CHAPTER I. READING DISORDERS (DYSLEXIA) IN CHILDREN WITH NORMAL INTELLIGENCE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ACT OF READING. NORMAL READING PROCESS

A critical analysis of the problem of reading disorders should be based, first of all, on an understanding of the complex psychophysiological structure of the reading process in the norm and the characteristics of the acquisition of reading skills by children.

What is the normal reading process?

Reading is a complex psychophysiological process. Visual, speech motor, speech and auditory analyzers take part in his act. Its process, as B.G. Ananiev writes, is based on "the most complex mechanisms of interaction between analyzers and temporal connections of two signal systems" ( Ananiev B.G. Analysis of difficulties in the process of mastering children in reading and writing. - Izvestiya APN RSFSR, vol. 70, p. 106.)/

Reading, as one of the types of written speech, is a later and more complex formation than oral speech. Written speech is formed on the basis of oral speech and represents a higher stage speech development... Complex conditioned reflex connections of written speech join the already formed connections of the second signal system (oral speech) and develop it. In the process of written speech, new connections are established between the heard, pronounced and visible words. If oral speech is mainly carried out by the activity of the speech-motor and speech-auditory analyzers, then written speech "is not an auditory-motor, but a visual-auditory-motor formation" ( Ananiev B.G. Restoring functions in agraphia and alexia of traumatic origin.- Scientific notes of Moscow State University. In 3 volumes, 1947, vol. II, p. 139). Written speech is a visual form of the existence of oral speech. In written speech, the sound structure of spoken words is modeled, indicated by certain graphic icons, the temporal sequence of sounds is translated into a spatial sequence of graphic images, i.e. letters.

Thus, according to its psychophysiological mechanisms, reading is a more complex process than oral speech, at the same time it cannot be considered outside the connection, outside the unity of written and oral speech.

Reading begins with visual perception, discrimination and recognition of letters. On this basis, the letters are correlated with the corresponding sounds and the sound-pronunciation image of the word is reproduced and read. And finally, due to the correlation of the sound form of a word with its meaning, the reading is understood. Thus, in the process of reading, two sides can be conditionally distinguished: technical (correlating the visual image of a written word with its pronunciation) and semantic, which is the main goal of the reading process. Understanding "is carried out on the basis of the sound form of the word with which its meaning is associated" ( Elkonin DB Some questions of mastering literacy.- Questions of psychology, 1956, no. 5, p. 39.). There is a close, inextricable connection between these sides of the reading process. The process of understanding what is read is determined by the nature of perception. On the other hand, the process of visual perception is influenced by the semantic content of the previously read. In the process of reading an adult, only the task, the meaning of what is being read is realized, and those psychophysiological operations that precede this are carried out as if by themselves, unconsciously, automatically. However, these automated literacy operations are complex and multifaceted. The complexity of the technical side of the reading process is clearly manifested even in the analysis of the reader's eye movements.

The movement of an experienced reader's eye occurs in rapid leaps, from one point of fixation (stopping) to another. In the process of reading, there is a movement not only forward (to the right), but also backward. Returning to what was previously perceived, moving backwards, is called regression. The perception of the words of the read, that is, the process of reading itself, occurs at the moment of fixation, the eye stops on the line. In the process of direct eye movement, the perception of what is read does not occur. This is confirmed by the duration of eye fixations. In the process of reading, the time of stops is 12 - 20 times longer than the time of eye movement along the line. In addition, as the reading conditions change, as the text becomes more complex, the number and duration of fixations undergo changes, while the time of eye movement from one stop to another remains unchanged. The number of stops on a line is different, it does not depend on the number of words or letters in a line, since eye fixations can be both between words and in the middle of a word. The number of stops varies depending on a number of conditions: on the structure of the word, on how familiar it is, whether it is used literally or figuratively, etc.

Relatively rare among experienced readers are regressions, that is, going back in order to clarify a previously perceived word. The number and duration of regressions vary depending on the degree of difficulty readable text, from its importance, from the attitude of the reader. So, for example, when reading a complex scientific text, the number of regressions will be much greater than in the process of reading an accessible literary text.

In the process of reading, an experienced reader perceives not a letter at the same time, but a word or a group of words. But this does not mean that he ignores the lettering of the word. The speed of reading and the accuracy of the visual perception of a word largely depend on its length, on the graphic outline of the letters, on the nature of the elements that make up the letter. An experienced reader does not read every letter of a word, but recognizes it in its entirety. In the process of recognizing a word, the dominant, most characteristic letters serve as a reference point, as well as letters whose elements protrude above the line or are under the line. In addition, when recognizing a word, the reader relies on the meaning of the previously read part of the text. Thus, a semantic guess facilitates the visual perception of the text. The last phrase of the text being read has an especially great influence on the recognition of a word. Of course, when reading the initial word of a sentence, text or unfamiliar words, as well as when perceiving an unusual grammatical structure, the role of semantic guessing is greatly reduced. Reading in this case is based on direct visual perception of words. Thus, the role of semantic guesses in reading is determined both by the place of the word in the sentence and by the peculiarities of the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the text being read.

Along with a positive meaning, the use of a semantic guess often leads to word substitutions, omissions, permutations of letters in a word, that is, a subjective introduction of meaning is observed in the process of reading. This happens when the semantic guess is not sufficiently controlled by the visual perception of what is being read.

Reading as an adult is a formed action, a skill. Like any skill, reading in the process of its formation goes through a number of stages, qualitatively unique stages. Each of these stages is closely related to the previous and subsequent ones, gradually passing from one quality to another. "In the previous stage, those elements accumulate that condition the transition to the next, higher stage of development" ( Egorov T.G. Psychology of mastering the reading skill. M., 1953, p. 31.). The formation of reading skills is carried out in the process of long-term and purposeful learning.

The well-known Soviet psychologist T.G. Egorov identifies the following four stages in the formation of the reading skill: 1) mastering the sound-letter designations, 2) syllabic reading, 3) the stage of the formation of synthetic reading techniques, 4) the stage of synthetic reading. Each of them is characterized by originality, qualitative features, a certain psychological structure, its own difficulties, tasks and methods of mastering.

The stage of mastering sound-letter designations... The mastery of sound-letter designations is carried out during the entire pre-literal and alphabetical period. At the same time, the psychological structure of this process in the pre-literal period and at the beginning of the alphabet will be different than at its end.

At the stage of mastering sound-letter designations, children analyze the speech flow, sentence, divide words into syllables and sounds. Having singled out the sound from speech, the child correlates it with a certain graphic image, a letter. Then, in the process of reading, he synthesizes letters into syllables and words, correlates the read word with the word of spoken speech.

In the process of reading, graphic images are first of all visually perceived, letters are distinguished and recognized, which correlate with their sound meanings. "However, the perception and distinction of letters is only the outer side of the reading process, behind which the most essential and basic actions with the sounds of the language are hidden" ( Elkonin D. B. Some questions of the psychology of mastering literacy.- "Questions of psychology, 1956, No. 5, p. 39.). Not a sound is the name of a letter, but, on the contrary, a letter is a sign, a symbol, a designation of a speech sound. Therefore, the complex process of mastering sound-letter designations begins with the knowledge of the sound side of speech, with the distinction and isolation of speech sounds. And only then are the letters proposed, which are visual images of sounds. Considering this side of the process of mastering sound-letter designations, it can be argued that the letter will be correctly and successfully learned primarily in the following cases:

a) When the child differentiates the sounds of speech, that is, when he has a clear image of the sound and when the sound does not mix with another, either by ear or articularly. In the case when there is no clear sound image, it becomes difficult to relate the sound to the letter. One and the same letter can correspond not to one, but to two or more mixed sounds, and vice versa, different letters can be called the same sound. In this case, the assimilation of the letter occurs slowly; a certain sound is not established behind the letter.

b) When the child has an idea about the generalized sound of speech, about the phoneme. It is known that sound in a stream of speech and sound pronounced in isolation are not identical. The sound of speech has certain physical properties, certain features, both significant for a given language, and insignificant (I. Baudouin de Courtenay, L. V. Shcherba, etc.). Significant are the semantic features of sound, which serve to convey the meaning of words, that is, when they change, the meaning of the word also changes (for example, deafness and voicedness: goat and scythe, hardness and softness: was and beat). In addition, in each individual case of pronunciation of a sound, it has individual qualities: pitch, timbre, intonation. Its character is also influenced by neighboring sounds, especially subsequent ones. The same sound in a stream of speech sounds different depending on the position in the word and on the nature of neighboring sounds. For example, the sound with sounds different in words: garden, mustache, kerchief, sun... But in all these cases, the main features of the sound remain. The sound remains a dull, non-nasal, solid, fricative, front-lingual sound. And these signs of sound, which have a meaningful meaning and are taken independently of other, insignificant qualities of sound, constitute a phoneme.

When isolating a sound from speech, the child must, in all the diversity of its sound, changing depending on the position of the sound in the word, catch some basic constant quality of the sound variants, regardless of its inconstant properties. Thus, the child should be distracted from the secondary properties of sounds and highlight the phoneme. Only under this condition, in the process of learning to read, an idea of ​​a grapheme is formed, of the correlation of a letter with a phoneme. In the case when the process of mastering a letter begins with the perception of its visual image, its assimilation and correlation with sound is mechanical in nature.

For a child starting to read, a letter is not the simplest graphic element. It is complex in its graphic composition, it consists of several elements, located differently in space in relation to each other. There are only a few elements of the printed font in the Russian alphabet. I i with C(B.G. Ananiev). As a result, in the Russian alphabet there are a lot of letters that are similar in style. Two groups of graphically similar letters can be distinguished: a) groups of letters consisting of the same graphic elements, but differently located in space (H - P - I, L - R, etc.) 6); groups of letters that differ from each other by some element (L - S, H - B, R - B, A - L, M - L).

In the psychological literature, the fact is noted that the child more easily establishes the similarity of various elements than the difference between similar elements (B.G. Ananiev and others). This fact is explained by the fact that the establishment of the difference is based on the process of differential inhibition, which develops later in the child and is weaker than excitatory.

In order to distinguish the letter under study from all other letters, including those similar in outline, it is necessary to carry out, first of all, an optical analysis of each letter into its constituent elements. Since the difference between many letters lies only in the different spatial arrangement of the same letter elements, the assimilation of the optical image of the letter is possible only with a sufficient development of spatial representations in the child.

The process of mastering the optical image of a letter is also carried out on the basis of the ability to memorize and reproduce visual images in memory. Recognition of a letter, like any recognition process, occurs when the directly perceived visual image is correlated with the idea of ​​it.

Thus, successful and rapid assimilation of letters is possible only if the following functions are sufficiently formed: a) phonemic perception (differentiation, distinguishing phonemes), b) phonemic analysis (the ability to extract sounds from speech), c) visual analysis and synthesis (the ability to determine similarity and difference between letters), d) spatial representations, e) visual mnezis (the ability to memorize the visual image of a letter).

