There are many myths about dyslexia based on concepts that are totally outdated by current neurobiological knowledge. Unfortunately, many of these concepts without any scientific basis continue to be used both as warning signs and detection, and as a basis for some treatments. Let us look at some examples….
“Dyslexia is a “maturation” problem, which disappears with time…”
While it is true that each child has his or her own pace and learning process, dyslexia is a disorder of biological origin that does not disappear spontaneously by waiting for it to “disappear with time” or when “the child matures”.
Letting “time pass” the only thing that is achieved is to seriously jeopardize the emotional, social and academic development of the sufferer. It is therefore a disorder that must be taken very seriously, that does not go away on its own and for which there are very effective psycho-pedagogical interventions.
“Dyslexia occurs because the child has “crossed laterality” ….
Most people have a natural preference for one side of their own body; this is called “laterality”. This side is usually the right side – in the case of right-handed people – or the left side in the case of left-handed people.
However, the dominance of one side of the body is not always constant (for example, an individual can write with the right hand, but be more skilled at shooting a ball with the left leg, or on the contrary, write with the left hand and focus on a target with the right eye). This is what is known as “crossed laterality”, which expresses a non-homogeneous hand-foot-eye dominance.
Although manual dominance is usually quite clear by the end of the first year of life, it may remain unstable for a long time (even up to 6 years of age) as part of the normal maturational process of the growing human brain.
It used to be a common belief that “crossed laterality” was the cause of certain learning disorders (including dyslexia). Fortunately, thanks to advances in neuroscience, professionals dedicated to the study of these disorders have solid scientific evidence that the non-homogeneous dominance between hand-foot and eye not only does not involve or predispose to any pathology or learning difficulty in particular, but is a designation without clinical significance.
His major contribution in this field has been to demonstrate that certain treatments based on saccadic or eye-tracking movements, exercises to improve balance or hand-eye coordination and special glasses; are based on uncontrolled studies and anecdotal cases (and therefore not indicated).
In dyslexia there is a problem in the functioning of the brain areas in charge of processing reading and writing, not in the visual area.
While it is true that a visual deficit can affect a child’s ability to read and write, it will also affect all aspects of daily life, such as adding, drawing or playing video games. So if this were the case, the child would not only have difficulties in reading as is the case with dyslexics.
It is therefore important to rule out a visual problem (myopia, strabismus, astigmatism, etc.), without losing sight of the fact that eye problems alone do not cause dyslexia or other learning difficulties. If the ophthalmologic assessment is normal, no further study or visual treatment is necessary.
In dyslexia there is dysfunction in the language areas of the left cerebral hemisphere. Spatial orientation depends mostly on the right cerebral hemisphere, so there is no causal relationship with dyslexia. Therefore, spatial orientation exercises are not indicated in dyslexia.
In some dyslexic children, parents report difficulties in their children to fix terms such as right/left, yesterday/today/tomorrow. Research explains it for the same reason that they find it difficult to name colors or shapes: i.e., because of difficulties in accessing the lexicon. In conclusion, being dyslexic does not necessarily imply confusing right and left.
“Children who turn letters around are dyslexic…”
The human brain has a natural tendency to “rotation invariance” of an object. This is the ability that allows us to recognize the same object even if we see it rotated, for example, by 90 or 180 degrees. When learning to read and write, it is necessary to “break” this tendency in order to understand that the letters p, d, q or b are different, and therefore are not the same object rotated (see figure).
When this does not happen, the so-called mirror errors occur. Many children during literacy learning make these types of errors without being dyslexic and many dyslexics do not make these errors at the beginning of learning to read. Therefore, rotating letters alone does not constitute a diagnostic element.
“Dyslexic children are gifted or exceptionally creative…”
The basis of dyslexia lies in the alteration of very specific areas of the brain, so that in the rest of the cognitive areas and functions there are all the variations found in the general population (greater or lesser intellectual capacity or creativity, greater or lesser social or emotional intelligence, etc.).