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14. History of Dyslexia Part 7: Hinshelwood Ch 3 · Learn Literacy Podcast

• Cheryl Urbanczyk: Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the Learn Literacy Podcast. We espouse the cause of language for life by teaching literacy through language and structure. So in this episode, we're doing another of our History of Dyslexia series, and we are reading through Dr. James Hinschelwood's 1917 book called Congenital Word Blindness. So today we're doing chapter three. ⁓ did chapter one and two already. Chapter one Was setting the stage with reviewing what acquired word blindness is or dyslexia. So if you're just jumping in now, word blindness is a historical term for dyslexia. Chapter two was talking about congenital word blindness and reviewing profiles ⁓ sharing his thoughts about people being born with this condition. So chapter three is ⁓ completely different and we jump into hereditary word blindness as a way to understand and hear his thoughts ⁓ what that is. Okay, so let's get started. Chapter three Hereditary Congenital Word Blindness. For the information regarding the educational history of the members of this family, I am greatly indebted to the headmaster of the of the school where the whole family, consisting of eleven children, had been educated and who personally brought the affected members to see me. Their schoolmaster informed me that there was no difficulty experienced in the education of the first seven members of the family, but the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh all boys experienced the greatest difficulties in learning to read. He also said that in his long experience as a teacher, he had never before met with anything like these difficulties encountered in attempting to teach these four boys to read, and that he was greatly puzzled how to account for it. As in every other respect, the boy seems so intelligent. That's a common thread in all the case studies that he's presented so far. Dr. W. Lewis Thompson, assistant medical officer of health for Lanarkshire, to whom he had mentioned the case of the four boys, at once recognized the true nature of the difficulty. doctor Thompson, being an old pupil of my own, was thoroughly conversant with the nature of congenital word blindness and at once recognizing that the four boys were typical cases of this condition, arranged that the children should be sent to see me. I saw them in March 1907, ⁓ accompanied by their mother and schoolmaster, who gave me valuable information about their past history. So case six. these are the cases he's building on from the first set of cases presented in the previous chapter. Okay, case six. ⁓ twelve years of age, the youngest member of the family, had been at school for more than seven years, having joined it in January 1900. His mother stated that his general intelligence was good and that he was quite as smart in every way as the other members of the family. The schoolmaster informed me that since going to school, the greatest difficulty had been experienced in teaching him to read. The children at his school were taught reading in the old method by learning first the letters of the alphabet. So keep in mind the old method that he's referring to is like alphabetic phonetic or learning the alphabet letters and phonics and sounding out and things like that. Okay, to continue, after seven years at school. This boy could not read by sight even a child's first primer. On examining him with the letters of the alphabet, I found he knew most of them, but not all. On testing his power of reading, I found that he was quite unable to read by sight even a child's first primer composed of monosyllabic words, but was only able to pick out a word here and there. On a whole page of a child's first primer, he could only recognize by sight five words. It is To can and not. He recognized nearly all the words if they were spelt out to him, and he recognized most of them if allowed to spell them out himself. So what he means here is like saying the letter names out loud, like C A N for can and O T for not, like that. ⁓ and I should add that when Hinselwood is talking about the old method, he's contrasting it to one of the current methods of learning to read at that time, which was the look say or memorizing words as a picture, like whole memorizing whole words. Okay. All right. ⁓ if allowed to spell out each word letter by letter and thus appeal to his auditory memory, he could read the most of them. But if confined to the recognition of words by sight, he could recognize only a very few of the simplest and most common words. His stock of visual word memories was thus extremely limited, and that after being over seven years at school, he has made much better progress in arithmetic. He reads fluently numbers up to hundreds of thousands and can do sums in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. He has thus made much greater progress with his arithmetic than with his reading, although even in this department, his master informs me he is below the average. His auditory memory and general intelligence are good and he can readily learn anything taught in the way of oral instruction. Again, a common theme we see about the receptive and expressive language skills of the children, that they ⁓ have no issue there, and we know even from Morgan's review of Percy that the teacher was saying he would be the brightest. A child in this in the class if the instruction was just oral. He repeated several verses from memory without a single mistake, which he had to