Having mastered the letter, the child reads the syllables and words with it. However, in the process of reading a syllable, the unit of visual perception at this stage is the letter. The child first perceives the first letter of the syllable, correlates it with sound, then the second letter, then synthesizes them into a single syllable. Thus, during this period, the reader visually perceives not a whole word or syllable at once, but only a single letter, i.e., visual perception is letter-by-letter. A. Troshin called this stage "subsyllabic reading". However, the modern method of teaching reading reasonably provides for the sequential reproduction of the read from the very beginning. Therefore, after visual recognition of the letters of the syllable, the child reads this syllable in one piece and in its entirety. In this regard, the main difficulty of this stage, as well as of the entire process of mastering reading, is the difficulty of merging sounds into syllables. When reading a syllable in the process of fusion of sounds, the child must move from an isolated generalized sound to the sound that the sound acquires in the stream of speech, that is, pronounce the syllable as it sounds in oral speech. "The main difficulty in fusing sounds is the need to overcome the typical sound of individual sounds when combining them into syllables and translate the typical sound into the sounds of live speech" ( Egorov T.G. Essays on the psychology of teaching reading. M., 1963, p. 57.). To read a syllable together, it is necessary to imagine that syllable of oral speech, which consists of the same sounds, and these sounds follow each other in the same sequence in which the letters in the syllable are given. This means that the child must be able to analyze the sound composition of the syllable, the words of oral speech.

Thus, in order to overcome the difficulties of merging sounds into syllables, it is necessary to form in children not only the ability to distinguish and distinguish sounds, but also clear ideas about the sound composition of a syllable, the word of oral speech, that is, a sufficient level of phonemic development is required.

The pace of reading at this stage is very slow, it is determined, first of all, by the nature of the syllables being read. Simple syllables ( ma, ra) are read faster than syllables with a confluence of consonants ( hundred, kra).

The process of reading comprehension is characterized by certain peculiarities. So, the understanding of what is being read is distant in time from the visual perception of the word. Awareness of the word is carried out only after the read word is pronounced aloud. But the word read is not always immediately recognized, that is, it is correlated with a familiar word of oral speech. Therefore, the child often repeats it in order to recognize the read word.

Peculiarities are also observed when reading a sentence. So, each word of the sentence is read in isolation, therefore, understanding the sentence, the connection of individual words in it is with great difficulty.

In the process of reading words and sentences, semantic guess is almost not used. At this stage, the guess takes place only when reading the end of a word and is determined not by the previously read, but only by its previous part.

Level of syllabic reading... At this stage, the recognition of letters and the fusion of sounds into syllables is carried out without difficulty. In the process of reading, syllables quickly correlate with the corresponding sound complexes. The unit of reading, therefore, is the syllable.

The reading pace at this stage is rather slow. The reading speed is still 3.5 times slower than in the next steps in grade II. This can be explained by the fact that the way of reading is still analytical, there is no synthetic reading, holistic perception. The child reads the word in its constituent parts, that is, in syllables, then combines the syllables into a word and only then comprehends what he read.

At this stage, a semantic guess already takes place, especially when reading the end of a word. Typical is the tendency to repeat the word just read. Long and difficult words are often repeated when reading. This is due to the fact that the word read by syllables is artificially divided into parts and does not look like the corresponding word in oral speech. Therefore, it is not immediately recognized, comprehended. Thus, by repetition, the child tries to recognize the word he has read, to correlate it with a certain word of oral speech known to him. The repetition of words when reading a sentence is often explained by the desire to restore the lost semantic connection.

The process of understanding the text still lags behind in time the process of visual perception of what is read, does not merge with the process of perception, but follows it.

Thus, at this stage, there is still the difficulty of synthesizing, combining syllables into a word, especially when reading long and difficult words in structure, the difficulty in establishing grammatical connections between words in a sentence.

The stage of formation of holistic methods of perception... It is a transition from analytical to synthetic reading techniques. At this stage, simple and familiar words are read integrally, and words that are unfamiliar and difficult in their sound-syllable structure are read even syllables.

At this stage, a semantic guess plays a significant role. Relying on the meaning of what was previously read and being unable to quickly and accurately control it with the help of visual perception, the child often replaces words, word endings, that is, he has a guessing reading. As a result of guessing, there is a sharp discrepancy between what was read and what was printed, and a large number of errors appear. Erroneous reading leads to frequent regressions, returning to a previously read for correction, refinement or control. Conjecture takes place within the limits of only the sentence, and not the general content of the text. More mature at this stage is the synthesis of words in a sentence. The pace of reading at this stage increases.

Synthetic reading stage characterized by holistic reading techniques: words, groups of words. The technical side of reading no longer hinders the reader. The main task is to comprehend what is being read. The processes of comprehending the content prevail over the processes of perception. At this stage, the reader carries out not only the synthesis of words in the sentence, as in the previous stage, but also the synthesis of phrases in a single context. A semantic guess is determined not only by the content of the sentence read, but also by the meaning and logic of the whole story. Reading errors are rare, since the guess is controlled by a sufficiently developed holistic perception. The reading pace is quite fast.

Further improvement of the reading process is carried out in the direction of the development of fluency and expressiveness.

At the last stages of the formation of the reading skill, there are still difficulties in synthesizing words in a sentence and synthesizing sentences in a text. Reading comprehension is carried out only if the child knows the meaning of each word, understands the connections between them that exist in the sentence. Thus, reading comprehension is possible only with a sufficient level of development of the lexical and grammatical aspect of speech.

The main conditions for successfully mastering the reading skill are the formation of oral speech, phonetic-phonemic (pronunciation, differentiation of phonemes, phonemic analysis and synthesis) and lexical-grammatical aspects of speech, sufficient development of spatial representations, visual analysis and synthesis, visual mnezis.

BRIEF HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE TEACHING ABOUT READING DISORDERS.

The idea of ​​the symptomatology, nature and mechanisms of reading disorders developed gradually.

For the first time, A. Kussmaul pointed out these disorders as an independent pathology of speech activity in 1877. Then, many other works appeared in which descriptions of children with various disorders of reading and writing were given.

During this period, the pathology of reading and writing was considered as a single disorder of writing. In the literature of the late XIX and early XX centuries. it was widely believed that impaired reading is a symptom of general dementia and is observed only in mentally retarded children. Such observations were made by F. Bachmann and B. Engler.

However, at the end of the 19th century. in 1896 W. Morgan described a case of these reading disorders in a fourteen-year-old boy with normal intelligence. This boy studied in a normal school from the age of seven, was good at math, but could only read a few monosyllabic words. Morgan defined this disorder as an inability to spell correctly and read coherently without errors. Following V. Morgan, many other authors (A. Kussmaul, O. Berkan) began to consider reading impairment as an independent pathology of speech activity, not associated with mental retardation. The British ophthalmologists Kerr and Morgan have published works specifically devoted to reading-in-writing disorders in children. They are, in fact, the pioneers of the theory of reading disorders.

Somewhat later, in 1900 and 1907, D. Ginshelwood, an optometrist from Glasgow, described several more cases of reading disorders in children with normal intelligence, confirming that these disorders do not always accompany mental retardation. D. Ginshelwood was the first to name difficulties in mastering reading by the term "alexia", referring to them as severe and mild degrees of reading disorder.

Thus, at the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX century. there were two opposing points of view. According to one, reading disorders are a symptom of mental retardation, while supporters of the other believed that reading disorders were an isolated disorder not associated with mental retardation. As the described cases show, disorders are found both in mentally retarded children and with normal intelligence, and even in mentally gifted children. The latter point of view was more progressive, since it made it possible to investigate the nature of the mechanisms of reading disorders, without making them dependent on the general diffuse insufficiency of intelligence.

Authors who advocate the isolated, independent nature of reading disorders have considered the nature of this disorder in different ways. The most widespread point of view was considered, which asserted that the basis of the pathology of reading lies in the inferiority of visual perception. According to this view, the mechanism of dyslexia is a violation of the visual images of words and individual letters. In this regard, defects in reading and writing began to be called "congenital verbal blindness." F. Warburg and P. Ranschburg were typical representatives of this trend.

F. Warburg described in detail a gifted boy who suffered from "verbal blindness".

P. Ranschburg performed a thorough tachistoscopic ( Taxistoscope is a device that allows you to present a visual image on a very a short time(short-term exposure)) an experimental study of the visual perception of letters by children with reading impairments. As a result of lengthy tachistoscopic studies, P. Ranshburg came to the conclusion that it is difficult to recognize the form of a word in case of "congenital verbal blindness." He investigated the visual field and the duration of the exposure during which a word or letter was recognized. P. Ranshburg came to the conclusion that in children with reading impairments the field of perception is narrowed and the process of visual recognition of letters and words is slowed down. Systematic exercises over many months reduced the time for visual recognition of letters and words. But the visual field remained the same. As a result of these studies, P. Ranschburg came to the conclusion that the basis of the pathology of reading is a limited field of visual perception.

P. Ranschburg first began to distinguish between severe and light degrees of reading impairment. Light degrees reading disorders, he designated the term "legasthenia", in contrast to severe cases pathology of reading, which he called alexia. Later, mild degrees of reading disorders were called dyslexia.

In the future, there is also a differentiation of the concepts of dyslexia and dysgraphia, alexia and agraphia.

Gradually, the understanding of the nature of reading disorders changed. Some authors began to consider various forms reading disorders, differing in their mechanisms and manifestations. Reading disorder was no longer defined as a homogeneous optical disorder. Thus, E. Illing identifies a number of processes that are disturbed in the pathology of reading: 1) mastering the optical unity of the letter and the acoustic unity of sound; 2) the correlation of sound with a letter; 3) the synthesis of letters into a word; 4) the ability to dismember words into optical and acoustic elements; 5) definition of stress, melody of the word, changing vowels of the word; 6) reading comprehension.

E. Illing considered the main thing in the picture of Alexia to be the difficulty of association and dissociation, the inability to grasp the integrity of words and phrases.

Of great interest for its time was the study of O. Orton, who in 1937 published a work on disorders of reading, writing and speaking in children. Orton noted that reading disorders are quite common in children. He also pointed out that reading difficulties in children when learning to read and write should not be confused with reading disorders in adults with various brain injuries. O. Orton emphasized that reading disorder in children is based on the inability to make words out of letters. He called these difficulties alexia of development. The term "developmental alexia", or "evolutionary dyslexia", was more in line with the cases of reading disorders described in the literature in children with delayed development of some mental functions. O. Orton concluded that developmental alexia in children is caused not only by motor difficulties, but also by sensory impairments. Reading disorders were most often observed by O. Orton in children with motor impairments, in left-handers and in those children in whom the release of the leading hand is late, as well as in children with hearing and vision impairments.

Analyzing observations on children with congenital reading disorders, R.A.Tkachev concluded that alexia is based on mnestic disorders, that is, memory impairments. A child with alexia does not remember letters, syllables well, cannot relate letters to certain sounds. The reproduction of the beginning of a word is especially disturbed. If the child retains the last syllables of a word in memory, then he forgets, distorts, replaces the first syllables. R.A. Tkachev explains the manifestation of alexia by the weakness of associative connections between the visual images of letters and the auditory images of the corresponding sounds. At the same time, the intellect is preserved. This violation, according to R.A.Tkachev, is caused by the influence of hereditary factors.

In the work of S. S. Mnukhin "On congenital alexia and agraphia" it is said that reading disorders are found in both intellectually full-fledged and mentally retarded children. With various degrees of mental retardation, alexia occurs noticeably more often than in normal children.

