Dyslexia & Co-Occurring Difficulties

Last week we talked about the 3 different kinds of reading disabilities including the two common clinical classifiers (dyslexia and reading comprehension disorder) and the more broad classifier (specific learning disability in reading). You can check that out here!

Today, we wanted to talk more specifically about dyslexia and the difficulties that often co-occur alongside dyslexia. Now, if you’ve been with us for a while, you know we have A LOT to say about dyslexia and in fact, we have an entire section of blogs on dyslexia you can reference by clicking here!

We wanted to take this conversation a step further and dig into some common co-occurring struggles we see in our students with dyslexia. Specifically language, attention, mathematics, and social-emotional difficulties.

So let’s dive in!

Dyslexia & Language Struggles

First and foremost, it’s important that we recognize that…

dyslexia is a language-based learning disability.

It’s impacting specific parts of the language-processing centers of the brain and therefore it’s not uncommon that we end up seeing more global language difficulties. There are two big pieces of language we consider when we think about reading specifically - language comprehension & phonology (processing the sounds of our language). We can think about these in terms of a grid in which we put phonology on the vertical access and language comprehension on the horizontal access. You can have students falling into 4 camps. If they have strong phonology and understanding of the sound (and print structure) of the language and strong language comprehension we would say they are typical readers.

Now if they have strong phonology (and understanding of the print structure of our language) but weak language comprehension, they would be known as students with poor language comprehension, which can absolutely impact their reading comprehension ability.

But the camps we’re thinking about today are the two camps at the bottom.

Students who struggle with the sound structure of our language, which impacts their reading ability, are known as dyslexic.

So the concern is that we can have students who have weak language comprehension and weak phonological processing. This means that these students will struggle with reading comprehension not ONLY because of dyslexia and struggling to actually sound out the words but also with comprehension as a whole which means that supporting dyslexia alone will not be sufficient to get these students back on grade level in terms of reading unless the comprehension deficit is also supported. It’s critical we understand where students fall in this chart.

Dyslexia & Attention Struggles

Another important consideration is the connection between language and attention.

Statistics vary but some have concluded that the co-occurrence rate of dyslexia and attention can be as high as 50%

…which means that if a student is diagnosed with dyslexia it is important to consider whether attention struggles may also be at play. Now we know that students who struggle to read may show more attention difficulties (fidgeting, lacking focus, etc.) specifically related to reading and writing tasks solely because focusing for long periods of time on things that are exceedingly difficult is a challenge for all of us - this doesn’t mean the student has an attention disorder.

So if we know that students may show signs of attention difficulty without actually having an underlying attention issue how can we determine whether it’s a reading issue or an attention issue?

Many students with dyslexia who also have an underlying attention issue also show specific difficulty in working memory and comprehension skills that are not related to the underlying difficulty with word-level reading.

• Seeing a student with poor retention or working memory may be one indicator of attention difficulty.

• Another common indicator would be a student who struggles with listening comprehension and actually performs better on reading comprehension tasks because they are able to refer to the information to answer questions indicating that weakness in short-term working memory.

• Seeing a student with inattentive (distracted/unfocused) behaviors or hyperactive (extra physical or cognitive movement) across multiple academic or social activities including tasks the student excels in. For example, if a student is strong in math but still shows signs of attention difficulty this could be a stronger indicator of an underlying attention difficulty.

It can be difficult to tease apart dyslexia and attention and at the end of the day putting extra supports in place to help with attention (such as graphic organizers and visual or written schedules) is always best practice for our students with dyslexia.

Dyslexia & Mathematics Struggles

Another important conversation we must consider is the impact that dyslexia has on mathematics performance. While many students with dyslexia perform well in math, some do not. This is because math has its own language with its own orthographic principles. For example, recognizing that 5 means five actual units of something is a connection that needs to be made and relies on many of the same neural pathways that are impacted in students with dyslexia.

This difficulty with the orthographic principles of math frequently impacts math fact memorization and fluency.

Furthermore, students with dyslexia often struggle with sequencing and order (specifically with things like days of the week or months of the year). When we think about math, it almost always relies on sequencing steps appropriately, so even though our dyslexic students often recognize the overall process and big picture they may struggle with the step-by-step sequential nature of mathematics.

Then, we also run into the difficulty of word problems! Our dyslexic students need to actually read the word problems and be able to tie that reading to a numerical calculation. So the first hurdle for these students is actually decoding (sounding out) the words in the problem and the second hurdle is comprehending the language of the word problem into an operation (reading comprehension impacts math). So for these reasons, dyslexia frequently impacts the ability to solve word problems in math.

Dyslexia & Social-Emotional Struggles

Finally, we wanted to chat about the impact dyslexia has on a student’s social-emotional well-being. Many students with dyslexia struggle to deal with the impact it has on their daily lives. Because school, as it’s currently organized, puts such heavy emphasis on the ability to demonstrate your knowledge through reading and writing, these students struggle with feelings of ineptitude. Not because they aren’t smart, THEY ARE, but because they don’t feel smart. They don’t feel successful, and they often feel something is wrong with them.

The analogy I like to use is that school is a child’s job, and they go in every single day feeling ineffective and not good at their job - and yet they have no option of quitting and finding a better fit. And they have to do this for over a decade of their life. The impact this has is significant and for many students, it leads to anxiety and depression. The International Dyslexia Association speaks about the Dyslexia-Stress-Anxiety connection at length, you can read more about that by clicking here.

What’s important to recognize is that we absolutely MUST address this component for students in order to see optimal growth in dyslexia intervention. It’s especially important as students grow older (middle and high school) because the impact of the social-emotional side of dyslexia can begin to create a negative impact in which students do not respond as well to dyslexia intervention because they’ve shut down and closed off the opportunity to improve their reading and writing because they’ve created a wall or barrier as a defense mechanism.

This is a critical reason that early identification and intervention are paramount in a student’s long-term success.

So there you have it,

These are just a few of the most common co-occurring diagnoses or difficulties we need to consider as we look at our dyslexic students. And it’s critical that we look at our students as a whole to provide the most effective support for them.

For information about how to structure effective literacy intervention sessions, check out our FREE training, 7-Steps to Reading Intervention that Works.