Latest / Learn Literacy Podcast / 4. History of Dyslexia Part 2: Percy
Transcript
- Cheryl Urbanczyk: Hello everyone and welcome to the Learn Literacy podcast. This is the show where we focus on language for life by teaching literacy through language and structure. I'm your host Cheryl Urbancic and I'm very excited for another episode today focusing on history of dyslexia. This is our part two episode. We left off last episode thinking about how people with brain injury who could once read then after their brain injury lose that ability to read. Today we're fast forwarding a bit in time and learning about the first student profile of dyslexia that was documented and then how ⁓ doctor connects back to brain injury to think about what the cause of dyslexia might be for that student. ⁓ so let's get started. looking at an article called Word, Blindness, and Children by Dr. Pringle Morgan, who lived in Sussex, England in the late 1800s. He wrote a paper in the British Medical Journal on November ⁓ 1896, that's when it was published, describing the inability of an otherwise bright child to learn how to read. And he used the term congenital word blindness to refer to this. condition that he noted. so we're going to jump right into his article. a case of congenital word blindness by ⁓ Pringle Morgan from Seaford Sussex. And he starts with Percy F., a well-grown lad, age 14, is the eldest son of intelligent parents, ⁓ second child of a family of seven. He has always been a bright and intelligent boy, quick at games, and in no way inferior to others of his age. So he shares a lot of information about Percy and his family right in that first sentence that his parents ⁓ of normal intelligence. The child is quick at games. ⁓ And you ⁓ interact him, he appears bright and intelligent and he doesn't appear to be less than any of his peers. ⁓ So other thing we need to keep in mind here is that can assume at this time in history that ⁓ comes from a well-to-do family, that if his ⁓ sought out a medical doctor, they had means to do so ⁓ were probably of a higher status. So ⁓ like how Morgan starts with a very human introduction to Percy and has asset-based language. in there. So it's not just well, here's a profile of someone who can't learn to read, but ⁓ we're of being set up for a contrasting situation coming up. We have a bright and intelligent young man, but we will learn that he has a hard time learning to read. ⁓ Okay, moving on. his great difficulty has and is now his inability to learn to read. This inability is so remarkable and so pronounced that I have no doubt it is due to some congenital defect. So he's contrasting this situation of a bright and intelligent boy with his inability to learn how to read. And he is so baffled by this that he believes that it must be due to some condition from birth. So that's what congenital means, right? That it's from birth. He has been at school or under tutors since he was seven years old and the greatest efforts have been made to teach him to read. But in spite of this laborious and persistent training, he can only with difficulty spell out words of one syllable. So we get information about his educational history that he, since the age of seven, he was learning. And again, this speaks to probably the well-to-do nature of his family, that he was in school and had tutors. And ⁓ in spite of all that, laborious and persistent training, he was only at words of one syllable or able to spell out words of one syllable. the following is the result of an examination I made a short time since. He knows all his letters and can write them and them. ⁓ In writing from dictation, he comes to grief over any but simplest words. For instance, ⁓ I dictated the following sentence. Now you watch me while I it. And he wrote, now you word me whale. ⁓ I spin it. And again, So another dictated sentence, carefully winding the string around the peg. And it is written, carefully wind the string around the peg. And peg is with a capital P. Okay. So what do we learn in this paragraph? That he knows all his letters. So he's aware of the alphabet letters. He can name them and read them and he can write them. dictation is a form ⁓ telling a sentence and then the student just writing it down. So it's not necessarily spelling individual words, but Morgan would have said that sentence and then Percy would have had to write it. many words are misspelled. ⁓ So he now you watch me while I spin it. And watch is spelled as ⁓ W-O-R-D, while spelled W-A-L-E. ⁓ and the other words are okay. The next sentence carefully is spelled c-a-l-f-u-l-y. Winding is w-i-n-d-e-r. String s-t-u-r-n-g. Round r-o-n-d, the, and then peg is spelled capital P-a-g. So, some things are there, some things aren't. In writing his own name, he made a mistake putting P-R-E-C-Y for P-R-C-Y and he did not notice the mistake until his attention was called to it more than once. So that's an interesting comment because I'm wondering if that's a form of reversal as opposed to a misspelling that leads to a reversal. And we see something potentially like that too in string. we the R after the vowel instead of before it. So, ⁓ you know, ⁓ I like his about not noticing the mistake because ⁓ I think all us who work with people with dyslexia ⁓ know that they will recognize these mistakes. ⁓ They're just so busy to get out written output and put their thoughts down that that awareness isn't there. And then ⁓ asked him to write the following words. ⁓ is spelled like scone. Subject is spelled scojok. Without, witchout. English is spelled E-N-G-L-I-S. Shilling, ⁓ guess an important ⁓ of currency at that time, was spelled ⁓ ⁓ and C-shore spelled C-so, S-e-a-s-o-w. So, there's very little ⁓ application sound symbol correspondence. Like, can get some of the initial sounds, but ⁓ vowel sounds, ⁓ medial ending sounds, especially in longer words, it's just... there. He's not able to put those things together. So, ⁓ know, we also kind of see Morgan's thought process in assessing the student, right? He starts with letters, then dictated some sentences, I'm guessing, ⁓ that Morgan thought, that didn't go well, let me just go back to individual words and see what he can spell. ⁓ And so he asked him write his name, and then ⁓ spell these other