Based on his own observations and observations of other authors, S. S. Mnukhin concludes that reading disorders are not an isolated disorder, but are accompanied by a number of other disorders. So, all the observed children could not list the months, days of the week, the alphabet in order, although they knew all these elements and reproduced this series in a random manner. Errors were also observed after multiple repetitions of these series. Children could not cope with the task of shading with a certain rhythm (Fig. 1). Memorizing the poem turned out to be a much more difficult process for them than for normal children. Reproduction of the story, which did not require accurate transmission in order, proceeded without difficulty, that is, in the same way as in normal children. The author notes that with alexia, the following violations are observed in the reading process:

Inability to count the number of letters in a word; compose words from the letters of this word, given in disorder, inability to read even a short and well-known word in which letters are missing or rearranged ( n-ro, tsalpa).

As the reading process improved, the children performed the indicated tasks more successfully.

As a result of the analysis of observations, S.S.Mnukhin concluded that with congenital alexia, there is a number of other disorders that are not accidental, but arise on a psychopathological basis common with reading and writing disorders.

Such a general psychopathological basis of these disorders, according to S. S. Mnukhin, is a violation of the function of structure formation. Alexia and agraphia are more complex manifestations of this disorder, and more elementary manifestations are disorders of "row-speaking", mechanical reproduction of rows (ordinal counting, naming the days of the week, months of the year, etc.).

S. S. Mnukhin believed that in the overwhelming majority of the cases of alexia and agraphia described by him, there is hereditary burden of varying severity, alcoholism, psychopathy, parental epilepsy, difficult childbirth, birth trauma. Family cases of this violation have also been described.

In the 30s of the XX century, issues of reading impairment begin to attract the attention of psychologists, teachers, and defectologists. During this period, a certain relationship between reading disorders, on the one hand, and defects in oral speech and hearing, on the other hand, is emphasized (F. A. Pay, R. M. Boskis, R. E. Levina).

THE CURRENT STATE OF THE ISSUE OF READING VIOLATIONS.

Terminology, definition and prevalence of reading disorders in children.

In modern literature, the following terms are mainly used to denote reading disorders: "alexia" - to denote a complete lack of reading and "dyslexia, developmental dyslexia, or evolutionary dyslexia" - to denote a partial disorder of the process of reading mastery, in contrast to those cases when the act of reading disintegrates, for example, with aphasia, as a result of certain lesions of the cerebral cortex.

Dyslexia is defined differently by different authors. For example, M.E. Khvatsev defines dyslexia as a partial disorder of the reading process, which makes it difficult to master this skill and leads to many mistakes during reading (omission of letters, syllables, substitutions, permutations, omission of prepositions, conjunctions, word substitutions, omission of lines). A special group of research on developmental dyslexia of the World Federation of Neurology, representing a complex of international studies in neurology, pediatrics, psychology and pedagogy, gives the following definition of dyslexia: specific developmental dyslexia is a disorder that represents a difficulty in mastering reading, despite normal learning, normal intelligence and good social -cultural conditions.

However, these definitions do not allow to distinguish dyslexia from other reading disorders: from reading errors that naturally occur at the first stages of mastering reading, from reading disorders in children, pedagogically neglected, difficult in behavior, etc. In the definition of dyslexia, it is necessary to indicate the main characteristics of errors reading for dyslexia, which would distinguish them from other reading disorders.

A feature of dyslexic errors is their typicality, repetitive character... Reading difficulties are manifested in repeated substitutions of letters, permutations, omissions, etc. Reading errors can also occur in a good reader due to fatigue, distraction, etc. But these errors will not be typical, characteristic, repetitive, but will be of a random nature. ... The second characteristic feature of reading errors in dyslexia is their persistent character... Reading errors are known to occur in normal children as well. Many children who begin to learn to read make such mistakes, but they are not observed for long, they disappear rather quickly. In dyslexic children, these mistakes persist for a long time, months or even years. Thus, dyslexia is determined not by several, often random, reading errors, but by their aggregate and persistent nature.

The definition of dyslexia, however, should include not only an indication of the manifestations of reading disorders and the specific nature of these manifestations, but also those difficulties that cause dyslexic disorders. The existence of reading errors in children does not yet prove the presence of dyslexia. As indicated, reading errors can occur in all children starting to read, in children who are pedagogically neglected, lazy, etc. Reading disorders can be the result of behavioral disorders. Failures are observed in these children not only in teaching reading and writing, but also in other school subjects. In these cases, we are not talking about dyslexia, since reading errors are not typical and persistent, they are not a consequence of the unformed mental functions that carry out the reading process. In dyslexia, however, reading impairments are often selective and represent a clear discrepancy with success in other subjects. On the other hand, the presence of difficulties alone in mastering reading without pronounced reading errors does not yet give grounds to talk about this violation.

Dyslexia in normal children is often the result of various difficulties, each of them, existing in isolation, can be compensated for, while the combination of difficulties, the possibility of compensation is reduced. So, for example, normal children may have non-rude phonemic disorders(impaired phonemic analysis) without obvious dyslexia. These children, despite the immature phonemic system, compensate for the difficulties in learning to read thanks to good intelligence and sufficiently developed spatial concepts. It is advisable to define dyslexia as follows: dyslexia is a partial disorder of the process of mastering reading, manifested in numerous repetitive errors of a persistent nature, due to the lack of formation of mental functions involved in the process of mastering reading.

In European countries, up to 10% of children with dyslexia are noted. According to R. Becker, reading disorders are observed in 3% of children primary grades mass school, in speech schools the number of children with dyslexia reaches 22%.

K. Makita finds a very small amount of dyslexia among Japanese children, only 0.98%. This is about 10 times less than in European countries. Based on the analysis of statistical data on the prevalence of dyslexia, given the nature of the written language, the author concludes that the specificity of the language used is a very significant factor in the prevalence, symptomatology and structure of the defect in dyslexia. Thus, dyslexia is not only a neuropsychological problem, but also a linguistic one.

Dyslexia symptoms.

Symptoms, manifestations of dyslexia are defined in different ways, depending on the understanding of the essence of these disorders.

A number of authors (J. Azuriaguerra, S. Borel-Mesonny, M. Ye. Khvatsev, etc.), defining the symptoms of dyslexia, dwell only on the manifestations of reading disorders directly. Disorders of oral speech, motor skills and spatial representations that accompany dyslexia are considered as pathogenetic factors of dyslexic disorders.

Another part of the authors (K. Lonay, M. Kutz et al.) Believes that reading disorders are not an isolated disorder, but represent only one of the symptoms associated with disorders of oral speech, motor skills, and spatial orientation. At the heart of all these disorders, as M. Kutz points out, is a disorder of that region of the cerebral cortex, where the synthesis of auditory and visual excitations occurs. K. Lonay suggests that with dyslexia, practical and gnostic processes, auditory and visual, are disturbed, mainly in the speech system.

However, it seems more correct to define the symptoms of dyslexia only as a manifestation of reading disorders directly, not including those disorders (lack of spatial orientation, motor disorders, etc.) that, although often accompany dyslexia, are, however, factors of a pathogenetic nature, i.e. the mechanism of this violation.

Dyslexia manifests itself in reading slowness. A dyslexic child's reading is characterized by a wide variety of mistakes. When assimilating letters, there are difficulties in mastering them, various mixtures of both graphically similar and letters denoting sounds that are acoustically similar. It is noted that dyslexics have no difficulty in mastering vowel letters. Sometimes with dyslexia, there is mirror reading, that is, reading from right to left.

Dyslexia can also manifest itself in permutations of sounds, in jumping from one line to another, in the inability to carry out sound synthesis when reading words. In the process of reading words, a student who can read well can easily combine syllables into words. A dyslexic child has difficulty synthesizing words, even if he or she reads all the syllables of the word correctly. He often does not grasp the meaning of the word he is reading.

Global perception of the word in dyslexia is possible, but it remains undifferentiated and erroneous. In severe cases, dyslexia is characterized by the inability to read groups of two or three letters. The reading will then be guessing.

R.E. Levina refers to the following errors in reading as typical manifestations of dyslexia: insertion of additional sounds, omission of letters, replacement of one word with another, errors in the pronunciation of letters, repetition, addition, omission of words.

In the literature, there are also attempts to systematize the manifestations of reading disorders. So, for example, R.E. Levina (1940) identifies the following main types of manifestations of dyslexia: insufficient assimilation of letters, insufficient merging of letters into syllables, incorrect reading of words, phrases.

N. Grangeon dwells on two types: incorrect recognition of letters and incorrect combination of letters in a word.

Dyslexia mechanisms.

The problem of dyslexia has been studied for a century, but this problem still remains unresolved in many of its aspects. One of these complex issues of dyslexia is its pathogenesis, that is, the question of the mechanisms of this disorder.

Modern research on reading disorders is multifaceted, in-depth and systematic. They show that the pathogenetic mechanisms of reading disorders are complex and varied. Trying to identify the mechanisms of dyslexia, scientists conduct neurological, electroencephalographic, audiometric, psychological, and linguistic studies.

Neurological examination does not reveal obvious pathology in children with dyslexia, however, some inaccuracy, insufficient differentiation of movements is often revealed, most often when performing voluntary, consciously controlled movements, while spontaneous involuntary motor skills are normal. What is the nature of this impairment of motor skills? Whether we are talking in these cases about some subtle, latent violations of praxis, that is, voluntary, purposeful movements, or should we talk about underdevelopment of motor skills, inadequacy of the child's motor skills to his age, about unpreparedness to perform many subtle manual movements - these are the questions remain open.

The second point of view is more consistent with the truth, since many children, inaccurately performing some movements in the process learning activities become surprisingly accurate and lively in play and extracurricular activities. Thus, children with dyslexia often have immaturity, underdevelopment of motor skills, which also affects the formation of spatial orientations.

Electroencephalograms in these children are almost always normal. There are, however, more sluggish, more lazy waves than the age of the child allows. In other words, the nature of the waves in children with dyslexia corresponds to an earlier age, which indicates a lag in brain maturation, a lag in development. The only cases of pathological traits occur in children with neurological symptoms and speech disorders.

Audiometric studies of hearing show that hearing acuity is normal, most often audiograms without deviations, at the same time, there are quite often preceding otitis media. With the help of electronic equipment, it was possible to detect minor violations in the area of ​​speech zones, especially when mixing of sounds predominated in oral speech. All this, however, does not exclude the possibility of dyslexia in children with hearing impairment, that is, in deaf children.

There have been many studies of visual function in dyslexic children. The first works on dyslexia belonged to ophthalmologists Helmholtz and Zhaval. Currently, there is no doubt that dyslexia is not a consequence of impaired or decreased visual acuity. Children with low vision may experience reading errors, but they will not have the specific character that occurs with dyslexia.

The study of eye movement showed that in dyslexia, eye fixations are very short and irregular, regressions and returns to movement are very frequent. But these symptoms are a consequence of dyslexia, not its mechanism. If good readers grasp several words during one fixation, eye pause, then the dyslexic reads only part of the word at one fixation, often doing regressions to control the reading.

Dyslexia and impaired spatial perception.

A large number of studies are devoted to the study of spatial representations, the development and state of functional asymmetry, i.e., lateralization, in children with dyslexia.

Children with dyslexia have difficulties in orientation in all spatial directions, difficulty in identifying right and left, top and bottom. There is an inaccuracy in determining the shape and size. The lack of formation of spatial representations in these children manifests itself not only in mastering reading, but also in drawing, in the difficulties of composing a whole from parts during construction, in the inability to reproduce a given form.

