What Is Dyslexia and What Causes It?

Dyslexia is a so-called learning disorder. It can be due to heritage or hormonal development in the fetal stage. In some rare cases, it is caused by some sort of brain injury. Both primary (through heritage) and secondary (through hormonal development) dyslexia are more common in boys.

It is caused by an impairment in the brain. Dyslexic people have difficulties to match visual marks (letters) with sounds and meanings.

There are believed to be three subtypes of dyslexia: visual dyslexia, auditory dyslexia and dysgraphia.

• Visual dyslexia means that the dyslexic person has difficulties to bring letters and numbers into the correct order.

• Auditory dyslexia has to do with the perception of sounds. People with auditory dyslexia have difficulties to distinguish the different sounds within a word or sentence and have therefore difficulties to match the sounds to the written words.

• Dysgraphia is the difficulty to control a pencil to make the right written marks. The person knows what it looks like but can't make his hand to write it properly.

Dyslexia has nothing to do with a person's IQ. It is no sign of being dumb, and it has nothing to do with visual or hearing impairment. Dyslexic people can be real geniuses and still struggle with reading and writing. They can have excellent vision and hearing, yet their brain has problems to connect written marks with sounds.

Learn more about the symptoms of dyslexia next Monday!