Study About Dyslexics 1. Having a learning disorder, dyslexics are ■ un

Study About Dyslexics
   Good morning everyone. Today we are going to talk something about the new research findings about dyslexia. First, let’s get clear on what dyslexia refers to. Dyslexia is a learning disorder. It interferes with the ability to recognize words, and for some readers to understand what they have read.
   Experts say dyslexia affects about five to ten percent of the population of the United States. Researchers have long known that people with dyslexia write or read words and letters backwards in the wrong order.
   But today we are going to talk about a new study which is the one led by Doctor Vanessa Harrar from University of Oxford of Britain. The study shows that people with dyslexia may have trouble redirecting their attention between senses, from seeing something to hearing something. That is to say they may have trouble moving quickly from what they read to what they hear. And Doctor Harrar calls this a "sluggish shifting of attention across the senses".
   As we know, normal people can shift their attention quickly, for example, when they are reading they can also try to follow others’ saying swiftly. However, according to Doctor Harrar, if dyslexic people are trying to read something and trying to listen to somebody who’s reading aloud, they have to switch their attention from hearing what they are saying to looking at the piece of paper and back again.
   In the study, Doctor Harrar tested 17 people with dyslexia, and 19 others without reading problems. The volunteers were asked to push a button as quickly as possible when they heard a sound, saw a light or experienced both together. Doctor Harrar compared the speed of their reactions. She found that people with dyslexia were just as fast as the others when they saw only a picture or heard only a sound. But they had a slower reaction time when they heard a sound and saw a picture at the same time.
   So, is there anything that may help dyslexic people learn more quickly? The answer is playing video games. Sounds inconceivable? But yes, as Doctor Harrar suggests, playing action video games may help dyslexic people shift from seeing to hearing more quickly. Why? Right, because images in video games force the eyes to move and focus quickly. In video games, different types of things pop out of here and there. The players have to move their eyes around the screen in response to things quite quickly, and the more one plays a video game the faster one gets that kind of thing. So, in this way, the video game is really training the attention system to move quickly.
   Doctor Harrar’s study also shows that dyslexic people have the most difficulty going between what they saw and what they heard. And this may have an effect on how dyslexic children are taught to read. Normally, when children learn the alphabet, they usually see the letter first and then hear the sound, or they see and hear the letter at the same time. But the study finds out that children with dyslexia might learn more quickly if they hear the sound of a letter or word first before seeing it. OK, time’s up for today. We will continue to talk about this finding in detail next time...