words. Alright, so the next bit of the article is this. He was quite unable to spell the name of his father's house, though he must have seen it and spelled it scores of times. Again, this points to the fact that he comes from a family with means that he lived in a house that had a name. And it also brings up an interesting fact that the visual memory for remembering spellings or that memorizing capacity to memorize a spelling isn't there. And this is very typical for dyslexics, right? ⁓ We it in his name, the name of his father's house. ⁓ And even notes that he must have seen these things tons of times, but even still, he's not able to spell these words that ⁓ should very well known to him. Okay. So in asking him to read the sentences he had just written a short time previously, he could not do so. So those would be the sentences I'm guessing from the dictation. But he made mistakes over every word except the very simplest. Words such as and and the, he always recognizes. I then asked him to read me a sentence out of an easy child's book without spelling the words. The result was curious. did not read a single word correctly with the exception of and, the, of, that, etc. The etc. I'm guessing are probably those very small function words and he notes the other words seem to be quite unknown to him and he could not even make an attempt to pronounce them. So I'm taking from that that Percy lacked maybe the ability to sound out. ⁓ this time in history, know, there were competing models of teaching reading. There was phonics, but then there was also like whole word memorization. So we can see that Percy would struggle with whole word memorization and he doesn't have the phonics skills to sound out words. All right, moving along. I next tried his ability to read figures and found he could do so easily. the word figures here means numbers math numbers. He read off quickly the following and I'm hoping I can read it off quickly. 785,852,017 and 20,969. And he worked out correctly. and then Morgan ⁓ lists an algebraic equation, which I will not attempt to read. But he could not do the simple calculation of four times one half, but he multiplied 749 by 867 quickly and correctly. He says he is fond of arithmetic and finds no difficulty with it, but the printed or written words have no meaning to him. And my examination of him quite convinces me that he is correct in that opinion. So when we keep moving ahead in our look at history of dyslexia and the case studies from this period of time, they did assess beyond just reading. ⁓ when think about assessment today and thinking about reading, we think, let me stick to just reading. But they wanted to know if kids could read other things like could they read math numbers? Could they do math? Could they solve equations? Because they were trying to figure out what was happening with the visual input and what areas of the brain were working, not working and that type of thing. So Percy's likes math maybe because the numbers don't give him trouble and he can solve them without having to ⁓ And he's saying printed words have no meaning to him. And we can guess why, because he can't read them. So Morgan goes on to say, words written or printed seem to convey no impression to his mind. And it is only after laboriously spelling them that he is able, by the sounds of the letters, to discover their import. So what that means is that when student would get to a word and they don't know what it is, they would say the letter names out loud and then that might support them in figuring out what the word is. We're going to see that as a strategy that's mentioned by others moving forward about spelling the word out loud as an aid to read it. And then he says his memory for written or printed words is so defective that he can only recognize such simple ones as and, the, ⁓ of, Other words, he never seems to remember no matter how frequently he may have met them. So, you know, again, dyslexic person or person with dyslexia has a weakness in the phonological processing, has trouble connecting sounds and symbols together, and does not, you know, does not have a good visual memory to remember. words. And that's why, he mentions this puzzle, like when he sees the word lots of times, he can't remember it. well, when we're working with a student with dyslexia and wanting to support remediation, we would not use visual memory as a support for them. We would focus on sound symbol correspondence. ⁓ And that's strategies like word walls or having words around don't don't help kids with dyslexia like learn them. They need other strategies that meet their needs. Okay. He seems to have no power preserving and storing up the visual impression produced by words. Hence the words, though seen, have no significance for him. His visual memory for words is defective or absent, which is equivalent to saying that he is what Kussmael has termed word blind. And he writes that out in Latin. So again, he notes the visual memory that that is not a skill that he can use. He's not able to store words that way or figure out words that way, even if you've seen them before. So the interesting part that we're getting to in this article, well, aside from this very fascinating glimpse of Percy, is his connection to Kussmael. And we learned about Kussmael before in our very first episode on the history of dyslexia. And so just as a refresher, Kussma was the one who documented cases of people with normal intelligence who had the ability to read, but then through brain injury, regardless of cause, whether illness or, actual injury to the brain or some something, ⁓ they that ability to read. And so he called this word blindness. So what is happening here is that Morgan is making a hypothesis, a connection to this situation of acquired word blindness and saying that, this student must have the same thing, but he has it from birth. we learn more about this in the next paragraph. ⁓ Cases of word are always interesting. And this case is, I think, particularly so. It is unique so far as I know in that it follows upon no injury or illness, but it is evidently congenital and due most probably to defective development in that region of the brain or disease of which in adults produces practically the same symptoms. And that