What Is Dyslexia in Adults?
By definition, adult dyslexia is an impairment of the brain’s ability to translate images taken in by the eyes into understanding. For children, dyslexia (or specific reading disability) is the most common learning disability, affecting roughly 5% of all elementary-age children. In many cases, working adults may have perfectly normal intelligence, vision and speech, but they may have difficulty interpreting writing or the spoken language at times. Treatment for adults with learning disabilities is often a combination of counseling and multi-sensory education training.
Symptoms of dyslexia in adults include the inability to recognize written words and letters, a low reading ability, problems understanding auditory words, difficulty understanding rapid commands and difficulty remembering a sequence. Often times, adults will encounter reversals of letters (like seeing a “b” as a “d”) or reversals of words (”saw” instead of “was”). Sometimes adults with dyslexia have a hard time recognizing the spaces between words and they have a hard time sounding out unfamiliar words. Rhyming words, syllable counting, remembering words, recalling places, distinguishing different sounds, associating words with the wrong meanings, keeping time and organizing are some of the problems that dyslexic male and female adults may encounter on a regular basis.
It’s believed that these symptoms occur as a result of brain malfunctioning in specific regions, although recent research also suggests there may be a genetic defect at the root. Doctors can study the brain using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or Positron Emission Tomography to identify structural differences associated with adult dyslexia. In the MRI images, doctors will notice a deficit in parts of the brain’s left hemisphere, such as the inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, middle cortex and ventral cortex. In PET images, doctors will see changes in the basal temporal language zone. A University of Maastricht (Netherlands) study found that people with dyslexic reading difficulties under-activate the superior temporal cortex.
Roughly 40 million Americans suffer from adult dyslexia, which is about 15% of the population. Many people are surprised to learn that some of the most brilliant, creative and successful people were diagnosed with dyslexia. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Tom Cruise, Cher, Orlando Bloom, Anderson Cooper, Jay Leno, Whoopie Goldberg, Anthony Hopkins, Kiera Knightley, Ozzy Osborne, Guy Ritchie and Suzanne Somers all have some form of diagnosed dyslexia. Yet, they have all managed to overcome their struggles to live successful, productive and rich lives.