Word: dyslexia
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Reading Backward. Nelson's health as a boy in a way condemned him to be an extravert. He suffered from dyslexia, which caused him to read letters and numbers backward much of the time. During his political career, he has been forced to memorize his speeches so that he would not stumble over the words. With a scholarly life pretty much closed to him, he had trouble getting good grades at the progressive Lincoln School in Manhattan. But he worked hard enough at Dartmouth to graduate Phi Beta Kappa...
...Doctors have long been puzzled about the cause of primary dyslexia, a common learning disorder that afflicts between 2% and 5% of all U.S. schoolchildren with average or superior intelligence, and interferes with their ability to read. Most researchers assume that the root of the problem is in the cortex, site of the brain centers involved with thinking and learning. But two New York City doctors offer a different explanation-one that could lead to earlier diagnosis of this disorder...
...Frank and Harold Levinson of Downstate Medical Center report in the Journal of Child Psychiatry that primary dyslexia is caused by some as yet unexplained defect in the nerve pathways that connect the inner ear, which helps control balance, with the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls coordination. The result of this defect, they claim, is a sort of permanent motion sickness that affects a child's balance and scrambles incoming visual signals. In fact, they say, 112 out of 115 New York City children known to have primary dyslexia were tested and found to be afflicted...
Frank and Levinson have devised an instrument that a school nurse can use to detect the ear disturbance. Thus, they suggest, primary dyslexia can now be diagnosed in preschool children. The two doctors are also searching for a physiological treatment for the disorder; in a small pilot program, they have begun to study the effect of cyclizine, a motion-sickness drug, on the reading ability of dyslexic children...
...Dyslexia Praecox. Susan started out with what should have been an insuperable handicap for an actress. She had dyslexia, a congenital brain condition that hampers her ability to read aloud. She still aches at memories of trying to get through London's Hampshire School (founded by her mother). "I remember standing up in class trying to read Shakespeare, and I could hear all the other children sniggering and laughing, because I'd be literally making it up. I remember thinking: when I grow up, people are not going to laugh at me. So I thought, who do they...