learn by heart the week before as part of his schoolwork. He recognizes at once all kinds of objects and pictures shown to him. He has learned to write well. He cannot write to dictation but copies correctly. His vision is practically normal and his general health is good. So when he says he cannot write to dictation, it means a sentence or some some words are told to him and they have that he has to spell them on his own. But by noting copying correctly, Hinshawood is getting at the fact that his letter formation and handwriting skills are good. Okay, case seven. ⁓ H, fourteen, has been at school for nine years. So this is another brother in this family. The greatest difficulty has been experienced all through these nine years in teaching him to read. He should now have passed all the standards and been in the supplementary class, but it is only in standard three. It has been his difficulty in learning to read which has kept him back, as otherwise he is a smart and intelligent boy. He gets on well with his arithmetic and is at present doing the compound rules, which he does fairly well. His auditory memory is good and he can learn by heart easily what is imparted to him by word of mouth. He writes well and no difficulty was experienced in teaching him either arithmetic or writing. With regard to his learning to read, the schoolmaster informs me that the greatest difficulty with him was experienced during the first three years, during which so much little progress was made that it seemed for a time that the difficulty would prove insuperable. During the last two years, however, he has made substantial progress and is now learning to read. And I I wonder why that is. Like what happened in those two years? We may find out if we keep reading. ⁓ When tested him with the reading book of Standard 3, I found that he could read slowly and laboriously, but if I allowed him to spell out the words ⁓ that could read slowly and laboriously if I allowed him to spell out the words aloud. He knew all his letters, but very few of the words by sight, only some of the monosyllabic and most familiar ones. However, even in this respect, he was improving and gradually increasing his stock of visual murder memories, which was still limited but much larger than that of his younger brother. So I guess we don't really get any insight into what the change was that allowed him to access more literacy, maybe just Okay, case eight. ⁓ Jay aged eighteen years, was at school for seven years and left when fourteen years of age. He has now left school for four years and has been working as a coal miner. His schoolmaster informs me that throughout his old his whole school career there seemed to be an insuperable difficulty in his learning to read, and at the end of seven years he left school without being able to read even the child's first primer. What struck the schoolmaster, however, as ⁓ most extraordinary was that with regard to his arithmetic he made good progress and had no difficulty in keeping up with the other boys in this department, and before he left school had gone through all the compound rules, practice, and simple proportion. His auditory memory was good, so much so that he learned his reading books by heart from hearing others go over them, so that when he got a start he could repeat considerable portions by heart. seen this compensatory strategy mentioned by Hinshelwood before, and we know even today kids are so good at doing that type of thing, just memorizing things as a way to compensate. He learned to write quite easily and could copy fairly well, but could not write to dictation or spell, right? ⁓ most interesting thing in Jay's career was that any progress made in reading had been accomplished during the last four years after he had left school. And to me, this is where the story gets really interesting for this young man. He is a great football enthusiast, and his mother informs me that since leaving school he has got the referee every Monday and Friday, which gives detailed accounts of all the football matches. So he was into soccer, and it seems at this time in history wherever he was living, either Scotland or England, there was this magazine or newspaper called The Referee that updated about soccer matches and so forth. So Hinchelwood every night his mother states after work ⁓ he spend a large part of the evening over this newspaper, attempting with the help of others to spell out the results of the matches in which he was interested. At first he could only do this very imperfectly and laboriously with the help of others, but now he can do this without help. On testing his power of reading with a child's first primer, I found that he could only read about one half of the words without spelling them. The other half he could read if allowed to spell them out letter by letter so that he could not read fluently even the child's primer. When I examined his power of reading with an ordinary book, I found that he recognized by sight very few words of more than one syllable, but had to spell them out letter by letter. Such common monosyllabic words as the of to in, etc., he recognized at once. When I examined his ability to read football news, I found he could do this much better as he could recognize by sight a great a much greater number of words, such terms as goal, goalkeeper, forwards, backs, runs, dribbling, etc., and the names of the various clubs he could recognize by sight at once. By persistently attempting to read the football news for the last four years, he had acquired a comparatively good visual vocabulary of football