The study of children with dyslexia revealed a delay in differentiation of the right and left parts of the body, late lateralization or impaired lateralization (left-handedness, mixed dominant).

As you know, with normal lateralization (asymmetry of the activity of the right and left parts of the body), the leading, stronger parts are the right parts of the body: right arm, right leg, right eye, right ear. In violation of lateralization, left-handedness can be observed, when the left hand, left leg, etc. is dominant, or a mixed dominant (for example, the right hand, left leg, left eye are dominant in the same person).

The frequency of dyslexia in left-handers, in children with imprecise, discoordinated, mixed lateralization has been noted by many authors. So, R. Zazzo found 3 times more reading disorders in children with mixed dominant. He believes that the mixed dominant serves as an obstacle to good motor-sensory coordination, to the acquisition of automatisms. M. Rudinesco, J. Trela ​​also noted a high frequency of dyslexia among left-handers and a large proportion of left-handedness among dyslexics. B. Halgren finds 18% of left-handers among dyslexics, and only 9% in the control group.

J. Ajuriaguerra and N. Grangeon compared the state of lateralization in children with dyslexia and in normal children. They concluded that left-handedness occurs in both normal children and children with dyslexia. Both normal and dyslexic children experience certain changes around the age of 10. In that age period the ratio of the predominance of the right and the left is changing. So, in normal children under 10 years old, the number of left-handers is 30%, and after 10 years - much less, 21%. In children with dyslexia up to 10 years old, the number of left-handers is 46%, and after 10 years - 31%.

Thus, the number of left-handers in normal children of an earlier age, 7-10 years old, is equal to the number of left-handers in children with dyslexia 11-13 years old. This confirms the view that children with dyslexia have a developmental delay in this function.

Should left-handedness be considered a mechanism for dyslexia? If left-handedness is presented as one of the main factors in the onset of dyslexia, then it is impossible to explain the mechanism of dyslexia in right-handers. In addition, there are often left-handers who do not have reading impairments. This means that left-handedness in itself cannot cause the onset of dyslexia. The relationship between left-handedness and dyslexia is not straightforward, but complex, mediated. In many cases, especially during retraining and with a mixed dominant, children have specific difficulties in the formation of spatial representations, designations of the right and left. Left-handed children have a mixture of the right and left sides. Normally, the distinction between right and left is formed by the age of 6. Sufficient formation of spatial representations is a necessary prerequisite for distinguishing and assimilating letters by a child. In left-handers without reading impairment, apparently, in the process of evolution, mechanisms are created to compensate for lateral discoordination; in dyslexic left-handers, these compensation systems are organized more slowly, later.

While the number of retrained left-handers is decreasing, the number of children with reading disabilities is not decreasing. This proves once again that left-handedness is not the cause of dyslexia. Not the fact of left-handedness itself, but the lack of formation of spatial representations, which is noted in retrained left-handers and with a mixed dominant, causes reading disturbances.

Dyslexia and speech disorders.

Speaking disorders are very common in children with dyslexia. In the literature, a diverse nature of violations of oral speech in dyslexia is noted: 1) violations of the tempo and rhythm of speech (stuttering, very fast speech); 2) delay in the appearance of speech; 3) insufficient verbal function (inaccuracy in the use of words); 4) violations of the grammatical structure of oral speech; 5) violations of sound pronunciation; 6) violations of phonemic development.

Violations of the tempo and rhythm of speech (stuttering, fast speech) are often observed among retrained left-handers, and in this case they are a consequence of retrained left-handedness and are not directly related to dyslexia.

In other cases, stuttering can occur in children with late speech development, with impaired language development during the transition to mastering complex forms of speech (phrasal speech). The speech functional system in such children is very fragile, vulnerable, weakened. Therefore, with an excessive load, with the complication of speech material, an overstrain of the speech occurs functional system, which manifests itself in the form of stuttering. At the same time, the underdevelopment of linguistic generalizations (phonemic, lexical, morphological, syntactic) in these children also leads to impaired reading mastery, dyslexia. Thus, in these cases, the connection between stuttering and dyslexia is of an indirect nature, although it is determined by a single pathological factor, a violation of speech development. It should be noted that the subtle specific mechanisms of stuttering and dyslexia will be different in these cases.

More significant in the onset of dyslexia is the late development of speech. With dyslexia, in a large number of cases, there is a delay in speech development. In some cases, this is only a slight lag (speech appeared after two years), in others - a pronounced delay in speech development, when speech appeared after four or more years.

Children with dyslexia have problems with sound pronunciation, poor vocabulary, and inaccurate use of words. They formulate their speech incorrectly, make mistakes in the use of words, avoid complex phrases, limit themselves to short sentences, and observe inversions.

Noting the frequency of speech disorders in dyslexia, many authors believe that both oral speech disorders and reading disorders are the result of the influence of a single etiopathogenetic factor (B. Halgren, S. Borel-Mesonny, R. E. Levin, etc.), which is the cause violation and its constituent pathological mechanism.

In mild cases, these violations are found only at the stage of mastering written speech. In difficult cases, first of all, oral speech is also impaired, and later, reading and writing impairments are revealed.

Auditory perception in dyslexia is unstable and fleeting. This transience, as noted by S. Borel-Maisonnie, entails the difficulty of establishing a stable correspondence between the phoneme and the corresponding grapheme. Dyslexic children have difficulty distinguishing many sounds.

R.E. Levina believes that the lack of formation of the phonemic system lies at the heart of reading and oral speech disorders.

At the initial stages of mastering reading with underdevelopment of the phonetic-phonemic side of speech in children, inaccuracy and instability of speech representations and generalizations are observed. This makes it difficult to master the sound analysis of a word (R. E. Levina, G. A. Kashe, N. A. Nikashina, L. F. Spirova). Selective non-assimilation of letters is caused not by the weakness of retention of graphic styles, the assimilation of which turns out to be normal, but by the unformed generalization of sounds. "Not a letter as a picture bearing the name of the corresponding sound, but a grapheme - a graphic designation of a phoneme - constitutes a unit of reading and writing" ( Levina R.E., Deficiencies in reading and writing in children. M, 1940, p. fourteen.)). If a letter does not correspond to a generalized sound (phoneme), then its assimilation will be mechanical.

Sounds that are accurately perceived and correctly pronounced by children are easily correlated with the letter. When sounds are poorly distinguished by ear, pronounced distortedly or are replaced in pronunciation by others, the generalized idea of ​​this sound is indistinct, and the perception of letters is difficult. Failure to master letters in this case is due to an insufficient level of development of phonemic perception.

Thus, if the formation of phonemic representations is difficult in children, then they slowly form ideas about the grapheme (B. G. Ananiev, R. E. Levina, A. N. Popova, L. F. Spirova).

The process of fusion of sounds into syllables is also extremely difficult for these children. To master the continuous reading of syllables, the child must correlate the letter only with a certain sound, differentiating this sound from others. In addition, he must have an idea of ​​the generalized sound of this sound. A semantic guess helps the continuous pronunciation of syllables. The fusion of sounds in a syllable is, first of all, pronouncing them as they sound in oral speech. If a child does not have clear ideas about the sound-letter composition of a word, the formation of generalized sound-syllable images is difficult.

Reading disorders can also be associated with insufficient lexical and grammatical development of speech. So, the replacement of words during reading can be caused not only by their phonetic similarity, incorrect pronunciation or non-discrimination of individual sounds, but also by the difficulties in establishing the syntactic connections of a sentence. In these cases, children do not have a focus on the morphological analysis of words, and the morphological analysis itself is difficult. So, when reading the phrase Mom washes the frame, a normal child, based on the existing connection of words washes and frame, maybe already when reading a word washes guess what the ending will be in the word frame, since these two words in the language appear only in combination washes the frame and nothing else. In the process of reading, a normal child begins to guess the meaning and grammatical form subsequent words already at the perception of the previous word. In this case, the semantic guess is based on the child's ideas about the laws of language, on the "sense of language."

A child with an underdevelopment of the lexical and grammatical structure of speech can read the above sentence as "Mom is a bridge frame", since his semantic guess is not based on exact linguistic generalizations, on clear ideas about the laws of changing words and their compatibility in a sentence. In this case, a semantic guess is either absent or plays a negative role, since it is the cause of a large number of specific errors.

Distortions of readable words in children with underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech are often determined by the fact that the morphological structure of the word is not sufficiently understood and in the process of reading a correct semantic guess does not arise. In such children, when reading, there are agrammatisms due to difficulties in perceiving subtle grammatical meanings due to the morphological structure of the word ( flew in- "flew in").

Reading disorders caused by the underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech are called agrammatic dyslexia. In this form of dyslexia, the following errors are observed during reading:

1. Changing the case endings of nouns ( I have- "at me", from under the leaves- "from under the leaves", comrades- "at the comrades").

2. Changing the number of a noun ( astronaut- "astronauts").

3. Incorrect agreement in gender, number and case of nouns and adjectives ("interesting tale", "cheerful children").

4. Changing the number of pronouns ( all- "all").

5. Incorrect use of generic pronouns ("such a city", "our rocket").

6. Changing the endings of the 3rd person past tense verbs ("this was the country", "the wind rushed by", "there was a day", did not want- "did not want").

7. Changing the form, tense and type of the verb ( flew in- "flew in", sees- "saw", announced- "announced").

Agrammatic dyslexia is most often observed in children with general speech underdevelopment of various pathogenesis at the synthetic stage of the formation of reading skills.

A limited vocabulary and insufficiently developed grammatical generalizations cause difficulties in understanding what is read, since understanding what is being read is determined by the level of the child's linguistic development, the degree and nature of mastering not only the meaning of a word, but also understanding the connection between words and sentences.

Dyslexia and bilingualism.

As a factor determining the onset of dyslexia, some authors also consider the conflict in bilingualism. In some cases of bilingualism, the child speaks one language at home, and at school, on the street, communicates in another language. In other cases, parents use different languages ​​when communicating with their child. It is believed that the main factor causing dyslexia in bilingualism is more often a psychological conflict between the child's tendency to native language and the need to speak another language (A. Sertou, J. Racine, J. Mar, M. Gard, A. Ham). The development of dyslexia in family bilingualism is considered in the same way. Is a psychological conflict really the pathogenetic mechanism of dyslexia in bilingualism, or are more complex and multivalued factors underlying reading disorders? The second is more reasonable.

In conditions of bilingualism, the onset of dyslexia is influenced by psychological difficulties, and difficulties in the formation of speech, and learning difficulties. In bilingualism, dyslexia is caused not so much by a psychological conflict or affective disturbances as by the peculiarities of expressive speech, which develops in conditions of bilingualism and is characterized by various disorders: pronunciation disorders, poorly formed lexical and grammatical design and speech understanding. With bilingualism, mastering linguistic generalizations is difficult. Each language is characterized by its own phonemic system, certain patterns of grammatical structure. In this regard, in the process of mastering oral speech, the linguistic laws of one language will, as it were, come into conflict with the still poorly mastered laws of another language. Thus, not a psychological conflict, but disorders in the formation of oral speech, difficulties in mastering linguistic generalizations in bilingualism can, first of all, cause the onset of dyslexia. Psychological conflict and affective disorders in these children can, at the same time, exacerbate the manifestation of reading disorders.

Dyslexia and mental retardation.

