Dyslexia Symptoms

Dyslexia symptoms vary according to the severity of the disorder as well as the age of the individual.

Pre-school age children:

It is difficult to obtain a certain diagnosis of dyslexia before a child begins school, but many dyslexic individuals have a history of difficulties that began well before kindergarten. Children who exhibit these symptoms have a higher risk of being diagnosed as dyslexic than other children. Some of these symptoms are:

Learns new words slowly
Has difficulty rhyming words, as in nursery rhymes
Low letter knowledge
Letter reversal, ex: e b f p (normal)

Early primary school-age children:

Difficulty learning the alphabet or in order
Difficulty with associating sounds with the letters that represent them (sound-symbol correspondence)
Difficulty identifying or generating rhyming words, or counting syllables in words (phonological awareness)
Difficulty segmenting words into individual sounds, or blending sounds to make words (phonemic awareness)
Difficulty with word retrieval or naming problems
Difficulty learning to decode words
Difficulty distinguishing between similar sounds in words; mixing up sounds in multisyllable words (auditory discrimination) (for example, "aminal" for animal, "bisghetti" for spaghetti)

Older primary school children:

Slow or inaccurate reading, although these individuals can read to an extent.
Very poor spelling
Difficulty reading out loud, reads word in the wrong order, skips words and sometimes says a word similar to another word
Difficulty associating individual words with their correct meanings
Difficulty with time keeping and concept of time, when doing certain task
Difficulty with organization skills
Due to fear of speaking incorrectly, some children become withdrawn and shy or become bullies out of their inability to understand the social cues in their environment
Difficulty comprehending rapid instructions, following more than one command at a time or remembering the sequence of things
Children with dyslexia may fail to see (and occasionally to hear) similarities and differences in letters and words, may not recognize the spacing that organizes letters into separate words, and may be unable to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word.

One major misconceptions of dyslexia is writing words backwards or letters move when reading. This is a very small population of dyslexics. Teachers/instructors can better identify dyslexic students when their writing doesn't seem to match their level of intelligence from prior observations.

Common signs:

Sentences often containing a similar-looking, but unrelated word in place of the one intended (what/want, say/saw, help/held, run/fun, fell/fall, to/too, etc.)

Dyslexia Symptoms

Further Reading

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