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Dyslexia, Rhythm, and Advocacy for Music

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Lecture: Dyslexia and Other Literacy Challenges

What is dyslexia?

It comes from two Greek words

dys (difficult) +lexicos (words of a language) = dyslexia (difficulty with words)

We may think of dyslexia as seeing letters backwards, but the terms "dyslexia" and "specific reading disorder" are now used interchangeably.

Definitions

From the 1981 Education Act:

Dyslexia: refers to any difficulty of such a nature that the child requires something more than, or different from the majority of other children of the same age in order to benefit from the education process.

From The Dyslexia Handbook (Texas Education Agency), dyslexia and related disorders are defined as:

Dyslexia: a disorder of constitutional origin manifested by a difficulty in learning to read, write, or spell, despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence, and sociocultural opportunity.

 

Related disorders: include disorders similar to or related to dyslexia, such as developmental auditory imperception, dysphasia, specific developmental dyslexia, developmental dysgraphia, and developmental spelling disability.

 

From The International Dyslexia Association

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

 

 

 

As you can imagine, there can be many types of dyslexia and many causes.

 

There are many terms to describe a whole range of learning difficulties.

 

 

 

Requirements for Educator Preparation Programs

According to TEC §21.044(b), all candidates completing an educator preparation program must receive
instruction in detection and education of students with dyslexia. This legislation ensures that newly certified
teachers will have knowledge of dyslexia prior to entering the classroom.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/ED/htm/ED.21.htm#21.044

Sec. 21.044. EDUCATOR PREPARATION. (a) The board shall propose rules establishing the training requirements a person must accomplish to obtain a certificate, enter an internship, or enter an induction-year program. The board shall specify the minimum academic qualifications required for a certificate.

(b) Any minimum academic qualifications for a certificate specified under Subsection (a) that require a person to possess a bachelor's degree must also require that the person receive, as part of the training required to obtain that certificate, instruction in detection and education of students with dyslexia.

(c) The instruction under Subsection (b) must:

(1) be developed by a panel of experts in the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia who are:

(A) employed by institutions of higher education; and

(B) approved by the board; and

(2) include information on:

(A) characteristics of dyslexia;

(B) identification of dyslexia; and

(C) effective, multisensory strategies for teaching students with dyslexia.

So . . .

Characteristics of dyslexia

Difficulty reading words in isolation

Difficult accurately decoding unfamiliar words

Difficulty with oral reading (slow, inaccurate, or labored without prosody)

Difficulty spelling

See The Dyslexia Handbook (pp. 2-4) for identifying behaviors by grade level

Symptoms and Signs of Dyslexia (Ages 1-7)

Identification of dyslexia

Screening

As a music educator, primary responsibility for screening will not be you, but you should be in conversation with classroom teachers. Screening is mandatory (since 2017) in Texas schools at kindergarten and first grade.

The Surprising Connection Between Reading and Rhythm

Good news:

There is an 85% accuracy of screening children in mid-kindergarten.

.

Bad news:

If intervention is not provided before the age of 8, the probability of reading difficulties continuing into high school is 75%.

A child's phonology (speech-sound system) is usually developed by age 8.

Effective, multisensory strategies for teaching students with dyslexia

One might think that a focus on notation would be of significant value to dyslexic students. Actually, research findings point to rhythmic skills as being the most beneficial.

The inability to keep a steady beat can be an early marker for preschool children who are at risk for difficulties in learning to read. But, music training has been shown to lead to improvements in phonological, reading, and spelling skills for students with dyslexia.

Rhythm training helps students with dyslexia read better and more fluently and that in turn DOES assist in reading notation. Tracking is a skill that is often difficult for those with dyslexia, and can be improved by reading rhythms.

Perception of patterns of musical beat distribution in phonological developmental dyslexia: Significant longitudinal relations with word reading and reading comprehension

Conclusions: The non-linguistic musical beat structure task is an important independent longitudinal and concurrent predictor of variance in reading attainment by children. The different longitudinal versus concurrent associations between musical beat perception and auditory processing suggest that individual differences in the perception of rhythmic timing are an important shared neural basis for individual differences in children in linguistic and musical processing.

Neural Entrainment and Sensorimotor Synchronization to the Beat in Children with Developmental Dyslexia: An EEG Study

Tapping in time to a metronome beat (hereafter beat synchronization) shows considerable variability in child populations, and individual differences in beat synchronization are reliably related to reading development. Children with developmental dyslexia show impairments in beat synchronization. These impairments may reflect deficiencies in auditory perception of the beat which in turn affect auditory-motor mapping, or may reflect an independent motor deficit. Here, we used a new methodology in EEG based on measuring beat-related steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs, Nozaradan et al., 2015) in an attempt to disentangle neural sensory and motor contributions to behavioral beat synchronization in children with dyslexia. Children tapped with both their left and right hands to every second beat of a metronome pulse delivered at 2.4 Hz, or listened passively to the beat. Analyses of preferred phase in EEG showed that the children with dyslexia had a significantly different preferred phase compared to control children in all conditions. Regarding SS-EPs, the groups differed significantly for the passive Auditory listening condition at 2.4 Hz, and showed a trend toward a difference in the Right hand tapping condition at 3.6 Hz (sensorimotor integration measure). The data suggest that neural rhythmic entrainment is atypical in children with dyslexia for both an auditory beat and during sensorimotor coupling (tapping). The data are relevant to a growing literature suggesting that rhythm-based interventions may help language processing in children with developmental disorders of language learning.

The article above was co-authored by Usha Goswami, Professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at Cambridge.

She has studied dyslexia in children for over a decade. In interviews, she states that dyslexia is not caused by an intrinsic reading disability, but by the children's "inability to hear the rhythm of words when spoken."

Read her interview below:

https://www.mia.org.uk/2019/05/dyslexia-can-be-overcome-with-nursery-rhymes-and-music-says-cambridge-professor/

Doyle, J., Dyslexia: An introductory guide, 2nd edition. Whurr Publishers, London 2002.

The Dyslexia Handbook

[BOOK] Dyslexia: Biology, cognition and intervention

Created and maintained by Vicky V. Johnson