Phonemic Awareness: A different take
Updated: Are dyslexic kids better at hearing the discrete sounds of language than others?
Wider letter spacing helps dyslexic children read
Updated: A study shows that wider spacing between the letters in reading materials can help dyslexic children read faster and better.
Good Fonts for Dyslexia – An Experimental Study
Updated: Research does not support claims that use of a specially designed custom font for dyslexia leads to improved reading performance.
Research: Dyslexics have better picture-memory (updated)
(Researchers puzzled by results) If you wanted to design a study to test the hypotheses that dyslexics tend to think in pictures rather than words, one way to do that…
The Meds Don’t Work (Updated)
A longitudinal study at Johns Hopkins University shows that children on medication for ADHD fared worse over time than unmedicated kids.
Research shows greater improvement from strength-based teaching
A recently published study from Canada shows that dyslexic students improve with spelling at a significantly higher rate when taught with a strength-based rather than remedial approach. Traditional teaching approaches…
The nonsense of teaching nonsense words
Dyslexic children often experience difficulty with phonetic decoding. Researchers and educators use nonsense words - also called nonwords or psuedowords - as a tool to assess phonetic decoding ability. These…
Book Review: Out of Autism
Out of Autism takes the reader through each phase of the Davis Autism program, interweaving practical explanations with the accounts of the very different experiences of each of the children and adults that Dr. Cathy Dodge Smith has worked with.
A Broader Legal Definition of Dyslexia
There is a bill currently under consideration in the New York legislature that would add a new definition of dyslexia for purpose of state disability law. While many states have…
Research Update: Morphemes, Meaning, and Dyslexia
In recent years, several separate teams of researchers have issued a series of groundbreaking studies, focused on the reading strategies used by high-achieving dyslexic university students. These are young adults…
Visual Dyslexia: New study is all sizzle, no steak
A new research report about dyslexia and vision has been drawing outsized media attention, with hyped up headlines that suggest a breakthrough discovery as to the cause and treatment of…
“Evidence Based” — But does it work?
Parents who are seeking help for their dyslexic kids usually have one question uppermost in their minds: will it work? Parents and teachers are often encouraged to look for a…
New Research Confirms that Dyslexics Read Better with Right Brain Strategies
A newly published fMRI study conducted in New Zealand has confirmed that improved reading skills among dyslexic adults correspond with stronger right brain activation patterns. In a study called Reading…
Why Tyrannosaurus but Not If?
"I don’t understand it: he can read tyrannosaurus, but he gets stuck on if!" This question from the mother of a dyslexic child reflects a commonly encountered and paradoxical aspect…
Dyslexia and Giftedness – By the Numbers
A new study by Italian researchers suggests that the rate of intellectual giftedness among students with dyslexia and related learning disabilities may be almost double the rate among typically developing…
Dysfunctional Science – How a new study about dyslexia gets things wrong
Human beings are very good at tuning things out – not noticing objects or events in that are in plain sight, or becoming indifferent to distracting sounds in their environment,…
Dyslexia Begins Early
Dyslexic brains are wired differently. Researchers now report finding evidence of these differences in infants as young as six months. In a study conducted at Boston Children's hospital, researchers used DTI…
US Education Department OK’s the Word “Dyslexia”….. sort of
In an artfully and elusively worded missive, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has issued a formal letter "clarifying" standards for usage of the labels dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia in…
Survey Results from Dyslexic Advantage
Dyslexic Advantage has announced the release of preliminary survey results exploring the talents tied to dyslexia. Well over a thousand individuals participated in the comprehensive surveys, focused on exploring…
Kids with ADHD must squirm to learn
New research shows that if you want ADHD kids to learn, you have to let them squirm. The foot-tapping, leg-swinging and chair-scooting movements of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are actually…
Phonological dyslexia? Not so much….
Two new research studies cast doubt on the role of phonological processing difficulties in dyslexia. One study, from the UK, suggests that previous research showing phonological dyslexia to be more…
Fish Don’t Climb Trees – A different take on dyslexia
Davis Facilitator Sue Hall has written a new book: "Fish Don't Climb Trees: A Whole New Look at Dyslexia". Sue understands dyslexia from the inside out – as a dyslexic person with vivid recollections of frustrations experienced in elementary school, as a parent who searched for and found a solution
Two New Books from a Davis Facilitator
Davis Facilitator Barbara Hoi of Sydney, Australia has recently published two books sure to delight parents and teachers. The first book is called [amazon text=The Right Brain for the Right…
Word meaning and processing speed
Dyslexia expert Maryanne Wolf says, "the more you know about a word, the faster you can read it." Now researchers have demonstrated that the brain recognizes words with concrete meanings…
Extra time? Choose wisely….
A great article at Headstrong Nation provides a cautionary note about the common classroom accommodation of extra time being extended to dyslexic students. Sometimes the accommodations aren't well suited to…
New Research: Small screen E-readers and dyslexia
A new study support the use of tablets and other e-reading devices for dyslexic high school students. Researchers found that the students experienced significant reading gains in speed and comprehension when…
A Font for Dyslexia: To Pay, or Not to Pay?
I've been seeing some buzz in social media about a specialized font for dyslexics, called Dyslexie. I am 100% in favor of graphic designers considering the needs of dyslexics in…
Study supports Davis Symbol Mastery
A recently published case study documents the progress of a fourth grade special education student who successfully used a modified form of Davis Symbol Mastery to improve spelling skills. The…
New Jersey Passes Dyslexia Laws
The New Jersey state legislature recently passed two new laws aimed at helping dyslexic children. One establishes the definition of "dyslexia;" another requires that all school teachers receive extra training in…
ADHD? or Sleep Deprivation?
An article in the New York Times highlights the fact that many children and adults are mistakenly diagnosed with ADHD, when their problems actually stem from lack of sleep. Sleep…
Parents need help, too
A researcher in England recently reported on the experiences of parents of school-age children who had been identified as dyslexic within the past two years. Researcher Alison Earey questioned parents about…
Study measures disorientation in dyslexic children….
... but the researchers don't seem to know that's what happened. Here's what they do know: "[C]hildren who are poor readers have more variable neural responses to speech, reflecting an…
Allophonic Processing & Dyslexia – A Research Update
New research among dyslexic adults seems to confirm that dyslexics have a heightened sensitivity to sounds of language, thinking in an allophonic mode rather than focusing on phonemic units. Allophones…
Picture It! Teaching Visual-Spatial Learners
Davis Facilitator Crystal Punch has teamed with educator Betty Maxwell to write a new book geared to teachers and homeschoolers. This 250-page illustrated book is full of practical tips and…
Teacher Says “I Quit!”
He wanted to motivate his 2nd graders to be life-long learners -- but current trends in educational policy stand in his way.
The Dyslexia Quandary – Update
On December 1, the APA (American Psychiatric Association) approved the recommendations for the forthcoming DSM-5. I am not exactly sure what they approved, because they haven't released the exact text…
The neural signature of creativity
In 1980, Ron Davis realized that his mind was at its dyslexic worst when he was at his creative best. This key insight led him to seek out a way…
Three Parts to a Word – an Explanation from Brain Research
Davis Symbol Mastery -- the modeling of words in clay - is based on the principle that each word has three parts: what it means, what it looks like, and…
Research Update: “Nonresponders” and dyslexia
A new study confirms that the children who fail to progress with traditional, phonics-based interventions are highly likely to be dyslexic: Following the recommendation of Rose (2006), many primary schools in…
Research shows exercise helps with ADHD
In yet another case of a scientific study to prove what should be obvious, researchers now report that children with ADHD are able to focus better after 20 minutes of…