Dyslexia or Dyscalculia

2024/05/20

What is Dyslexia or Dyscalculia

Dyslexia is a Specific Learning Disorder that refers to a pattern of learning difficulties characterised by problems with accurate or fluent word recognition, poor decoding, and poor spelling abilities.

Dyscalculia is a Specific Learning Disorder that refers to a pattern of difficulties characterized by problems processing numerical information, learning arithmetic facts, and performing accurate or fluent calculations.

These difficulties are usually identified early on in the developmental years, and would need to have persisted for at least 6 months despite the provision of interventions that target the difficulties. In addition, the difficulties should not be attributed to general external factors such as economic or environmental disadvantage or a lack of education as typically provided in the community context.

Diagnosis

A psychologist will need to conduct a cognitive and academic assessment to assess the child’s level of functioning to ascertain that there is significant underachievement in the child’s academic learning and cause significant interference with academic or occupational performance, or with activities of daily living.

Typical difficulties include:

Inaccurate or slow and effortful word reading
Difficulty understanding the meaning of what is read
Difficulties with spelling
Difficulties with written expression
Difficulties mastering number sense, number facts or calculation
Difficulties with mathematical reasoning

Treatment

Individual’s with dyslexia would require help from a teacher, tutor, or therapist specially trained in using a multisensory, structured language approach. It is important for these individuals to be taught by a systematic and explicit method that involves several senses (hearing, seeing, touching) at the same time.