What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a neurological disorder caused by structural abnormalities in the brain resulting in specific deficits in cognitive function. Children with Dyslexia struggle with word recognition and writing skills, despite having intact intelligence and sensory abilities. As a result, their reading comprehension abilities are impaired, hindering their qcquisition of knowledge and impeding academic progress. This difficulty in processing written language negatively impacts their learning motivation. Research suggests that dyslexia affects approximately 10 to 12 percent of children, with a higher prevalence in males, with a male-to-female ratio of about 2-3:1.

Symptoms of Dyslexia

Dyslexia manifests in various ways throughout different stages of a child's life:

❖Preschool Years: Children may experience delays in language development, such as inaccurate pronunciation. They commonly struggle with letter, number, ad sight word recognition.

❖Junior Primary School Years: Difficulties arise with sound-letter association and spelling. Some children may also exhibit mirror writing.

❖Senior Primary School Years: As reading and writing demands increase in the senior grades, difficulties with reading comprehension and academic writing become more noticeable.

❖High School Years: Teenagers with dyslexia face heightened academic demands, requiring independent thinking and self-organization skills. However, they continue to struggle with reading comprehension and writing. Consequently, they may experience challenges in maintaining a positive self-image and may exhibit emotional disturbances such as anxiety and a depressed mood.

Etiology of Dyslexia

Dyslexia can be attributed to various factors that contribute to its development:

❖Abnormalities in Brain Structure: Research indicates that children with dyslexia exhibit differences in brain structure. In Chinese dyslexia, reduced grey matter volume is observed in the right inferior occipital and left inferior frontal gyrus, impacting word recognition and phonological processing. In English dyslexia, reduced grey matter volume is found in the left frontal lobe, left temporoparietal region, and left occipitotemporal region, affecting sound decoding and discrimination abilities.

❖ Cognitive Deficits Associated with Dyslexia: Children with dyslexia display specific cognitive deficits. Those with English dyslexia often struggle with phonological processing, slow retrieval speed from long-term memory, limited short-term and working memory capacities, as well as slower processing speed. Meanwhile, children with Chinese dyslexia may experience difficulties in morphological awareness and orthographic skills.

*Genetic Heredity: Studies have shown a hereditary component in dyslexia. Approximately one-fourth of children with dyslexia have parents who also have dyslexia, indicating a higher likelihood of the condition within families compared to the general population.

Treatment of Dyslexia

❖ Word Recognition Skills Training: Enhancing children's understanding of the association of sound and words through teaching word deconstruction skills and pair-reading strategies.

❖ Reading Comprehension Skills Training: Teaching children common passage structures, summarising abilities, and 5W1H reading strategies (i.e., Who? When? Where? What? Why? How?).

❖ Sentence Structure Training: Teaching children the standard ways of composing sentences in the correct order.

❖ Passage Writing Training: Training children to organize passages using mind maps.

❖Word Dictation Training: Use repeat practice and the "look, say, cover, write, and check" method to enhance the memory of Chinese words.

Dyslexia Assessment in Neuroscientist

Service Target

❖ Children and adolescents aged 4 to 16

Content of Service

❖Intelligence Assessment: Before conducting the dyslexia assessment, the psychologist will conduct an intelligence test on the child to rule out the possibility that an intellectual disability causes the child's learning problem.

❖ Dyslexia Assessment: There are two parts to the assessment for Chinese Dyslexia: the literacy domain and the cognitive function domain. The literacy domain assesses the child's Chinese word recognition and Chinese word dictation ability, while the cognitive function domain assesses the child's abilities in phonological awareness, orthographical skills, etc.

Referral & Follow-Up

❖ The psychologist will write a comprehensive report (English) to integrate the findings and explain the assessment results in the report meeting. 

❖If the assessment result suggests the child exhibits significant features of Dyslexia, appropriate interventions, and treatment recommendations will be provided based on the conclusion.

❖ If concurrently diagnosed with other developmental disorders and may benefit from medication treatment, we will make a referral to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre of the Hospital Authority. For children under six years old, we may direct them to pre-school rehabilitation services offered by the Social Welfare Department, such as the Early Education and Training Centre (EETC) or On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Services (OPRS). Children over six years old can submit the assessment report to their school for school-based support.