Is it possible I have dyslexia?

[Pythagorean]

note: not a health issue

I've taken several online quizzes/tests and I always get moderate or borderline results. Reasons I believe I might have dyslexia:

1) I'm left-handed
2) I can't tell where sounds come from. In some occasion, I think they're coming from exactly the opposite direction.
3) it's sometimes really frustrating and takes a lot of concentration to read blocks of text.
4) I mix up extremes (example: I never remember whether high-viscocity is more sticky or more fluid).

It's not stopped me from succeeding in academia, employment, or elsewise, so it's not detrimental to my health, just a curiosity. Things like 3) and 4) above can sometimes make parts of academia painful, but I assume everybody struggles in some domain or another in that regard.

 

[micromass]

The only person who can give an answer is a professional. So my suggestion would be to talk to one of those.

 

[Evo]

You've succeeded inspite of the problems, which is admirable. I agree with micro, get it checked out.

They found out, too late, that my little sister had fluid blocked in her inner ear.

 

[Pythagorean]

Since it's not a health issue (mental or otherwise) I didn't think it would really merit that.

 

[Evo]

Since it's not a health issue (mental or otherwise) I didn't think it would really merit that.

You should get checked, you never know if you have a minor problem now that could cause problems later if left untreated. Could be an inner ear issue, but I can't diagnose. My little sister eventually went deaf in that ear, and it could have been prevented.

 

[Pythagorean]

Interesting result. I would have expected mine was just a result of almost but not completely backwards wiring.

Hrmm...

5) I had strabismus when I was younger.

Maybe a checkup wouldn't hurt.

 

[I like Serena]

Just from curiosity, how do you link these symptoms to dyslexia?

As far as I know they are all pretty common and unrelated to dyslexia.

 

[Pythagorean]

For 2) I've had many friends (and my wife) repeatedly comment on my sense of sound. It's only with far-off sounds, like a gunshot.

for 3) and 5), if I read with only my right eye, the letters get jumped up. This could just be a matter of the circuitry not developing during the critical period (as it was a wandering eye then and didn't get used).

there's studies showing correlation between left handedness and dyslexia (1).

Hrm... here's actually a paper refuting a link between left-handedness and dyslexia, saying that it's an assertion typical in the pediatric psychology field that has never really been checked or thoroughly criticized:
http://jpepsy.oxfordjournals.org/content/12/2/291.short

 

[edgeArchitect]

Not sure about dyslexia, but I do see signs of paranoia. ;) (jk)

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm paranoid that I might be paranoid

 

[phinds]

Just from curiosity, how do you link these symptoms to dyslexia?

As far as I know they are all pretty common and unrelated to dyslexia.

I agree w/ this. Your symptoms don't seem to me to have anything at all to do with dyslexia, which is about word recognition problems.

 

[Pythagorean]

I agree w/ this. Your symptoms don't seem to me to have anything at all to do with dyslexia, which is about word recognition problems.

(emphasis mine)

This is what happens with my right eye; words get all jumbled up. With both eyes, I"m just really slow at reading.

 

[I like Serena]

If you write or type a word, do you mix up letters like a dyslexic does?

 

[Pythagorean]

I don't know how a dyslexic does, but yes I do mix up letters; for example from/form is typical one for me. But I don't know how that compares to everyone else. I'm sure people do this kind of thing anyway.

But its not all the time, it's when I'm tired (I tend to write late into the night for the week projects are due). That's how my wondering eye started too (when I was tired... then it went to fulltime as I got older... then after three surgeries it's gone).

My mother has a wandering eye and I'm starting to see my youngest daughter's eye drift when she's tired, too.

 

[phinds]

I don't know how a dyslexic does, but yes I do mix up letters; for example from/form is typical one for me. But I don't know how that compares to everyone else. I'm sure people do this kind of thing anyway.

I have a very mild form of dyslexia that exhibits itself as interchanging words, almost always nouns and particularly placenames. On this forum I've done it with photons/protons, but that probably doesn't require dyslexia, just general stupidity. Where it really shows up is when I'm telling someone about something that happened somewhere and I'll use a city name that has no relationship to the city name that I think I'm using.

I've often read about the switching of letters, and that it is common, but that doesn't seem to occur in my case.

 

[Pythagorean]

I tend to other letters to, like do instead of does or me instead of more.

And I always as n to ratio for some reason. Writing or typing.

 

[Monique]

Sometimes I feel like a dyslectic, then I want to write down a word that I can say out loud, but have no idea how to spell it. Even when I google the word as I think how it should be spelled, there are no hits.

