Chesterton

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This is a serious question. I'm not trying to make fun of anyone. Besides if I wanted to make fun of a dyslexic person I guess I'd have to type this post backwards, which would be tluciffid.

Do dyslexics see other things scrambled, or just letters? Like if I laid out eating utensils on a table in a row, could they see fork-spoon-knife when I laid them out spoon-knife-fork, or could they see the utensils upside down?
 
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Paulos23

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As someone who was diagnosed with dyslexia, I don't see them scrambled. There are dyslexics that do I understand, but that is not my form of reading disability.

One thing I do find is that reading gets harder unless I keep it up, like a daily exercise.

And it only applies to reading. Other objects are not going to move around on them.
 
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Mark Quayle

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Dyslexia is a category; not everybody has the same disability same problem same answers. I was somewhat dyslexic as a kid, and disciplining myself to compensate for it has given me the bad habit of seeing when a word looks wrong. I may not spell it right the first time, but when it is wrong I know it. Compensating for dyslexia also helped me get compass directions naturally right, know which direction a screw ("righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" doesn't do it for me) or auger needs to turn to cause what result, see in my mind's eye what something looks like from a back view, etc. There was even one day in school, I momentarily had the right mindset, and was able to write the absent teacher a message on the chalkboard upside down, backwards and mirrored, almost as naturally as writing the usual way.

But when they say "Spring back, Fall forward" I give up. I have to go back in my mind to the purported reason they did this goofy business, to figure out which way the clock needs to go.

What's funny to me is, the older I get, the more lucid I become in the matter, some days, and other days I'm just not sure. But I refuse not to let myself be overly-negatived. 10010110
 
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Paulos23

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How do you see them?
It is hard to describe, but I see them as whole units. I have every word memorized, and new ones I process through a learned set of rules that I don't think about now.

It is believed that I would do well with the Japanese written word, but I have never had the time to test it.
 
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Chesterton

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Dyslexia is a category; not everybody has the same disability same problem same answers.
I know, but I'm just wondering why it only occurs with letters and not other things (unless it does).

I'm thinking that letters in a word are 1) small 2) close together and 3) meant to be seen as a unit. I'm trying to think of some other thing which operates the same but I can't think of anything, except numerals. Maybe someone else can.

And also @Paulos23 , do you see numerals like 42,863 differently?
 
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Mark Quayle

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I know, but I'm just wondering why it only occurs with letters and not other things (unless it does).

I'm thinking that letters in a word are 1) small 2) close together and 3) meant to be seen as a unit. I'm trying to think of some other thing which operates the same but I can't think of anything, except numerals. Maybe someone else can.

And also @Paulos23 , do you see numerals like 42,863 differently?
It does with other things. But I've noticed with two brain-injured friends of mine (one from stroke, one from blunt force trauma) who find it hard to read, that numbers are not particularly a problem. A different part of the brain is involved. It isn't the eyes nor what interprets what the eyes see, but whatever comes next, I'd guess. Both also have problems with certain kinds of reasoning, and both have a tendency toward child-mindedness, gaining pleasure from simple things. For example, both find complex irony hilarious in movies, but neither easily understand spoken jokes.

One of them is an excellent mechanic, but he can't figure out how to play minesweeper (simple logic) on his computer. He likes cartoons and children's movies, but he's 62 years old. The other friend is probably better at reading body language now than before her stroke, and situational comedy (TV or movies) is her thing (ironies, frustrations and such), yet she cannot understand a simple pun or a play on words, and explaining it only frustrates her.
 
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Bob Crowley

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I know, but I'm just wondering why it only occurs with letters and not other things (unless it does).

I'm thinking that letters in a word are 1) small 2) close together and 3) meant to be seen as a unit. I'm trying to think of some other thing which operates the same but I can't think of anything, except numerals. Maybe someone else can.

And also @Paulos23 , do you see numerals like 42,863 differently?

A lady friend of mine told me she was dyslexic with numbers, or had a condition along that line. She's fine with words and spelling, but struggles with numbers. She said that Sudoko puzzles drive her crazy.
 
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coffee4u

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This is a serious question. I'm not trying to make fun of anyone. Besides if I wanted to make fun of a dyslexic person I guess I'd have to type this post backwards, which would be tluciffid.

Do dyslexics see other things scrambled, or just letters? Like if I laid out eating utensils on a table in a row, could they see fork-spoon-knife when I laid them out spoon-knife-fork, or could they see the utensils upside down?