terms, and hence he could always make something out of the accounts of football matches, although still with difficulty and spelling out a considerable number of words. And this is so fascinating because it really talks about and speak to motivation, and that when someone is motivated to learn to read or to learn to do anything. That they can find a way. And even though this student may have memorized some words maybe without decoding, ⁓ still speaks to the point that he could be successful in reading something he really wanted to read about. ⁓ that when we think about today children and their text choices, ⁓ and understand such theories you know, culturally responsive pedagogy, representation, matching up student interests to ⁓ they want to read and this ⁓ ⁓ kind of thing that here's some very early documentation ⁓ of this ⁓ And I ⁓ not sure of like number scientific studies so forth or reading of science that has studied about child's interests and how that matches up. But we know for some students that matching these interests to text and other things is really important and gives them that into practice and acquiring skills and and to interacting with text. So that's pretty neat, I think. Okay, moving on with another brother. ⁓ case nine. ⁓ aged sixteen years, was nine years at school and left it one and a half years ago. He has since been working as a minor. I have not been able to personally interview him as he refused to allow himself to be examined, so that I can speak of him only from the information supplied by the schoolmaster, his mother, and brothers. The schoolmaster informs me that after nine years at school, ⁓ left it without being able to read. He practically made little progress beyond learning the letters of the alphabet. His general intelligence and auditory memory were good. And like his older brother Jay, he learned his reading book by heart from hearing others repeat it, so that if he got a start, he could read off a good portion of the lesson from memory. He made fair progress in arithmetic, and when he left school, he was working at the compound rules. He learned to write quite easily and copied well, but could not write to dictation. Since leaving school, his mother informs me, he has never made the slightest attempt to learn to read and never looks either at a book or a newspaper. At present, she says he can read none. Okay, so th this is kind of the to me some of the the really interesting emotional and well being effects of not being able to learn how to read. this young man did not want to be interviewed by the doctor. He ⁓ never tried to learn how to read after ⁓ and I think working as a minor at time. maybe literacy skills were were not a huge requirement for that position. But ⁓ I think in the way Hinschelwood wrote up the profile of case nine, we see some of these aspects ⁓ ⁓ I can't read, I don't want anything to do with it, I'm not gonna go to the doctor. It doesn't matter, that kind of thing, that ⁓ that development of ⁓ uncaring feeling is like a shield to hide like that shame behind ⁓ and that of inability right okay ⁓ four years after examining four brothers in 1911 I had an opportunity opportunity of examining two members of the next generation of this family meaning the children of the eldest daughter of the family ⁓ so Remember, there was a a rather large family and we read four profiles of boys from the family and now we're being presented with profiles of children of a sister of these brothers. Okay. The two cases reported below are therefore the nephew and niece of the four boys whose cases I have just recorded. The mother of these two children never herself experienced any difficulty whatever in learning to read. She has six children, and the other four members of her family have learned to read without any special difficulty. Okay, moving along. Case ten. N, a girl twelve years of age, has been at school for seven years. She has experienced the greatest difficulty in learning to read and at present can only read very imperfectly. being able to recognize by sight only some of the commonest monosyllabic words. For several years she has seemed to make very little progress, but has done much better during the last year. Again, interesting that there's some progress. I hope we find some details about why this progress is occurring. She knows all the letters of the alphabet, but was a very long time in learning them. She can recognize by sight most of the common words of one syllable, such as the, of, in, which, etc. But most of the rare monosyllabic words she cannot recognize by sight alone, although she recognizes them nearly all when spelled out aloud to her. ⁓ that's kind of interesting. I I wonder if It just occurred to me now, I'm having a brain light bulb moment, that when kids are spelling out the the letters, even if it's of a monosyllabic word like ⁓ most, M-O-S-T, if it's somehow appealing to their ability, like a phonemic awareness blending almost, you know, we know the letter names and the letter sounds may be the same ⁓ connected and they may be a little bit different. But I'm wondering if there's enough there that allows for that concept of blending sounds together to announce a final word when the students spell them out loud. She has never had the slightest difficulty with arithmetic and in fact has been rather good at it and above the average. She is at present in the compound rules and has no difficulty in keeping up with the rest of the class on this subject. She has no difficulty in committing things to memory which are repeated aloud to her, and this shows the