This is just giving me chills, especially this one quote from the program by one dyslexic person:
"The easy things are really hard... but when you get to the hard things, they are a lot easier."
The guy who did the VR rooms called "The Cave" is dyslexic! I've been reading and learning about Cave VR systems for many years now. This is so cool!
What dyslexia is for me:
I feel like I have to go all the way around the block to get to the house next door.
It's still amazing to me that I ever completed my dissertation. Sure, I had to do a bit of a strange dissertation. To do a normal dissertation, for me, would be like going to the house next door. My orals about slayed me because I read three times as much as I really had to, because my head has no real concept of a "discipline," meaning a domain to study. I could never stay inside those fences.
And the dissertation itself is really three dissertations in one: an argument based on my study; a creative narrative meta-text about the making of the study; and an argument justifying the hypertextual, nonlinear form for the argument based on my study.
Oh yeah, and then there was all that wild-ass coding (along with a visual representation of the structure), because I wanted to make sure the "document" was impossible to read the same way twice, and impossible to reproduce on paper. That's fourth part of the project.
Did I mention that my entire purpose in going to grad school and writing a nonlinear hypertextual dissertation was to justify the nonlinear epistemologies my head is forced into because of my dyslexia?
I figured the Internet was made for people who think like me, but why did I pick something so hard?! But to this day, no matter what I end up doing for a living, nothing can change how intensely proud I am of successfully completing that project and degree. I still look at it sometimes and can't believe I did it.
I lucked out because visualization comes naturally to me, but not abstract thought, as the person suggests on "The Infinite Mind" program. I visualize elaborate concrete detail, creative recombinations. I had learned to read through visualization and contextualization. I was barely conscious of turning the pages, because I had a visual movie of the novel running in my head, and when I was finished, I nearly had a photographic memory of the book.
In truth, my memories of the books I read were as vivid as my own life memories. And to take it a step further, I also had trouble as a kid telling dreams from not-dreams. I have dream memories from my entire life that are as vivid as my walking-around memories, and my book memories.
(Hey, at least this year I'm NOT going to go get the new Harry Potter book at midnight and read it straight through all night long... not gonna, no way, gotta take the car in early tomorrow, so I better not...)
But whatever you do, you don't want me to give you directions that involve right and left. Oh, I can tell you which way to go by pointing, and I can recreate a visual turn-by-turn memory of the directions, but when it comes to right and left, I guess correctly about 50 percent of the time.
Hey, go listen to this radio program! It's so cool!
Chris
Link: The Infinite Mind: Dyslexia.
DYSLEXIA
Broadcast starting week of July 13, 2005
As many as one in seven American children are affected to some degree by dyslexia, which disables language skills but often bestows special abilities in the visual and spatial realm. This program explores what dyslexia is, and what it is not, with guests including author and producer Stephen J. Cannell, Thomas Viall of the International Dyslexia Association, Yale researcher Dr. Sally Shaywitz, Toronto entrepreneur Jay Mandarino, author Thomas G. West, virtual reality pioneer Daniel Sandin, children's author Jeanne Betancourt and her daughter, filmmaker Nicole Betancourt.
The program begins with commentary from guest host Dr. Fred Goodwin, who observes that advances in neuroscience have made it clear that dyslexia is a wiring glitch in the brain, and that it is wrong to assume that dyslexic children are stupid or slow.
Next, we hear from children's author Jeanne Betancourt, who reads a selection from My Name is Brain Brian, the story of a young boy with dyslexia who struggles for acceptance and achievement. She begins by reading about Brian's nightmare: he is pursued by giant gray rocks, which he later realizes are letters of the alphabet.
Ms. Betancourt, who is joined in the discussion by her daughter, Nicole, explains that the dream was actually her daughter's dream, and that Nicole was the inspiration for the book. Both Jeanne and Nicole Betancourt have dyslexia. Nicole, grown now and an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker in New York, says that she is still uncomfortable in libraries or any other place where things are arranged in an order that makes no logical sense to her. She says she has to figure out the logic behind things to learn them, and says that she believes that as a result, she learns things more thoroughly than most.
Jeanne Betancourt's more than 60 books include the beloved "Pony Pals Series" which feature the adventures of three girls and their ponies. One of the three girls, Anna [her name reads the same way forward and backward], is dyslexic, and her dyslexia is mentioned in every book. Click here to view a clip from Nicole Betancourt's award-winning documentary film "Before You Go."