One of my grown children has dyslexia, but like most conditions its not a one size fits all scenario. I would say no person with dyslexia would view a table setting backwards but words and letters can appear to move and slide. More so it is individual letters that can flip. Especially b,d,p,q you can see how similar they are, just turned different ways. Some do have the ability to flip an image in their mind to be able to view it from different angles. Creative talent often comes along with it as well. My daughter can both draw and play an instrument by ear.
 
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Gene2memE

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I have a relatively mild but uncommon form of dyslexia - discalculia, which is trouble with numerals rather than reading/words.

In adulthood, it mostly presents itself as a tendency for me to transpose the position of numbers. For instance, if someone tells me a phone number, I'll commonly swap the positions of 8s, 6s and 9s. I have real problems counting numbers through the 60s, 80s and 90s as well - even speaking out loud, I will just drop out numbers in the series.

As a child, I was slow to learn to count and as a teen mathematical concepts that I couldn't picture spatially/graphically were very difficult to learn/comprehend. I had extreme difficulty with some basic stuff like introductory algebra. However, calculus was comparatively easy and I would consistently score full marks in trigonometry.

At university, statistics was difficult. I probably spent more time studying to just end up with a pass in my first and second year econometrics and applied statistics classes than I did in the rest of my classes combined, over my four years of university.
 
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jayem

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I remember reading this article from 2019. Postmortem studies of the brains of dyslexic persons who died from other causes have apparently shown some abnormal neurons (so called ectopic neurons) in the thalamus. The thalamus acts as sort of a relay station. It receives signals from the auditory and visual cortices and sends them to higher brain regions in the cerebrum, where the signals are interpreted. Ectopic thalamic cells may slow down or otherwise interfere with this process. Which might account for the reading impairment, and other difficulties dyslexic persons experience. These abnormal neurons can't be detected as yet with CT and MRI scans. AFAIK, this is all speculative. The article isn't long, and not too technical.

https://brainconnection.brainhq.com/2019/07/01/the-biology-of-dyslexia/
 
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dgiharris

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I have dyslexia and I may be an outlier but it actually has helped me in life.

Firstly, I can read forwards, backwards, upside down, mirror images, etc. Doesn't matter, it is almost the same to me. The only reason I read faster forwards is simply because that is the way I mostly read. But when I was a kid, I like to read my books by turning my books upside down but my mom hated it when I did that and discouraged that (FWIW, I learned to read when I was 4).

I'm ambidextrous and can do everything with either hand. I play ping pong with either hand but I trained my left hand to play CHinese style and my right hand plays American style both at the same skill level. I bowl either handed (I bowl better left-handed), I can hit in baseball and golf ball either handed, and I can throw either handed though I do throw better right handed than left handed simply because I throw more with that hand.

I do get numbers confused visually very easily, they just get scrambled in my head, however, that does not happen if I 'hear' the numbers. But if I read a phone number as 915-128-5469 then I would remember it all jumbled like 951-182-5649 or something like that. But if I say the number to myself as I'm reading it, then I would remember it correctly.

However, the most powerful thing about my dyslexia is that I think way differently than everyone. The best way I can describe it is I think backwards. For some reason, this has been invaluable for me when getting my degrees in math and physics. Every test I've ever taken, I always approach the problem differently than 95% of my classmates. Oftentimes, I would reach the right answer with a completely different approach that the teacher never saw before. To be clear, it was never a genius approach in which I'm inventing some new concept. No, my approach was nothing genius or clever just "different" using the same tools that everyone else had just applied in a way different or "backwards" way.

But my dyslexic super power really comes into play when arguing socio-political-economic issues. Because I think backwards I don't approach problems the same way everyone else does and it just allows me to see the issue from a different perspective. For instance, lets take a political argument like a police shooting.

The first thing everyone does is they look at the specific instance from the perspective of whatever side they support. So, if they support police, they look at it from the standpoint of the cop. If they support the person who was shot, they look at it from the standpoint of the person shot.

I do the opposite. I naturally do not support police, so when a police shooting occurs I immediately put myself in the position of the cop. I have a bias towards those who experience hardship by the State so I naturally take a position against said people. This is completely counter to what people naturally do.

People use the term "Devil's advocate" when arguing, and to them, Devil's advocate means supporting the position opposite of your position. That is my default starting position. I immediately jump into the position opposite my position and I jump in WHOLEHEARTEDLY and I bolster the argument as much as I can and then after that I then look at the other position.

This allows me to see so much of what other people do not see and the clarity that comes from this just makes me see the truth of whatever the argument is.

THere are plenty of police shootings I support and there are plenty that are flagrantly and absolutely abhorrent and wrong.

Ok, that is enough ranting about my dyslexia
 
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