In children with mental retardation of various pathogenesis, as a rule, dyslexia is observed when learning to read. Thus, Ingram in his work establishes correlations between reading disorders and developmental delay. The author notes that children with dyslexia are lagging behind in speech development by at least two years, compared with normal children. In these children, in the process of speech development, there is a late appearance of speech sounds, a slower pace of development of expressive speech. In the process of reading, children with great difficulty correlate the sounds of speech with written symbols (letters), mix letters that are graphically similar, rearrange the sounds when reading syllables and words. The author associates specific disorders of written speech with a delay in the development of various mental functions, with speech-hearing and optical-spatial difficulties.

V.A.Kovshikov and Yu.G. Demyanov, studying children with mental retardation, also note in these children a complex of speech disorders, including reading disorders, as well as difficulties in the perception and reproduction of letters, difficulties in the formation of the function of phonemic analysis, synthesis, the difficulty of correlating sound with a letter. In the process of reading, children mistakenly read syllables and words that were complex in structure, confused letters that were similar in outline.

Various reading disorders in these children, according to the authors, are caused not so much by disorders of oral speech as by the insufficiency of a number of mental functions: attention, memory, visual gnosis, successive and simultaneous ( Successively - consistently; simultaneously - simultaneously.) processes.

Dyslexia and affective disorders.

With dyslexia, various affective disorders are often noted (M. Rudinesco, M. Trela, F, Aubrey, V. Halgren, etc.). At the same time, in relation to dyslexia, primary and secondary affective disorders are distinguished. In some cases, affective disorders, being primary, are considered as a factor causing dyslexia. In other cases, affective disorders occur in a child in connection with his failure to learn to read. If a child is seen as retarded and incapable, he begins to feel inferior. If accused of laziness and lack of will, he often becomes aggressive and undisciplined. M. Rudinesco and M. Trela ​​combine all affective reactions in dyslexia into three types: 1) feelings of inferiority, 2) feelings of anxiety, fear, insecurity, 3) negative reactions, accompanied by aggressiveness, anger, harshness.

J. Aubrey identifies several other types of affective disorders in children with dyslexia:

Active negative reactions arise in the case when a child associates entering school with something unpleasant, due to a change in the situation, environment, conflict with children, and the strictness of the teacher. When negative reactions are observed only at school, one can look for the reason in the change in the situation in connection with entering school. When the negative reaction spreads to the family, it is necessary to look for its cause in those relationships that develop in the child in the family.

Affective immaturity occurs when the child has not been taught to be independent at home. Such children are infantile, do not tolerate changes in the environment, at school they do not establish contacts with peers. They retire, do not play with other children, keep isolated, sometimes openly express their fear of school life and want to stay small.

Passive protest reactions occur in passive and lethargic children who act only under fear. They must be forced not only to work, but also to dress and eat.

V. Halgren also detects behavioral disorders in some children with dyslexia. But the author finds no connection between behavioral disturbances and the onset of dyslexia. (He views behavioral disturbances as a factor that accompanies the course of dyslexia.)

The question naturally arises as to how affective disorders should be considered: as one of the etiopathogenetic factors or as a consequence of reading disorders.

Isolation of affective disorders as etiopathogenetic factors is insufficiently substantiated, since most often affective disorders are a consequence, not a cause of dyslexia. In those cases when the non-assimilation of reading occurs due to the child's negative reactions, pedagogical neglect, difficulties in behavior, reading errors will not be specific, repetitive, persistent, characteristic of dyslexia.

Therefore, there are currently different points of view on the origin of dyslexia. This indicates, first of all, how complex the problem of the mechanisms of dyslexia is. At the same time, analyzing all the above data, certain conclusions can be drawn. As etiopathogenetic factors of dyslexia in children, disorders of those higher mental functions that carry out the process of reading normally should be considered. In this regard, dyslexia can be caused by a violation of visual analysis and synthesis, spatial representations, violation of phonemic functions, underdevelopment of the lexical and grammatical side of speech. Consequently, reading impairments can be caused, first, by underdevelopment of sensorimotor functions (agnostic-apractical impairments). So, the underdevelopment of visual analysis and synthesis, spatial representations causes difficulties in the child in mastering the visual images of letters, difficulties in recognizing and distinguishing them (optical dyslexias). Secondly, reading disorders can be caused by underdevelopment of higher symbolic functions, underdevelopment of linguistic generalizations: phonemic, lexical, grammatical (phonemic, semantic, agrammatic dyslexia). This group of reading disorders is the most common. Reading disorders in this case are one of the signs of impaired language development.

The origin of dyslexia is associated with the underdevelopment of many functional systems. In determining the form of dyslexia, the underdevelopment of the leading functional system in this case is of decisive importance.

Dyslexia and heredity.

Some authors studying reading disorders in children note a hereditary predisposition for dyslexia. So, M. Lamy, K. Lonay, M. Sule studied an interesting case of dyslexia in two monozygotic twins 12 and a half years old. In the first year of learning to read, boys showed numerous errors in reading, repetitive, typical and persistent. The mastery of reading was very slow, with great difficulties. In the process of writing, various errors were also observed: replacements of graphically similar letters, rearrangements of letters and syllables, spelling errors. In all other subjects, especially mathematics, knowledge was satisfactory. She had a history of normal motor development. However, speech appeared late, there was a lag in the development of speech. Phrasal speech appeared only at the age of three. Both boys were right-handed, one had a mild ambidexterity, he used both hands equally.

Research and interviews with parents revealed the following. The mother had some difficulty learning to read and write. During the examination, I wrote simple phrases without mistakes. But more subtle tests revealed errors almost as numerous as in children. The father is left-handed. In the process of learning to write, he was taught to write with his right hand. As a child, my father stuttered slightly. During his school years, he had dyslexia. The maternal cousins ​​of the children under study also had dyslexia, the maternal grandfather had reading disorders, and the paternal great-grandfather had left-handedness and dyslexia.

Thus, the genetic study allowed the authors to draw a conclusion about the hereditary nature of some of the factors that cause the onset of dyslexia.

B. Halgren in his research notes that it is clinically difficult to distinguish between hereditary cases. However, the study of six pairs of twins allowed the author to confirm the hypothesis of the genetic basis of evolutionary dyslexia.

Reinhold in his work also points to the influence of a hereditary factor in the etiology of dyslexia in children. He studied children with reading and writing impairments with normal intelligence, without impairment of hearing, vision, and without central lesions. nervous system... The work notes that reading and writing disorders were of a family nature, that is, the relatives of these children also suffered from them. Analyzing the results of his research, the author concludes that there is a special, congenital form of dyslexia. In these cases of congenital dyslexia, children inherit from their parents a qualitative immaturity of the brain in its individual zones. This immaturity of brain structures manifests itself in specific delays in the development of a particular function.

Most authors studying reading disorders in children consider dyslexia as a functional disorder, referring to reading disorders in children as evolutionary dyslexia, or developmental dyslexia. Evolutionary dyslexia is caused by a delay in the development of mental functions that carry out the reading process normally.

Dyslexia classification.

By manifestation, two forms of dyslexia are distinguished: literal, which manifests itself in the inability or difficulty in assimilating letters, and verbal, which manifests itself in the difficulty of reading words. However, this division is arbitrary, since both forms can be found simultaneously in the same children.

So, S. Borel-Maisonnie divided dyslexia into groups:

I. Dyslexia associated with disorders of oral speech.

II. Dyslexia associated with poor spatial representation.

III. Mixed cases.

IV. Cases of false (false) dyslexia.

In children I group there is insufficient auditory memory, impaired auditory perception. These children find it difficult to establish a connection between auditory and visual perception, between sound and letter. In mild cases, these perceptual disturbances appear only at the stage of mastering written speech; in severe cases, these disturbances also affect the process of mastering oral speech. In oral speech in such children, various disorders are observed.

Revealing the mechanism of this type of dyslexia, the author, unfortunately, reduces the entire complex picture of speech underdevelopment of these children to sensory (auditory) disorders, to impaired auditory memory and perception. S. Borel-Mesonny considers oral speech primarily as auditory function... However, many modern studies prove that even the process of speech perception is carried out by the interaction of the speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzers. In addition, speech is a complex multilevel process that cannot be reduced only to elementary auditory perception and motor reproduction. The speech function has a complex systemic structure. The multilevel structure of the functional speech system I suggests that violations of both oral and especially written speech cannot be reduced to elementary disorders of the sensorimotor order. In most cases, reading disorders are determined by the underdevelopment of functions of a higher order, underdevelopment of the symbolic language level and underdevelopment of linguistic generalizations.

In children II group there are disturbances in the perception of shape, size, location in space, determination of the top, bottom, right, left sides, in severe cases - disturbances in kinesthetic memory, inability to imagine unusual positions of arms and legs in space, disturbances in the body scheme. These children sometimes have phenomena of motor discoordination, dyspraxia, which are especially noticeable in writing.

Mixed cases of dyslexia ( III group) are the most numerous. At the same time, children have both visual and auditory perception disorders, as well as motor lag. Children with a mixed form of dyslexia mispronounce many sounds, words, poorly construct phrases, choose words for a long time, mix right and left, poorly distinguish figures in shape and size. Their movements are often awkward, synkinesis and sluggish reactions are observed.

IN IV group unite children who have neither speech impairments nor underdevelopment of spatial representations. Nevertheless, these children did not learn to read well for various reasons (due to incorrect teaching methods, unfavorable environmental conditions, due to pedagogical neglect, etc.).

Difficulties in mastering reading can arise when parents use the wrong method of teaching reading: a global method (whole words) or a literal method (m + a = ma).

Reading difficulties appear when young children learn to read. If children of six years old easily master reading, then children of 3-4 years are not yet ready to master reading. Therefore, attempts to teach young children to read are accompanied by natural difficulties and reading errors.

In this regard, it is not recommended to start teaching reading too early or too late, to use different methods of teaching reading at school and at home. It is very important to identify among children who read poorly, true dyslexics, with whom systematic, purposeful work should be carried out according to a specific method. These children are taught to read for a longer time, at a slower pace.

ME Khvatsev distinguishes phonemic, optical, optical-spatial, semantic and mnestic dyslexia by disturbed mechanisms. He believes that only phonemic and optical dyslexias are observed in children. Other forms occur with organic lesions of the brain, with aphasia.

Phonemic dyslexia. With this form of dyslexia, children cannot learn to read correctly within 2 to 4 years. Some with great difficulty learn individual letters, but cannot merge them into syllables and words. Others learn letters without much difficulty, but in the process of reading syllables and words they make a large number of mistakes. In these children, "the letter is not a signal of a generalized sound of speech (phoneme), and therefore is not a grapheme (generalized graphic sign)" ( Khvatsev M.E. Speech therapy. M., 1959, p. 385.). The author believes that the poor connection between sound and letter is due to poor phonemic hearing. The sounds of speech in these children are indistinct, unstable, they hardly distinguish them, especially oppositional ones, similar in sound. Therefore, the letters are learned with great difficulty.

In the process of reading words, children find it difficult to merge sounds into syllables and words by analogy with already memorized syllables, they hardly recognize the syllables in the "face".

Optical dyslexia consists in "not recognizing letters as generalized graphic signs of the corresponding phonemes, that is, letters are not recognized as graphemes" ( Khvatsev M.E. Speech therapy. M., 1959, p. 387.). Thus, a violation of the formation of ideas about the connections of a phoneme with a grapheme is noted in both phonemic and optical dyslexia. The difference in the mechanisms of disruption of the connection between phoneme and grapheme in these two forms of dyslexia is not quite clearly shown.