is the left angular gyrus. So, you know, when those doctors were doing those post-mortem examinations of brains that were damaged in some way. That's where they noted the deficiency or the harm to the brain. So ⁓ Morgan ⁓ being insightful and thinking, well, if that's what is happening to adults with brain injury, maybe that's what's happening to this student and he has some, something is affecting that region of the brain. that he was born in a way that produces these same symptoms as if someone acquired congenital word blindness. So what is the left angular gyrus? What does it do? So basically it is a processor for language and meaning, ⁓ it is involved with reading and listening, and it maps words to sound and meaning. ⁓ does a bunch of other things, but kind of in a high level nutshell, that's it and so that makes sense and why and how it's so connected to the reading process because the reading process is that sound-symbol connection and putting ideas together and that sort of thing. ⁓ we know from more modern ⁓ of ⁓ with dyslexia that ⁓ parts of the brain are not lighting up in the same way as neurotypical brains do. So Morgan is hinting at this probably about 100 years or so before the CAT scans and MRI that we have now led us to understand that through our modern diagnosing or looking at the concern. All right. ⁓ So to the end of the article here. I may add that the boy is bright and of average intelligence in conversation. So what does that mean? Expressive, receptive language is not a problem. And this is true for many people with dyslexia, that it's not an issue of intelligence. And it's so great that Morgan highlights this as opposed to coming up with ⁓ stereotypical ⁓ blaming the student type of thinking. His eyes are normal, there is no hemianopsia, and his eyesight is good. So again, for students with dyslexia, we often suggest an eye exam just to rule that out, but we know it's not a problem of vision. The schoolmaster who has taught him for some years says that he would be the smartest lad in the school if the instruction were entirely oral. it will be interesting to see what effect further training will have on his condition. So again, he's highlighting the strengths of Percy and the school teacher is highlighting those strengths as well, that he's good at listening, good at speaking, and he can learn well that way, no problem. It's just the challenges is reading. ⁓ so because schooling needs reading, it makes it hard. But it's interesting because many accommodations that students might get can involve assistive technology where there's speech to text or text to speech. And this would support where they are and their cognitive level with removing the reading barrier. ⁓ And of we want kids to get instruction for reading. but we want to make sure that they can move along with assistive technology as needed. And the final paragraph here is that his father informs me that the greatest difficulty was found in teaching the boy his letters, and they thought he never would learn them. No doubt he was originally letter blind, and Morgan writes that in Latin, but by dint of constant application, this defect has been overcome. So Morgan ends the article with talking about his ability to ⁓ the letters ⁓ write them and name them and how hard it was just to even do that. ⁓ he states he may have originally been letter blind or not able to read the letters, but by constant application, he was then able to read them. So, it's not that long of an article, but it's really ⁓ a interesting documentation ⁓ of a with dyslexia and shows ⁓ many ⁓ touches to profile. So it's really neat that kind of took that angle as opposed to kind of you know, medical. clinical, more dry approach. You know, he could not read, this is how he spelled, so forth and so on. But Morgan really saw the boy as like a whole person, noting his strengths, noting the comments from the teacher about how smart he would be if learning was just oral, and that he was able to work with math and numbers. So the other interesting thing is how stable this profile is. It really hasn't changed from then until now. In some of the Orton-Gillingham trainings I do, we talk about this profile and I ask the participants, ⁓ many people know a Percy or who have taught a Percy? And everybody raises their hand because they can see from this profile the same characteristics of the students that they're interacting with and teaching with. we have a suite of characteristics that form a stable profile over time. Okay. ⁓ The ⁓ thing you know challenges Morgan is the discrepancy between the assets he has, and this unexpected inability to read. So we've mentioned that that Percy comes from a family of means so his whole family must have been literate, they lived in a house large enough to have a name. But yet Percy lacked that ability. So, it wasn't for trying by family. And sadly, we sometimes still hear that today. Well, if the family would just read with them at home. Well, if the family had read books or if the family had did this. I mean, we can assume Percy's family did a lot, right? We know for seven years he was in school and had tutors and it still didn't work. we don't want to family blame or shift the burden of education onto the family. We want to understand the profile of the child and how to help them. And so when we're thinking about the history of dyslexia, this is a very ⁓ important treatise ⁓ gives us a of insight into ⁓ what people were starting notice at the time about children and their ability to learn how to read. So we'll wrap up here with Morgan and his description of Percy. ⁓ forward, we're going to talk about another doctor called James Hinchelwood, ⁓ he did a lot of interesting work. We will first look at a paper he wrote in response to Morgan, and then move forward looking at Hinchelwood's ⁓ own writings a book that he wrote. ⁓ So ⁓ you much for tuning into this episode of Learn Literacy. ⁓ If you're interested in learning more about LearnLiteracy, please go to learnliteracy.com or at learnliteracy1 to learn more about what I do in terms of trainings for Orton Gillingham, structured literacy, advocacy for dyslexia, consulting, and all that kind of thing. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thank you.