possession of a good auditory memory. She seems a smart and intelligent girl in every other respect, apart from her difficulty in learning to read. And then case 11. Dee is a boy aged 10 years and has been at school for four years. He has made very little progress in learning to read by sight. ⁓ Which is, I think, the look say method of reading that he would be taught by here. He does not know by sight even all the letters of the alphabet, although he can repeat them in sequence correctly. He can scarcely recognize any words by sight alone. Out of a whole page of a children's primer, he recognized by sight only two words, to and go. When I spelled out the words aloud to him and he appealed and appealed to his auditory memory, He recognized every word on the page. He can spell nearly all the small words and can recognize them when they are spelt aloud to him, but he cannot recognize them by the sense of sight alone. Whilst the visual memory for words is so defective, the auditory memory seems good. He has therefore experienced no difficulty in committing things to memory which have been read aloud to him, such as pieces of poetry. With regard to arithmetic, he has had the same difficulty as with regard to reading. He can repeat the figures in sequence up to 100 and can write them also. But if the figures are written down out of their order, he can only recognize them by sight up to 20 and with any degree of certainty and very few combinations beyond that. In other respects than learning to read words and figures, he seems a quite inspired. a smart and intelligent boy. Hmm, that's interesting. This is one of the first cases that we've really seen ⁓ maybe a connection where the student really is challenged with reading numbers and and working with them. Or dyscalculia, ⁓ Alright, so now we go on to hear some information about hereditary component. To Dr. C. J. Thomas belongs the credit of first calling our attention to the probability of a hereditary tendency in congenital word blindness. In a paper which appeared in the Ophthalmic Review August 1905, Dr. Thomas first called special attention to the fact that congenital word blindness may assume a family type and that a hereditary tendency is probable. The above example of six members of the same family and two generations with congenital word blindness is a striking confirmation of the correctness of Dr. Thomas' observations. In the discussion which followed the reading of my paper on hereditary congenital word blindness at the Exeter meeting of the British Medical Association in 1907, Dr. Sidney Stevenson narrated a striking example. By giving details of six cases of congenital word blindness affecting three generations of the same family. This he subsequently published in the ophthalmoscope. In the ophthalmic review, Mr. F. Herbert Fisher published a case of congenital word blindness, and in this paper, he called special attention to the fact that the uncle of the child affected had also experienced the greatest difficulty in learning to read. I have little doubt that in future, if observers in every case would make careful inquiries into the family history, both of the present and previous generations, the evidence would rapidly increase as to the frequency of the hereditary tendency. The fact that congenital word blindness is sometimes hereditary, as is typically exemplified by these six cases occurring in two generations of the same family, is of considerable importance from the etiological standpoint. We have seen that the difficulty in learning to read in cases of congenital word blindness can most readily be explained by some defect in that special area of the brain, the left angular gyrus, where are stored the visual memories of words and letters. We have seen that the defect of this limited cerebral area might be due to disease, to injury at birth, or to faulty development. In these six cases of defective belonging to the same, in these six cases of the defect belonging to the same family, it is evident that we may exclude such causal factors as disease and injury at birth. The abnormal condition of the visual memory center for words and letters is doubtless both in these six cases. And in all such hereditary groups, due to defective development of this special cerebral area occurring in the early stages of embryonic growth. The first seven members of the family escaped this faulty development, but when it occurred in the eighth member, it repeated itself in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh. If we analyze the symptoms manifested by these six cases, we are struck by their similarity. The symptoms of all six children were practically identical in kind, but only differed in degree. Their defect was strictly confined to their inability to recognize by sight words and letters, and with one exception, that of case eleven, where the inability extended to numbers also. So it it's great that he mentions this differed in degree. We know dyslexia is a sliding scale. from very severe to mild and with a bunch of manifestations in between. And, with regard to the hereditary factor, this has been corroborated by recent science and and even included in definitions of dyslexia about the hereditary factor. ⁓ And it can be a for when screening children. Do other members of the family have a learning disability? That type of thing. So, you know, we see so many of these seeds planted like about a hundred years ago, right? Which is pretty neat that they worked out a lot of these different things. Okay. moving with the similarity of these cases, that they were