According to the manifestations, M. Ye. Khvatsev distinguishes between literal dyslexia (individual letters are not recognized) and verbal (individual letters are assimilated, but words are not recognized). The main reason for poor assimilation of letters is the lack of clarity of their perception, the instability of ideas about the letter. Usually, in the visual image of a letter, first of all, its general structure is preserved, certain details fall out. The letters are mutually similar. Most often, substitute letters are simpler in their graphic image than the letters they replace. The more similar the letters are graphically, the more often they are replaced, especially if these letters are located close to each other in the word. In this regard, according to the author, visual stereotypes of words are brought up with great difficulty, recognition of words slows down.

Children with optical dyslexia have visual impairments outside of speech. Some of them hardly distinguish familiar faces, similar objects, draw poorly.

With the defeat of the right hemisphere, the author notes, difficulties are observed when reading the left side of the word ( Masha - porridge), mirror reading, the word is read from right to left, permutations of letters and words during reading are noted.

R. Becker also notes the variety of types of reading disorders. She considers it possible to group them into the following types: 1) congenital verbal blindness, 2) dyslexia, 3) brady-lexia, 4) legasthenia, 5) congenital weakness in reading. However, this classification is not based on the pathogenesis of dyslexia, but rather on the degree of manifestation of reading disorders.

OA Tokareva examines violations of written language, depending on which of the analyzers is primarily violated. Taking into account the violation of the auditory, visual or motor analyzers, the author distinguishes acoustic, optical and motor reading disorders. The most common, according to the author, are dyslexia associated with acoustic disorders. Consider these types of dyslexia.

At acoustic dyslexia there is an undifferentiated auditory perception, insufficient development of sound analysis. Children find it difficult to merge letters into syllables and words, since the letter is not perceived by them as a phoneme signal. Mixing of sounds similar in articulation or sound (sibilant and hissing, voiced and deaf, soft and hard) are frequent.

Acoustic reading disorders are noted both with underdevelopment of oral speech (dysarthria, dyslalia), and with delays in speech development. Thus, p. with sufficient reliability, a connection is established between the development of oral and written speech, which are considered as different, closely related aspects of a single process of speech development.

The definition of this reading impairment as an acoustic reduction of this type of dyslexia to impairment of elementary auditory gnostic functions is probably not entirely justified. Clear acoustic perception is one of the prerequisites for the formation of oral and written speech. However, the process of mastering written speech presupposes, as the main conditions, the presence of linguistic generalizations in a child, primarily phonemic, the formation of higher symbolic functions. One of the necessary prerequisites for the formation of the reading skill is the ability to isolate a phoneme from the whole variety of sounds as a specific generalization of the meaningful features of sound, to correlate a phoneme with a certain symbol, icon, that is, a letter, to analyze words into their constituent phonemes, that is, to differentiate phonemes and phonemic analysis. The formation of phonemic differentiation and phonemic analysis is a process of linguistic development, a process of the formation of linguistic generalizations. It cannot be limited to sensory function only. In addition, it is known that the formation of speech analyzers occurs in close interaction with other analyzers, in the process of which the influence of one on the other is constantly carried out. So, in the differentiation of sounds and the sound analysis of words, both the speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzer are simultaneously involved.

The second type of dyslexia is optical... With this type, the instability of visual perception and representations is noted. In the process of reading, children learn individual letters poorly, do not establish a connection between the visual image of the letter and the sound, they do not have a clear visual image of the letter, therefore they perceive the same letter in different ways. Children often mix letters that are similar in outline ( P - N, N - I, Shch - Ts, Sh - Sh, S - O). In the process of reading words in children, verbal dyslexia is observed, recognition of words when reading is impaired.

At motor dyslexia children have difficulty in eye movement when reading. In the process of reading, as you know, there are various movements of the eyeball, for those who read normally, mainly in the direction of the lines. The act of reading is carried out only under the condition of coordinated, interconnected work of the visual, auditory and motor analyzer. Coordination disorders of these analyzers cause various reading disorders, O. A. Tokareva believes. With motor dyslexia, there is a narrowing of the visual field, frequent loss of a line or individual words in a line. In other cases, speech and motor reproduction is impaired. This is manifested in the fact that children are unable to reproduce in a coordinated manner the necessary articulatory movements in the process of reading in the absence of paralysis and paresis. At the same time, the impossibility of remembering the necessary speech movements is noted.

Many authors point to disorders, a qualitative difference in eye movement during reading in dyslexics. Discontinuity, spasmodic movements, frequent regressions, backward movements, in order to clarify what was previously perceived, fluctuations in the direction of movements, changes in the direction of movements, etc., are noted. However, these violations of eye movements during reading are observed in almost all children with dyslexia and are not so much the cause of reading disorders in dyslexia as a consequence of other difficulties in mastering reading, optical, phonemic, grammatical difficulties, etc.

Especially altered, impaired are eye movements in optical dyslexia. Any complex perception is based on the joint work of a whole group of analyzers and is not only polyreceptor in nature, but is always carried out with active participation motor components. Even I.M.Sechenov pointed out the decisive role of eye movements in visual perception. Recently, in a number of psychophysiological studies, it has been noted that a motionless eye is practically unable to perceive an image that has a complex structure. Any complex perception is carried out with the help of active, search movements of the eyes, and only gradually the number of these movements is reduced.

These facts convince us that the isolation of motor dyslexia as an independent type is inappropriate. In some cases, these eye movement disorders accompany visual impairments and cause optical dyslexia. In other cases, frequent regressions, intermittent movements, an abundance of excessive eye movements are not a cause, but a consequence of reading difficulties in phonemic, semantic, mnestic forms of dyslexia.

With the modern understanding of the systemic structure of the higher cortical functions, the classification of dyslexia should take into account not so much the analytic disorders as the nature of the disorders of the higher mental functions, not only disorders of the sensorimotor level, but also of the higher, symbolic, linguistic level.

Thus, the most reasonable is the identification of the following types of dyslexia in children with normal intelligence: optical(M. E. Khvatsev, O. A. Tokareva), phonemic(R. E. Levina, L. F. Spirova), agrammatic(L.F.Spirova, R.I. Lalaeva).

Optical dyslexias are manifested in the difficulties of assimilating letters due to the blurred perception of them, the instability of ideas about the visual images of letters. Especially often in the process of reading, children mix letters that are graphically similar. With optical dyslexia, disturbances in the visual analysis of the structure of the word, rearrangement of letters and words during reading can also be observed.

Phonemic dyslexias are caused by the underdevelopment of phonemic generalizations in a child, primarily by the unformed function of phonemic analysis. Phonemic dyslexias manifest themselves in distortions of sound and syllabic structure words (omissions, permutations, additions, substitutions of sounds when reading).

Agrammatic dyslexia due to the underdevelopment of grammatical generalizations in the child. They manifest themselves in distortions and substitutions of certain morphemes of the word in the process of reading (suffixes, endings).

Questions and tasks for self-examination.

1. What is the psychophysiological characteristics of the act of reading in the norm?

2. Tell us about the main stages of developing reading skills.

3. Give a brief historical overview of the development of the doctrine of dyslexia.

4. What are the modern points of view on the definition, terminology, symptoms of dyslexia?

5. What pathogenetic factors stand out as mechanisms of dyslexia?

LITERATURE.

Ananiev B.G. Analysis of difficulties in the process of mastering reading and writing by children. - Izvestiya APN RSFSR, 1950, no. 70.

Becker R. Speech disorders as a factor causing difficulties in teaching reading and spelling. V scientific session on defectology. M., 1967.

Egorov T.G. Psychology of mastering the reading skill. M., 1953.

Lalaeva R.I. Reading disorders in children with motor alalia.- In the book: Experience in studying abnormal schoolchildren. L., 1978.

Levina R.E., Deficiencies in reading and writing in children. M., 1940.

Nazarova L.K. Teaching to read and write. M., 1965.

Spirova L.F., Disadvantages of reading and ways to overcome them. - In collection: Disadvantages of speech among primary school students. M., 1965.

Tokareva OA Reading and writing disorders (dyslexia and dysgraphia) .- In the book: Speech disorders in children and adolescents. Ed. S. S. Lyapidevsky. M., 1969.

Khvatsev M.E. Speech therapy. M., 1959.

Elkonin D. B. Some questions of mastering literacy.- Questions of psychology, 1956, no. 5.

In modern special literature, the following terms are used mainly to denote reading disorders:

• ~ alexia - to indicate a complete lack of reading;
• ~ dyslexia, developmental dyslexia, or evolutionary dyslexia - to denote a partial disorder in the process of reading mastery. (29, 18, 12)

Dyslexia is a partial disorder of the process of mastering reading, manifested in numerous repetitive mistakes of a persistent nature due to the lack of formation (violation) of higher mental functions involved in the process of mastering reading. (8,15, 23)

The prevalence of reading disorders among children without pathology of the sensory sphere and children with visual impairment is quite high, as evidenced by the data of various authors.

In European countries, there are up to 10% of children with dyslexia: according to Z. Mateichik - 2-4%, according to B. Halgren - up to 10%, according to A. N. Kornev - 4.8%. According to R. Benker, reading disorders are observed in 3% of primary school children (7, 24, 27)

MODERN CONCEPTS OF THE ETIOLOGY AND PATHOGENESIS OF READING DISORDERS

The approach to the problem of the etiology of reading disorders has changed significantly, it has become deeper and more complex. Clinical and experimental experience shows that any of the possible causes of a painful condition causes pathological changes only in the presence of certain internal conditions. The latter include the "constitution" of a person. To this should be added the possible consequences of previously transferred diseases.

A) CLASSIFICATION OF READING DISORDERS

B. Becker notes a variety of types of reading disorders. He considers it possible to group them into the following types: congenital verbal blindness, dyslexia, bradylexia, legasthenia, congenital weakness of reading. This classification is based on the degree of manifestation of reading disorders. (2)

O.A. Tokareva classifies reading disorders depending on which of the analyzers is primarily impaired: auditory, visual, motor. And in this regard, he distinguishes acoustic, optical and motor forms of dyslexia. (27)

Taking into account the modern concept of the systemic structure of the higher cortical functions, when classifying dyslexias, it is necessary to take into account not so much the analytic disorders as the nature of the disorders of the higher mental functions, disorders not only of the sensorimotor level, but also of the higher, symbolic, linguistic level.

M.E. Khvatsev distinguishes phonemic, optical, optical-spatial, semantic and mnestic dyslexia by disturbed mechanisms. He believes that only phonemic and optical forms of dyslexia are observed in children. Other forms are noted in aphasia due to organic brain damage. (29)

In the classification of M.E. Khvatseva does not take into account all the operations of the reading process. The presented types of dyslexia in children do not cover all cases of reading impairment. (18).

Taking into account the disturbed operations of the reading process, R.I. Lalaeva identifies the following types of dyslexia: phonemic, semantic, agrammatic, mnestic, optical, tactile (14, 15, 13, 12, 16).

The French researcher S. Borel-Masonny has developed the following classification:

• III dyslexia associated with speech disorders;
• III dyslexia caused by difficulties in spatial orientation;
• Mixed form;
• Cases of false dyslexia.