Dr. Goodwin is joined next by three guests with different perspectives on dyslexia: Dr. Sally Shaywitz is a professor of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine, and co-director, with her husband, Dr. Bennett A. Shaywitz of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Tom Viall is executive director of the International Dyslexia Association, a membership organization that promotes the study and treatment of dyslexia. Jay Mandarino, who has dyslexia, is the founder and owner of C.J. Graphics, a large printing and bookbinding company located in Toronto. He's active in philanthropic and civic affairs and volunteers as an auctioneer for charity events. He also has dyslexia.
To begin, Viall observes that while most people believe dyslexia is simply reversing letters, "nothing could be farther from the truth." Shaywitz agrees, and points out the "dyslexia paradox:" people with dyslexia can be very intelligent, but still have great difficulty reading. Mandarino says that when he was in grade school, his parents were told that the best he could hope to achieve in life was a job as a gas station attendant. Instead, he managed to graduate from college at the top of his class, and today owns and operates a multi-million-dollar printing and publishing company. While reading is still difficult, he finds that he quickly picks up even complicated tasks when instruction comes through demonstration.
Shaywitz says that brain scans now allow researchers to view the disruption that occurs in the brain when a person with dyslexia is trying to read. She says that the problem seems to be in the person's ability to pull written words apart into sounds, an essential step in reading. Magnetic imaging shows the "glitch" occurs between the occipital and parietal lobes of the brain, she says. Dyslexia has a strong genetic link, she observes, often passed from generation to generation.
[...]
Another caller, Dean from upstate New York, says that both he and his son have dyslexia, and asks whether the panelists believe that dyslexics have to be over-achievers to get by. Viall replies that the condition is really a life-long struggle, but observes that dyslexic people seem unusually gifted in spatial and visual skills and fields. Art, computers and design appear to be areas in which dyslexic people often excel, he says. Shaywitz adds that research supports the ideas that people with dyslexia are more creative, and speculates that they are using the areas of the brain other people use for reading for their creative endeavors. The group briefly discusses the possibility that advances in the neurobiology of dyslexia may eventually identify a target for medication that would treat the condition. Viall observes that there are "deep philosophical issues" about that, with many arguing that dyslexia is not a learning disorder, but a difference in learning style, and as much of a gift as a disability.
[Oh, don't get me started on this! I'd blow a gasket at the idea of trying to "fix" sydlexia. Sure, it's a struggle, and in grad school where you're surrounded by very bright linear thinkers, you sometimes feel like such a retard you wonder if you've hit a wall, hit the limit of what your brain can do, because you can't make a "normal" linear argument to save your soul, you're always jumping ahead or sideways or skipping steps.
I was talking to a friend the other day, when it hit me what it was most like. In grad school, you're around people with something like a highly coherent crystaline structure, so they can build spires straight up into the sky, specializing in a discipline to the -nth degree, like Mount Everest, starting way up high, and poking up even higher, a sharp, jagged snaggle tooth.
But me, my brain is nowhere coherent enough to build those kind of structures. I'm too busy going around the block to get to the house next door, while my classmates were like, "Come on over here, through the gate, we're having a party!" I'm like, "I'm coming! I'll get there pretty soon!"
So I do what I've always done. I try to cram Thomas Jefferson's big-ass generalist polymath brain inside my pathetic head, try to read everything in the world that seems to pertain, and what I'm doing is starting from sea level, see? But I'm building Mount McKinley, Denali, this massively fat, wide marshmallow sitting on the horizon all socked in with clouds, piled with huge snowfields year round. I kept piling it higher and deeper until it is truly piled high and deep (that's what a Ph.D stands for, you know) all the way almost as high as those beautifully pure snaggle tooth Everests.
The snaggle tooth disciplinary "purist" scholars aren't really sure if they want to let someone as undisciplined and messy into their fine clubhouse of crystal spires, but some nice ones took pity on how much I was able to build up so high while going all that way around the block, and they decided to let me and my big snow mountain marshmallow in their gate and come to the party. Maybe pretty soon they'll even give me a beer.
Man, did I go off on a tangent there or what?]
