Sorting Through Dyslexia Disability Can Be Conquered with Time
August 2004
By Rebecca F. Johnson
USA Today

Linda Hendrickson remembers how she was paralyzed with fear when asked to read aloud as a child.

How she gripped the book so tightly to hide the shaking that her knuckles turned white. How she labored so heavily on each word that it took an hour and a half to read a paragraph.

The third grade still haunts Hendrickson, now 33. The recently diagnosed dyslexic muddled through her early grade-school years until a teacher finally noticed she couldn't read and tutored her every day after school to help her learn.

''It's actually pretty easy to disguise if you want to,'' she says. ''In a classroom with 30 kids, if you're quiet and sit in the back of the class, you blend into the woodwork.''

Schoolwork was still a struggle, but she has good comprehension and memory skills, so even though work took longer for her than for many of her classmates, she began to thrive.

Today, she's a chemistry major at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and has a near-perfect grade-point average.

Hendrickson's success impressed the American Chemical Society's Women Chemists Committee, which will honor her with its ''Overcoming Challenges Award'' later this month.

Dyslexia is a language-processing disorder that can affect reading, writing, spelling and even speaking, says Sheldon Horowitz of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Despite these difficulties, many dyslexics have above-average intelligence. Horowitz calls dyslexia ''an island of weakness in a sea of strength.''

While there is greater awareness of dyslexia today than in the past, society still has a long way to go, says J. Thomas Viall of the International Dyslexia Association.

Many adults still think dyslexic children are just not trying hard enough, but they often spend much more time on schoolwork than their peers do, he says.

New developments in the field might help both in changing attitudes and in reaching children before they get too far behind, says Sally Shaywitz, a professor of pediatrics at Yale University who has studied learning disabilities for 25 years.

Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia , says the most promising recent advance is the use of brain-imaging scans -- known as functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRIs -- to delineate how dyslexics' brains differ from those of strong readers and help researchers rewire a dyslexics' brain through intensive reading instruction.

In May, Shaywitz published findings from a clinical trial that examined 77 children, both those who read well and those who have difficulty. One-third got experimental reading intervention, which teaches children how letters represent sounds and helps them connect sounds with what is written on the page.

Participants' brains were scanned before, immediately following and one year after the intervention. Those who got intervention showed improvement in reading fluency, accuracy and comprehension -- and their brain patterns changed to resemble those of good readers.

Guinevere Eden, director of the Center for Learning at Georgetown University, is conducting a similar clinical trial with dyslexic children using brain-imaging technology. Some of the 80 students receive specialized reading intervention, others get intervention that targets non-reading skills and a third group gets no intervention, she says.

Then Eden's team scans the brain to see whether activity grows in areas associated with reading.

The implications from the studies are clear: With early intervention, many of the problems befalling dyslexics, including school failure or dropping out, can be avoided or diminished.

''In education, we have the potential to be in an era where we base instruction on scientific evidence,'' Shaywitz says. ''People today don't have to struggle.''

Many adults dyslexics -- high-profile examples include Charles Schwab and Tom Cruise -- still struggle with the lifelong disability.

Hendrickson must take fewer classes at a time than her peers to ensure she can complete her scientific reading. She also uses a computer dictionary that pronounces words aloud, and marks up the pages as she reads to stay on track. ''Mostly though, I just have to take my time,'' she says.

Viall says many successful adult dyslexics had a mentor, like Hendrickson's fourth-grade teacher. But they also must be intrinsically motivated.

Linda's husband, Dick, knows just how motivated his wife is: She wants to study nuclear medicine and become a technician qualified to do brain and body scans.

''She's just so interested in everything she learns, and she doesn't just want to learn it, she wants to find the reasons behind it,'' he says.

A few of Hendrickson's professors also testify she is a model student. While juggling school and raising three children, now ages 14, 12 and 10, she still manages to mentor fellow undergrads and conduct research projects, says Judith Iriarte-Gross, associate professor of chemistry.

Hendrickson will face her greatest fear once again when she delivers her acceptance speech at the American Chemical Society's national conference on Aug. 24. She's still nervous, but she's a little more confident this time around.