Thus, each of the above classifications is based on different criteria: manifestations, severity of reading disorders (R. Becker), disturbances in the activity of analyzers participating in the reading act (O.I. Tokareva), disturbances of certain mental functions (M. E. Khvatsev, R.E. Levina and others), accounting of operations of the reading process (R.I. Lalaeva).

B) MAIN SYMPTOMS OF READING DISORDERS

Dyslexia manifests itself in slowing down the process of mastering reading, as well as in slowing down the heat, the speed of reading (bradylexia). In children, eye movement disorders are observed during reading (chaotic, erratic, uneven, intermittent). There is a large number of regressions (return to the previously read), excessive duration of fixations. Reading errors are persistent and specific. (25)

Error groups:

• 1. Substitutions and mixing of sounds during reading: replacement and mixing of phonetically close sounds (voiced and voiceless, affricates and sounds included in their composition), as well as replacements of graphically similar letters (H-F, P-N, Z-V, etc. etc.).
• 2. Letter-by-letter reading - violation of the fusion of sounds in syllables and words. In letter-by-letter reading, the letters are named alternately, "buckled", strung one on top of the other.
• 3. Distortions of the sound-syllabic structure of a word, which manifest themselves in various errors: a) omissions of consonants in a confluence, b) omissions of consonants and vowels in the absence of a confluence, c) addition of sounds, d) permutations of sounds, e) omissions, permutations of syllables, etc. ...
• 4. Violations of reading comprehension are manifested at the level of a single word, as well as a sentence and text. This group of reading disorders stands out in cases where there is no disorder of the technical side of the reading process.
• 5. Agrammatisms when reading. This group of errors manifests itself at the analytical-synthetic and synthetic level of mastering the reading skill. There are violations in case endings, in the agreement of a noun and an adjective, changes in the endings of verbs, etc.
• C) DYNAMICS OF READING DISORDERS

Symptoms and the course of dyslexia largely depend on the type of dyslexia, the severity, and the stage of mastering speech.

At the analytical stage of mastering reading (at the stage of mastering sound-letter designations and post-word reading), reading disorders are manifested most often in sound substitutions, disruption of the fusion of sounds into syllables (post-letter reading), distortion of the sound-syllable structure of a word, disruption of reading comprehension. At this stage, the most common is phonemic dyslexia, due to the underdevelopment of the function of the phonemic system (phonemic perception and phonemic analysis).

At the stage of transition to synthetic reading techniques, the symptomatology of dyslexia is most often expressed in distortions of the structure of difficult words, word substitutions, agrammatisms, impaired understanding of the read sentence, text.

At the stage of synthetic reading in children with impairment, word substitutions, grammatisms, and impaired understanding of the text are observed. Most often, there is agrammatic dyslexia, due to the underdevelopment of the lexical and grammatical side of speech.

The dynamics of reading disorders is of a regressive nature with a gradual decrease in the types and number of reading errors, the severity of dyslexia.

D) DISORDERS OF SPATIAL REPRESENTATIONS IN CHILDREN WITH DIFFICULTY IN READING

The most often visually impaired children have difficulties in orientation in all spatial directions, difficulties in determining the right and left, top and bottom. There is an inaccuracy in determining the shape and size.

The lack of formation of spatial representations is manifested in drawing, difficulties in composing a whole from parts during construction, in the inability to reproduce a given form.

There is a delay in differentiation of the right and left sides of the body, late lateralization or impaired lateralization (left-handedness, mixed dominant).

The lack of formation of visual-spatial perception and visual memory in children entails poor memorization of the configuration of letters when reading and, accordingly, a slow pace, guessing letters, recurrent eye movements, Difficulties in forming a visual image of a letter, number, graphic element: the ratio of elements is disturbed, confuses similar according to the configuration of letters, numbers, writes unnecessary elements or does not add elements of letters, numbers.

Thus, only a sufficient formation of spatial representations allows the child to distinguish and learn letters.

E) DISTURBANCES OF SPEAKING

Speech disorders are common in children with visual impairments. Violations are of a varied nature: violations of sound pronunciation, poor vocabulary, inaccurate use of words. They incorrectly formulate their speech, avoid complex phrases, limit themselves to short sentences, they often have violations of coherent speech.

In mild cases, these violations are found only at the stage of mastering written speech. In difficult cases, first of all, oral speech is impaired, and reading impairments are detected later. R.E. Levina believes that the lack of formation of the phonemic system lies at the heart of reading and speaking disorders (17).

At the initial stages of mastering reading with underdevelopment of the phonetic-phonemic side of speech in children, inaccuracy and instability of speech representations and generalizations is observed. This makes it difficult to master the sound analysis of a word (R.E. Levina, G.A.Kache, N.A.Nikashina, L.F.Spirova). Selective non-assimilation of letters is caused not by the weakness of retention of graphic styles, the assimilation of which turns out to be normal, but by the unformed generalization of sounds. If a letter does not correspond to a generalized sound (phoneme), then its assimilation will be mechanical. (17, 25, 6)

Sounds that are accurately perceived and correctly pronounced by children are easily correlated with the letter. If children do not distinguish sounds well by ear, pronounce them distortedly or replace them in pronunciation, then the generalized idea of ​​the sound is indistinct, and the perception of letters is difficult. Non-assimilation of letters in this case is due to insufficient development of phonetic perception.

The process of fusion of sounds into syllables is also extremely difficult for these children. To master continuous reading, the child must correlate the letter only with a certain sound, differentiating it from others. In addition, he must have an idea of ​​its generalized sound.

To merge sounds into syllables is, first of all, to pronounce them as they sound in oral speech. If a child does not have clear ideas about the sound-letter composition of a word, the formation of generalized sound-syllable images is difficult.

Reading disorders may be associated with insufficient lexical and grammatical development of speech. Replacement of words during reading can also be caused by difficulties in establishing syntactic links in a sentence. In these cases, children have no focus on the morphological analysis of words, and the analysis itself is difficult. In the process of reading, a normal child begins to guess about the meaning and grammatical form of subsequent words already upon perception of the previous word. A semantic guess in this case is based on his ideas about the laws of language, on the feeling of language.

If the child's lexical and grammatical structure of speech is disturbed, there is no reliance on precise linguistic generalizations, on clear ideas about the patterns of changes in words and their combination in a sentence, a semantic guess in this case is either absent or plays a negative role, since it leads to a large number of specific mistakes.

If the morphological structure of a word is not sufficiently understood by children, then in the process of reading a correct semantic guess does not arise, and agrammatism arises, associated with the difficulties of perceiving subtle grammatical meanings due to the morphological structure of the word.

A limited vocabulary and insufficiently developed grammatical generalizations cause difficulties in reading comprehension.

Thus, the violation of phonemic perception (differentiation of phonemes), phonemic analysis and synthesis, the lack of formation of the lexical and grammatical structure of speech cause difficulties in reading.

Dyslexia is one of the most common learning problems in children, which manifests itself as a specific reading disorder. The cause of this disease is associated with neurological disorders of a genetic nature. A dyslexic person has difficulty learning how to read and write.

Problems accompanying a dyslexic person:

1. Difficulties in mastering reading, despite the sufficient level of intellectual (and speech) development for this;
2. Difficulty perceiving written information;
3. Coordination disorders (clumsiness, movement planning problems;
4. With difficulty develops the ability to read, write, poorly masters spelling;
5. Poorly oriented in space, disorganized;
6. It makes it difficult to recognize words, often does not understand what you just read;
7. ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Dyslexia symptoms

There are a number of symptoms common to dyslexia that can help parents understand that their child has the disorder and take action to treat it.

Signs of dyslexia:

1. The child often rubs his eyes, squints a little;
2. Keeps the book close to the eyes, can cover or even close one eye when reading;
3. Tires very quickly;
4. Trying to avoid doing homework and reading under any pretext;
5. Can read a book, turning his head so that one eye does not participate in reading;
6. When he reads, he skips certain words or does not notice certain places in the text;
7. Complains of severe headache while reading or after reading;
8. The child has difficulty remembering, identifying and reproducing basic geometric figures;
9. Writes words backwards at an early age;
10. Reads very poorly (his reading does not match what was expected at that age);
11. The child's handwriting is very bad, the words creep on top of each other.

Dyslexia should be diagnosed as early as possible. However, you should pay attention to the fact that the child may simply have vision problems, so he must be taken for a consultation with an ophthalmologist. Therefore, if you cannot accurately determine the symptoms of dyslexia, it is better to entrust this matter to a specialist.

Diagnosing dyslexia

Most parents do not even suspect that their child is dyslexic until he goes to kindergarten or a school where he will begin to study symbols. It is necessary to examine children who have a delay in passive and active speech, who cannot catch up with their peers after the first stage of education.

Dyslexia in children is assessed for reading, hearing, language development, and cognitive ability. Also children pass psychological examination, with the help of which the functional characteristics of children and their preferred forms of education are clarified. At the request of teachers or parents, research is carried out that will help determine the level of understanding of the text when reading, text analysis, understanding of speech being read, listening speech. Through this research, effective approaches can be identified for teaching a child.

As a result of the study, the functions of active and passive speech are assessed, and cognitive abilities (memory, justification, attention) are examined. Language, pronunciation, speech perception are also assessed.

Psychological evaluation helps to identify emotional aspects that exacerbate reading disorder. For this, a complete family history is collected, which includes the presence of emotional disturbances and mental disorders in the family.

The doctor needs to make sure that the child has normal vision and normal hearing. With the help of a neurological examination, it is possible to reveal the presence of dyslexia in children, neuropsychic immaturity, or neurological disorders in order to exclude any other diseases.

Dyslexia causes

Violations of the combination, recognition, analysis and memorization of sounds cause problems with the phonological process. With dyslexia, violations of verbal speech, writing and understanding of written speech are noted, which in the future can lead to problems with memory, finding suitable words, and speech formation.

Cases of familial dyslexia are not uncommon. Children from such families often suffer from this disorder. Scientists believe that dyslexia is due to congenital malformations of the central nervous system. It is believed that this is due to disorders in the areas of the brain of the left hemisphere that are responsible for speech motor skills and speech reproduction. If there are violations in the right hemisphere, then the person has problems with word recognition.

Dyslexia does not include abnormal eye movements and visual-perceptual problems, although they also affect learning and understanding of words.

The main symptom is a specific and significant impairment in the development of reading skills that cannot be explained solely by mental age, visual acuity problems, or inadequate schooling. Reading comprehension and improvement skills on assignments requiring reading may be impaired. Children with a history of Specific Reading Disorder are more likely to have Specific Speech Disorders, and comprehensive examination of current speech functioning often reveals persistent mild impairments, in addition to lack of success in theoretical subjects.

A child's reading productivity should be well below the level expected for the child's age, general intelligence, and school performance. Productivity is best assessed on the basis of individually assigned, standardized tests of accuracy and reading comprehension.

Later, there may be mistakes in oral reading skills such as:

a) omissions, substitutions, distortions or additions of words or parts of words;

b) slow pace of reading;

c) attempts to start reading again, lengthy hesitation or "loss of space" in the text and inaccuracies in expressions;

d) rearrangement of words in a sentence or letters in words.

There may also be a lack of understanding of what is being read, for example:

e) inability to remember facts from what he read;

f) inability to draw conclusions or conclusions from the essence of what has been read;

g) to answer questions about the story read, general knowledge is used rather than information from a specific story.