Words like "decision" are difficult, which I could easily misspell as "desicion" or when I get really confused "disition". To find the right word I then have to google "making a choise", which google then corrects in "making a choice".. after which the correct spelling of "decision" shows up. Those times I feel demented

Names are impossible to remember, unless I see them written down. I guess that's the difficulty of translation a sound into a word. But I guess many people have a problem with remembering names.

Is it important for you to know whether you're dyslexic, or is it more a curiosity of what it entails?

 

[phinds]

And I always as n to ratio for some reason. Writing or typing.

I assume you mean "add" not "as". I do the same thing but have always attributed it to being a speed typist whos fingers just keep going after the brain stops

I don't remember all the words I do it with but ratio{n} is definitely one of them.

 

[Pythagorean]

Monique, entertainment purposes only!

phinds, I do it writing a lot too, so I always figured it was in the processing preceding the motor pool.

I think that add/as confusion was just autocorrect and stubbly fingers. I notice I completely forgot the word "drop" in the first sentence though.

 

[phinds]

Monique, entertainment purposes only!

phinds, I do it writing a lot too, so I always figured it was in the processing preceding the motor pool.

I think that add/as confusion was just autocorrect and stubbly fingers. I notice I completely forgot the word "drop" in the first sentence though.

That's interesting about the writing. When I'm writing and I SEE the wrong word I generally realize right away that I'm making a mistake but I can SAY the wrong word with total confidence that I'm saying the RIGHT word.

That difference reminds me of the Feynman story about the different ways people can count seconds internally.

 

[Pythagorean]

I was just talking with a friend and I referred to sedentary as sedimentary. Apparently there's two different words! I had always read and heard sedentary as sedimentary and it seemed to fit the definition.

That was kind of embarrassing

 

[phinds]

I was just talking with a friend and I referred to sedentary as sedimentary. Apparently there's two different words! I had always read and heard sedentary as sedimentary and it seemed to fit the definition.

That was kind of embarrassing

When I was a teenager, I used the word "congenital" in an interview when I thought I was using the word "congenial". NOT the same thing.

 

[Pythagorean]

Ha! Definitely not the same. That could be awkward.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I was just talking with a friend and I referred to sedentary as sedimentary. Apparently there's two different words! I had always read and heard sedentary as sedimentary and it seemed to fit the definition.

When I was a teenager, I used the word "congenital" in an interview when I thought I was using the word "congenial". NOT the same thing.

This kind of error is called a "malapropism":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism

There was a famous TV comedian named Norm Crosby whose humor was based on malapropisms back when I was a kid. Scroll forward to 40 seconds into it, where he comes in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY6KyCuqeoA

The wiki article is probably under-researched. I think a lot of people have had more to say about the possible causes. A quick skim of Freud's analysis of mistakes in speech in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life seems to indicate he sees the malapropism as a classic Freudian Slip. That is: he doesn't think the person is simply making the error of substituting a similar sounding word but that the meaning of the similar sounding word has more to do with what they're thinking about than the "appropriate" word. I'm sure there must have been neurological explanations put forth as well, linking it to plausible causes like minor aphasia or dyslexia.

 

[phinds]

This kind of error is called a "malapropism":

Yes, but the fact that this particular aspect of dyslexia happens to have a name based on a character in a play does not change the fact that it is an aspect of dyslexia.

 

[Pythagorean]

I don't think Zooby was trying to be argumentative, he/she suggested the possibility of a link to dyslexia in the last sentence.

I've started to read about the neurobiology of word retrieval, kind of interesting, but I defend my thesis soon, so it's an inconvenient distraction right now.

 

[I like Serena]

I'm still amazed that people invented words that sound almost the same and/or are written almost the same, while meaning something entirely different.

 

[phinds]

I don't think Zooby was trying to be argumentative, he/she suggested the possibility of a link to dyslexia in the last sentence.

Actually, you are right. Somehow I read argumentative into the post when it wasn't there at all. GADS I'm touchy

 

[phinds]

I'm still amazed that people invented words that sound almost the same and/or are written almost the same, while meaning something entirely different.

I don't see why you stop there. How about words that ARE the same word and have different meanings? I run into this all the time when doing crossword puzzles. I'll take the clue word to mean one thing when it actually means something entirely different.

I'll go you even one better. How about a word that is pronounced differently, and means something entirely different, if you just capitalize the first letter?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, but the fact that this particular aspect of dyslexia happens to have a name based on a character in a play does not change the fact that it is an aspect of dyslexia.

You're saying an actual doctor ascribed this to dyslexia?