Your child has trouble reading, is it dyslexia?

It could be, but it could also be an binocular vision (eye-teaming) disorder, instability in the focusing system, an eye movement dysfunction, or a perceptual disorder.  It’s important to decipher the underlying cause of a reading difficulty to determine the most appropriate treatment.  Dr. Januskey can evaluate your child for all of these conditions.

What exactly is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a minimal dysfunction found in the brain.  The precise location of of the dysfunction determines which type of dyslexia someone has.  There are three main types of dyslexia:

• Dyseidesia is the inability to recognize sight words. These individuals can still sound out words.  They tend to have good phonetic word attack skills, but poor spelling.  It’s caused by a dysfunction in the angular gyrus of the left parietal lobe.
• Dysphonesia is the inability to decode unfamiliar words.  These individuals know sight-words, but have trouble sounding words out.  It’s caused by a dysfunction in Wernick’s areas of the left temporal and parietal lobes.
• Dysnemkinesia is the writing of letters and numbers backwards.  This form of dyslexia is less severe than the previous two and can be treated by Dr. Januskey.  Perceptual therapy that focuses on improving a child’s laterality (left/right) and directionality (where an object is in space compared to another object), dysnemkinesia can be corrected.