Dyslexia and Difficulties with Reading and Literacy

Neurocognitive profile: the phonological deficit

Dyslexia is the most common ASD and is defined as an unexpected difficulty in acquiring fluent and accurate reading.

Its origin is neither visual nor motivational, but lies in a deficit in the phonological component of language.

The dyslexic student's brain has difficulty connecting the sounds of speech (phonemes) with the letters that represent them (graphemes).

This makes reading a slow, syllabic and laborious process, where cognitive energy is exhausted in decoding, leaving few resources for text comprehension.

It is essential to understand that dyslexia is a chronic condition, not a disease that can be cured.

The student does not read poorly because he or she does not make an effort, but because his or her brain uses different and less efficient neural pathways to process written language.

This often leads to typical errors such as letter rotation, omitting words, or making up terms when reading.

However, these students often excel in other areas such as visual reasoning, creativity or orality, as long as the mediation of written text is not required.

Intervention and Compensation Strategies

Intervention in dyslexia should be based on scientific evidence, avoiding [miracle cures].

Explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness and grapheme-phoneme conversion rules is required.

However, in advanced stages, the focus shifts from rehabilitation to compensation.

The goal is no longer [speed reading] but [accessing knowledge]. To this end, non-significant adaptations are applied to level the playing field.

Measures such as allowing extra time on tests (to compensate for slow reading), allowing the teacher to read aloud statements, or using oral assessment formats are essential.