However, individuals with dyslexia find they have several of these characteristics persisting over time and interfere with their day-to-day life. Because the impact of dyslexia varies from individual to individual, the severity of the symptoms below will also vary. The International Dyslexia Associationreports that between 3% and 6% of all school-aged children are believed to have Dyslexia and between 15% – 20% of the general population have some dyslexia symptoms.
Dyslexia Symptoms – Preschool
- Late learning to talk
- Difficulty pronouncing words
- Difficulty acquiring vocabulary or using age appropriate grammar
- Difficulty following simple one-step directions
- Confusion with over/under, right/left, beginning/middle/end, etc.
- Difficulty learning the nursery rhymes, or songs
Dyslexia Symptoms – PreK, Kindergarten and First Grade
- Difficulty learning the alphabet—even the letters in his/her name
- Difficulty with word retrieval
- Difficulty naming colors, common objects in the child’s environment, simple shapes and letters rapidly, in a sequence—Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN)
- Difficulty switching between naming colors, objects, shapes, and numbers rapidly, in a sequence –Rapid Automatic Switching (RAS)
Dyslexia Symptoms – Reading
- Difficulty learning to read –even the simplest words: dog, cat, dad, mom
- Difficulty identifying or generating rhyming words, counting the number of words in a spoken sentence, or counting syllables in words spoken (phonological awareness)
- Difficulty with hearing and manipulating individual sounds in words (phonemic awareness)
/c/ /a/ /t/, /b/ /a/ /t/ - Difficulty distinguishing different sounds in words (phonological processing)
/sh/ /u/ /t/ - Difficulty in learning the sounds of letters (phonics)
- Slow, laborious decoding of words and of oral reading
- Difficulty remembering names of letters in or out of sequence or recalling the shapes of letters
- Transposing the order of letters when reading or spelling
- Misreading or omitting common short words: on, no; saw, was; an, and;
- “Stumbles,” will even skip longer words
- Comprehension during oral or silent reading is normally poor due to rate of reading and/or number of words read incorrectly
Dyslexia Symptoms – Writing
- Difficulty putting ideas on paper in a coherent manner
- Many spelling mistakes—often spelling the same word different ways within the same assignment
- May do well on weekly spelling tests due to rote memorization, but may have many spelling mistakes in daily work including those spelled correctly on a previous spelling test
- Proofreading is difficult—even involving the simplest skills, such as, capitalization and punctuation
- Weak memory for lists, directions, or facts
- Needs to see, hear and manipulate (when possible) concepts many times to gain ownership
- Downward trend in achievement test scores or overall school performance when left undiagnosed and treated
The above dyslexia symptoms are not all inclusive.