Next, Dr. Goodwin welcomes writer and producer Stephen J. Cannell, who created such hit TV series as "The Rockford Files," "Hunter" and "The A Team." He's written several best-selling novels, mostly thrillers, the most recent of which is Cold Hit. Cannell explains that he was diagnosed as dyslexic in his 30s, along with his daughter, who was in sixth grade and having trouble reading. He says that he was put back three grades in school and eventually graduated two years behind his class, but remained resolved to become a writer nonetheless. He recounted how his parents and teachers kept telling him that he just wasn't trying hard enough. His father, a self-made millionaire, was also dyslexic, a fact that he kept secret for much of Cannell's childhood. Cannell has recently started speaking publicly about his dyslexia hoping to encourage changes in thinking about the condition. He urges pediatricians to take time to ask about a child's schoolwork, observing that children now have access to many resources if they are diagnosed as dyslexic early-on.
Last, Dr. Goodwin explores the link between dyslexia and creativity with Thomas G. West and Daniel J. Sandin. West is the author of In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Learning Difficulties, Computer Imaging, and the Ironies of Creativity the 1997 book that one reviewer observed, "turns one's thinking upside down" about dyslexia. An author based in Washington, D.C., West studies and writes about visualization, and is a regular columnist in Computer Graphics magazine. Daniel J. Sandin is director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a professor in the university's School of Art and Design. He is a pioneer in virtual reality development, and co- invented the "CAVE" system of projected virtual reality image. His artwork has been exhibited at museums around the world, and is included in the inaugural collection of video art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Both West and Sandin have dyslexia.
West says his research for the book found that dyslexic people are often highly visual, able to quickly process and integrate high-quality visual and spatial information. Society is shifting, he says, with far more call for that sort of skill than for more mechanical tasks like reading and writing. Both West and Sandin say that people with dyslexia seem to problem-solve in unusual ways, perhaps working from the inside out or from the back to the front. Sandin, who says he still cannot spell or do arithmetic, talks about developing the CAVE virtual reality system, which uses rear projection screens instead of a headset and knows where you are by generating your position in the room. It is a visual simulator completely matched to the human visual perceptual capability, he says. West says the dyslexic person may well be at the fore as the technological revolution continues, with their ability to process information and data and depict visually creating "a whole new literacy."
OK, I quoted more of that summary of the program than I intended to, but I've got to get that "Mind's Eye" book. I couldn't cut any more out above because it just lays it down in a nutshell, this bit at the end, instead of endlessly focusing on hyperactive boys in grade school and how to help them read better. Nobody pays attention to why little girls are scrambling up numbers in math, because they don't make as much noise about their troubles as boys do.
Here's my totally uninformed opinion on that subject: I have a cousin who is very bright but who needed extra help from his mom, who worked very hard to get him reading when he was little. And that's a good thing, to be sure. I always knew how sharp he was, tho. Didn't matter who was talking, he would figure out their sentence and say the entire second half with them. A master contextualizer, and a terrific playmate.
What I mean to say is that it is the WRESTLING that creates the creativity, not the dyslexic parts of the brain. It's like blind people aren't necessarily born with acute hearing skills. Their blindness forces them to develop sophisticating hearing skills.
So I believe that being forced to repeatedly go around the block to get to the house next door shocks your brain out of all those overworn neural paths everybody else uses ad nauseum. You gotta develop different ways to get to the same spot. You learn to compensate, to visualize, to route around the areas that don't work so well (like remembering your own phone number, with all the numbers in the right order, sometimes it's just better to keep it written down on a piece of paper).
So it is great that people get help and learn to do more than just pump gas, like the guy said above. But the process of learning has to involve the wrestling with the dyslexia, because I think that juices up parts of the brain that sometimes are a tad too dormant in folks who are sometimes too comfortable being good little cogs in the wheels of this world. People who "settle" for less. Dyslexics don't have the luxury of settling, so they're often driven, but god knows where they're driving.
When I was teaching, I had two favorite kinds of students to work with: gifted and talented or honors students, and learning disabled students. I was often the MOST frustrated with the folks in the middle, the ones who were often unmotivated seat-fillers.
Sometimes I even tried to pair up the GT kids with the LD kids, because it ended up being a more rewarding experience for both, compared to the alternative of having to deal with their apathetic and conventional classmates, the ones that grade inflation forces us now to give all A's and B's. Given that, the GT and LD students are outside the limited realm of how grade scales are conceived. They actually think and produce things and question things. They're on their own roads and they're going to town, even if it's all uphill.
by David Wann
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