Specific reading disorders are usually preceded by language development disorders. In other cases, the child may have normal stages of speech development in accordance with age, but still there may be difficulties in processing auditory information, which manifests itself in problems in categorizing sounds, in rhyming and, possibly, defects in distinguishing speech sounds, auditory sequential memory and auditory association. In some cases, there may also be problems in the processing of visual information (such as distinguishing between letters); however, they are common among children who are just beginning to learn to read and are therefore not causally related to poor reading. Low self-esteem and problems with school adaptation and relationships with peers are also often noted.

Includes:

Specific reading delay;

Optical dyslexia;

Optical agnosia;

- "backward reading";

Specific reading lag;

Reading in reverse order;

- "mirror reading";

Developmental dyslexia;

Dyslexia due to violations of phonemic and grammatical

analysis;

Spelling disorders combined with reading disorder.

F81.1. Specific Spelling Disorder

It is a disorder in which the main feature is a specific and significant impairment in the development of spelling skills in the absence of a prior specific disorder in reading skills and which is not exclusively due to low mental age, visual acuity problems and inadequate schooling. Both the ability to spell words orally and to spell words correctly is impaired. Children who have problems solely with poor handwriting should not be included; but in some cases the difficulty of spelling may be due to writing problems. Unlike characteristics commonly found in a specific reading disorder, writing errors tend to be mostly phonetically correct.

Spelling difficulties should not be due primarily to grossly inadequate learning or defects in visual, auditory, or neurological functions. Also, they cannot be acquired due to any neurological mental or other disorder.

Includes:

Specific delay in mastering the spelling skill (without reading disorder);

Optical dysgraphia;

Spelling dysgraphia;

Phonological dysgraphia;

Specific spelling delay.

"I constantly confuse right and left, am I dyslexic?" "Why does the child do not read well and swap letters?"Surely, you have heard this more than once from friends, or even, perhaps, yourself asked such a question. What is dyslexia really? Is there a dyslexia test? Is dyslexia a "childhood disease" or can adult dyslexia also occur?

In this article we will tell you what this "disease of geniuses" is, list its types, name the signs and symptoms of dyslexia in children and adults. You will also learn how to diagnose dyslexia, how to correct and treat the disorder, and how brain training can help with dyslexia.

What is dyslexia

What is dyslexia? Definition. Diagnosing dyslexia

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Thus, we can say that dyslexia is a disorder in which reading performance is lower than expected, taking into account the child's potential, abilities, age, intelligence, regardless of the period of his schooling.

By reading performance, we mean both decoding and reading speed, as well as intonation and word comprehension.

Therefore, in order for dyslexia to be diagnosed, the following conditions must be met:

1. Lack of mental retardation which can be the cause of poor read performance.
2. Reading problems must be observed for at least two years(in comparison with peers).
3. The chosen teaching method suits the person and encourages him to study at home as well.
4. Lack of mental problems, as well as visual and hearing impairments, which can cause reading difficulties.
5. And finally, similar difficulties arise only and exclusively with reading and assignments related to reading.

Researchers drew attention to dyslexia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the study of this disorder continues to this day. During this time, several scientific theories have been put forward that interpret dyslexia from the standpoint of various sciences. Dyslexia can be viewed from a cognitive, behavioral and neuropsychological perspective:

Cognitive dyslexia: This theory considers dyslexia from the perspective of processing received information. Simply put, reading is a process that consists of a number of sub-processes: attention, memory, perception, reasoning, or comprehension. Each of these sub-processes involves certain cognitive resources. People with reading difficulties have impaired one or more of these subprocesses and therefore have to use more cognitive resources. As a result, this leads to learning and reading difficulties.

Dyslexia from a behavioral perspective: This theory considers dyslexia to be a behavioral problem, explaining all problems that arise during reading by the ineffectiveness of the chosen teaching method.

Dyslexia from a neurological, educational and psychological point of view: Reading is defined as a collection of various processes aimed at understanding and comprehending the reading. Thus, dyslexia is seen as a violation of understanding, recognition and discrimination of sounds, letters and syllables and their integration, i.e. violation of phonemic hearing and perception.

Dyslexia classification

According to the classification of dyslexia by its origin, there are the following types of it:

• Acquired dyslexia or alexia: is the result of a previous trauma or damage to the brain of a person who has not previously experienced reading problems.
• Evolutionary dyslexia or developmental dyslexia: typical for people who have problems identified at the very beginning of learning to read. In this case, we are talking, as a rule, about childhood dyslexia.

There are also different classifications of dyslexia depending on the approach that is taken into account.

Currently, a widespread classification developed by the researcher Max Colthart and his associates. It is based on a cognitive model that distinguishes between two routes or paths from the perception of a graphic image of a word to understanding its meaning.

First - phonological route, according to which reading is carried out through the transformation of graphic signs (letters) into sounds, and from them - to the meaning of the word. First, each letter is recognized separately, then syllables, phonemes, and then words - and so on in all languages.

As a rule, in this way, words or pseudowords unfamiliar to the reader are read, which are a set of letters that form a word that does not exist in the language.

The second path called visual or lexical, it is a route by which the reader directly associates a word with its meaning. In other words, the graphic representation of a word directly activates its lexical representation. In this case, word recognition consists in correlating its spelling with spelling information stored in our semantic memory, in our personal "dictionary".

This is how we read familiar words that we are able to recognize visually.

As a rule, the reading process takes place along one of these paths, depending on which of them is more effective in each specific case. People without reading problems use both routes correctly. When one of them is disturbed, dyslexia occurs.

Based on this model, the following types of dyslexia are distinguished:

• Phonological dyslexia: the phonological route is broken. People with this type of dyslexia use a visual or lexical path when reading. Typical mistakes, on the one hand, are the inability to read unfamiliar words and pseudowords. On the other hand, there are difficulties with lexicalization, i.e. transformation of a language element or pseudoword into a separate word with a meaning. For example, if it says "combuter", they read "computer". In addition, such people confuse visually similar words. For example, they can read “subscriber” instead of “subscription”, “post” instead of “growth”, etc.
• Superficial dyslexia: the lexical or visual route is broken, the person uses the phonological path when reading. Errors consist, first of all, in the difficulty of recognizing the whole word. Such people will try to find the correct pronunciation of the word. They confuse homophonic words, for example, "ball" and "score", "betray" and "give", etc., and also skip, replace or add letters when reading.
• Deep dyslexia: problems arise in both routes. People with profound dyslexia will primarily be guided by meaning when reading, so they will best understand words by reading in silence. The most difficult for them are abstract concepts or verbs, such people are faced with semantic paralexia or paradislexia, in which a person confuses words with similar meanings, for example, "car" and "motorcycle". In addition, there are problems common to other types of dyslexia.

Dyslexia in children: symptoms and signs

It is believed that 80% of the learning disabilities diagnosed are related to dyslexia. Approximately 2 to 10% of schoolchildren have this disorder.

As a rule, this disorder is not diagnosed until 7 years of age, despite the fact that the first signs can appear in preschool age and especially in primary school, when children begin to learn to read. What is quite obvious, in the case of dyslexia, it is important to detect the problem in time, its early diagnosis, in order to start applying correction and treatment as soon as possible.

In some cases, dyslexia can be associated with other specific learning disorders, such as writing disorders (dysgraphia) or an inability to count and arithmetic (dyscalculia).

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Dyslexic children have problems with language and speech development. One of the first symptoms may be difficulty reading the alphabet, recognizing and reading letters, choosing the simplest rhymes. In the future, problems with skipping, replacing, adding letters, lexicalization while reading may appear. Usually, children with dyslexia do not like and do not want to read, while reading, they are inattentive and impulsive. Such a child perceives reading as something unpleasant and will avoid it in every possible way. And this, in turn, will complicate learning and make this process longer than teaching peers and classmates.

Since dyslexia causes the child significant discomfort, as a rule, this is reflected in his social relations at school. In addition, potential school failure can lead to adjustment problems, absenteeism, emotional problems (occurring at an early age) and behavioral problems (when moving from primary school, in adolescence).

Dyslexia in adults

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Identify and evaluate dyslekia

How to detect dyslexia? for neuropsychological assessment of dyslexia is a professional tool consisting of a variety of clinical tasks and exercises aimed at quickly and accurately detecting signs, symptoms, problems and dysfunctions associated with dyslexia.

It is important to emphasize that despite some common features, the disorders in dyslexics are quite different. Therefore, it is important to study each child, to understand what difficulties he is experiencing, to identify the strengths and weaknesses of his learning ability. Such an assessment will make it possible to develop an individual program for the treatment and correction of dyslexia, depending on the specific problem.

If you suspect dyslexia in a child, you need to find out the history of his life: physical and psychological development, medical history; school grades, what are his reading habits at home and in the classroom, age, level of intelligence. To understand if his academic performance is really so different from his peers.

For such an assessment, specific tests are needed - for vocabulary, comprehension, information processing speed, etc.

Examples of such exercises include:

• Exercises on words-homophones. For example, give a definition and ask to point out the right word.
• You can give a child pseudo-intercom word list, and ask which words from this list exist in Russian.

Exercises can also be used to evaluate the phonological route.

• One such exercise is reading aloud a list of pseudowords which can be very difficult for dyslexic children. They will make a lot of mistakes.
• You can also ask your child to read a list of words that belong to different categories, such as concrete and abstract. In this case, the greatest number of errors will occur when reading abstract concepts.

How to treat dyslexia

Dyslexia correction

Dyslexia Correction: How To Treat Dyslexia? As mentioned above, the sooner you start correcting dyslexia, the more successful it will be. An integral approach based on the synthesis and analysis of all information obtained during testing is important. The correction or treatment must be tailored very precisely to address the specific problems found in the dyslexic. The entire treatment strategy should be aimed at restoring the impaired functions.

Program CogniFit is a leader in cognitive stimulation for dyslexia. Research has shown that dyslexic children and adults who exercise with CogniFit significantly improved their cognitive development, working capacity and reading performance (the number of words read correctly per minute increased by 14.73%). In addition, the results persisted for six consecutive months after the end of the training, which is undoubtedly a positive result for dyslexia.

Cognitive stimulation of dyslexia: the CogniFit platform

You can also additionally use programs for the development of phonological competence and training in the rules of transformation "phoneme-grapheme"... Use exercises for rhyming, for identification, for highlighting letters, counting sounds, adding and connecting syllables and phonemes, etc. However, it is important in all of these exercises to use materials that can help the students, for example, drawings or lined sheets, etc.

At teaching the rules of transformation "phoneme-grapheme" it is necessary to use all the senses in the exercise. For example using tasks on the relationship of visual and auditory stimuli: the child is shown the letter that he must voice; auditory and visual stimuli: the child, having heard the sound, must recognize the letter; auditory and motor stimuli etc. You can also apply reading words or texts together with an adult or child who is better at it, and re-reading short texts, etc.

With the help of these exercises, which develop phonological competencies, the visual route and word recognition are also improved. Some vocabulary routing exercises are specifically designed to increase the visual recognition of words. Usually this exercises with picture cards. You can also apply exercises in which it is necessary to divide words into groups and categories.

These are just examples of tasks that can be used to correct dyslexia. However, it is important not to forget that emotional involvement and assistance is needed, and that the treatment should not be turned into a reading lesson. It is also important to apply these methods both at school and at home.

We would be grateful for your questions and comments on the article.

Translated from Spanish by Anna Inozemtseva Spanish