Dyslexia and the Backward Letter Dilemma

Does your child reverse b's and d's?

I found some great information on this topic from the amazing book "The Dyslexia Advantage" written by Dr. Brock Eide and his wife, Dr. Fern Eide. Residing in the Seattle area, they have performed extensive research in our field, to assist their daughter with dyslexia.

Over the past ten years, researchers have discovered that the newborn human brain creates two mirror-image representations of everything it observes: one in the left hemisphere and the other in the right. Typically, this duplication is beneficial as it enables us to identify objects from various angles.

For instance, a toddler who has been cautioned about a dog while viewing its left side can recognize the same dog from its right side.

Unfortunately, when attempting to identify the orientation of printed symbols—or any item with a natural mirror, like a shoe or glove—this ability to create mirror images can become problematic.

Before a child can consistently differentiate an image from its mirror, he or she must learn to inhibit the production of its mirror image.

Some children find it particularly challenging to learn to suppress this mirroring function. When they initially learn to write, many children will reverse not only symbols with true mirrors (such as p/q or b/d), but also virtually all letters or numbers. I see this with most of the children I work with.

For most children, these errors start to decrease after only a few repetitions.

However, up to the age of eight, as many as one-third of children continue to occasionally make mirror image substitutions when reading or writing. If these mistakes happen only occasionally and the child experiences no significant difficulty with reading and spelling, these errors are neither significant nor indicative of dyslexia.

Yet, for some genuinely dyslexic children—approximately one in four - letter reversals can be a significantly more persistent and critical issue. These children might reverse entire words or even sentences, and at the individual symbol level, they may reverse not only "horizontal" mirrors like b/d or p/q, but also "vertical" mirrors such as b/p, b/q, d/p, d/q, or 6/9.

The frequency of these reversals during reading can severely impact their comprehension.

Many younger dyslexic children have more difficulty with letter orientation than their nondyslexic peers, though this difficulty declines with age. However, this phenomena can continue through the college years and beyond.

Leonardo da Vinci's lifelong dyslexic difficulties in reading, word usage, syntax, and spelling were combined with phenomenal M-strengths (more on this in a later blog post).

Leonardo wrote his journals in mirror-image script, and he also drew many of his sketches and landscapes in mirror image.

One reason that spatially talented individuals with dyslexia may be especially susceptible to reversals is that their brains are just so good at rotating spatial images. Sebastian Bergne a designer explains “If I’m designing an object, I know the exact shape in 3-D. I can walk around it in my head before drawing it. I can also imagine a different solution to the same problem.”

I found this information so interesting. Reversing letters has always been one of the known "hallmarks" to having dyslexia. However good to know that it is a normal "stage" in the developmental journey and for the person with dyslexia it can be persistant for a longer amount of time.

Excerpt from "Dyslexia Advantage" - Dr. Brock Eide and Dr. Fern Eide

(a great book to own and read!)