practically identical but differed in degree. The inability was to recognize by sight words and letters. And in other respects, these children were quite as intelligent as the other members of the family. Their auditory memory was good and they made satisfactory progress in subjects where the instruction was oral. They all learned to spell and could read if allowed to spell out aloud each word letter by letter and thus appeal to the auditory memory. They could all recognize figures by sight and learn to count fairly well with the exception of case 11. They all learned to write easily and could copy correctly, but could not write to dictation. So meaning the spelling that they could not spell. It is evident, therefore, that the area of the brain involved was exactly similar in each case except in case 11, where the area involved was a little more extensive. The similarity of area involved occurring in six members of the same family excluded the idea of any other causal factor than development. Although it is possible, as we have seen, that in isolated cases of congenital word blindness, the cause may be found in disease or injury at birth, I think it is probable that even in most of these isolated cases, the condition is the result of defective development, just as in the hereditary form. This view derives considerable support from the fact that ⁓ hemiacritic. Which is so frequently associated with acquired word blindness due to disease, has never, so far as I know, been met with any case of congenital word blindness. Okay, I am going to look up what that word means because he's mentioned it a couple times. ⁓ so homonymous hemionopsia is vision loss, which would make sense that he mentions that ⁓ to disease or injury. In the first chapter, I have discussed the reason for the frequency of this combination of symptoms, meaning the acquired word blindness. Whilst I have never seen or heard of any case of congenital word blindness associated with That's hard for me to say. Homonymous hemianopsa, or I'm just gonna substitute vision loss. I've met in my own experience with five cases of acquired word blindness associated with this symptom. The fact that this association, so frequently observed in acquired word blindness due to cerebral disease, has never yet been met with in the congenital form, is I think most significant and helps to confirm us in the opinion that defective development. is the cause of congenital word blindness in the vast majority of these cases. In this group of six cases, case eight is, I think, worthy of special notice and is especially significant with regard to the question of treatment. Here we have the case of a boy who, after being seven years at school, left it without being able to read even a child's first primer. The ordinary routine instruction in class had evidently been of no service to him so far as learning to read was concerned, or Although he made good progress in arithmetic, writing, and in subjects imparted by oral instruction. Yet he actually taught himself to read within four years after leaving school. The motive power which stimulated him to make the efforts was the necessary persistence and perseverance, being his th enthusiasm for football, which induced him night after night to try to read the newspaper accounts of the matches. This he did very laboriously at first. spelling the words out letter by letter, but by dint of keeping at it, he had gradually acquired a fair visual vocabulary of football terms as enabled him to read the accounts of the matches in the newspapers. I think the history of this voice case supplies us with the secret of successful treatment. And he's saying perseverance as his example, which I completely agree with, you know, ⁓ but I think he is maybe not giving enough credit to the motive, right? He does mention he the motive power that stimulated him. And I think that's his secret to being persistent. He was persistent because he had that motive. And his motive was learning soccer and knowing about the soccer matches and whether he taught himself to read some words by visual memory or by announcing letters, he was able to do that. Whether he could apply that to other text and things, who knows, but at least it allowed this person to access some basic literacy and gain some basic skills. And, we know those could be transferred anyway. Okay. So Hinselwood has compiled some amazing documentation so far. And we're getting more and more shades of understanding of how he's defining word blindness from isolated cases and now adding in the to hereditary to hereditary family members, right? That there's something in this that ⁓ could be passed down somehow ⁓ a hereditary component. That it's not coincidental that family members, ⁓ either the same children from the mother and father or extended family or so forth, could all have this without it being some type of hereditary component. Okay? So we're gonna keep going with Hinshelwood's book. We have a couple chapters left on diagnosis and treatment, and we'll d dive deeper into what he's talking about there. So if you're interested in learning more about Learn Literacy and what I do, don't be shy to go to my website, learnliteracy.com. You can get a link to the ⁓ information that's coming out, either the practitioner profiles or the dyslexia history series. ⁓ I'm also on social media at Learn Literacy1 and at Cheryl Urbanzic1. So look forward to seeing you in the next episode. and keep working hard on teaching literacy through language and structure so we can help all kids achieve the goal of Language for life. Thank you.