I'm Michael A Skeide and I'm the head of
the Research Group Learning and Early Childhood at the
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
in Leipzig, in Germany.
And I've been studying
dyslexia and dyscalculia for about more than a decade now.
So what fascinates me
about dyslexia and dyscalculia research
is that there are a number of apparent opposites.
So, for example, reading and math difficulties affect
high level cultural techniques,
but at the same time, it can be traced back
developmentally to very basic fundamental sensory
capacities, like speech perception, for example.
Another striking observation is that
each child who meets criteria
for dyslexia and dyscalculia has a unique cognitive profile,
so a unique fingerprint of individual risks and resources.
Still dyslexia and dyscalculia occur universally
across all cultures studied so far.
I think the question about causes and consequences
of dyslexia and dyscalculia
can only be answered by longitudinal studies beginning
in early childhood, ideally already in infancy.
What we know from the few studies available so far
is that children who go on to develop dyslexia
have early difficulties in linking vision and speech
and also fine-grained speech perception.
Children with dyscalculia
have early difficulties in making sense of numbers,
be it patterns of dots or number symbols.
But in any case of dyslexia and dyscalculia,
both are multicausal in nature.
Regarding the universality of dyslexia and dyscalculia,
one could say that each child with dyslexia, for example,
experiences difficulties in linking speech to text.
And this is the case no matter whether kids learn
the English alphabet or Chinese logograms.
And every child with dyscalculia
finds it difficult to understand
and to handle numbers.
So in this sense, there are universal
characteristics that are shared by virtually all children,
but there are also important differences
that I would like to mention.
And to give one example in dyslexia,
so dyslexia is diagnosed most often
in English speaking cultures
simply because their writing systems
are the most inconsistent and intransparent,
with respect to print to speech conversion rules.
Think of how many different pronunciations
of the letter A, for example, there are in English.
So there’s certainly a cultural unity,
but also cultural diversity
when it comes to dyslexia and dyscalculia.
It's often overlooked that reading, writing
and recognising numbers are so fundamental
capacities that dyslexia and dyscalculia affect
children in virtually all classes,
and not just reading or writing or math,
and beyond educational achievement.
Such negative learning experiences
can even have serious mental health consequences,
even severe forms of anxiety or depression.
So yes, definitely dyslexia and dyscalculia have a large impact
on children's lives outside of school
because letters and numbers are ever present.
So now more than ever in our digital worlds,
imagine how exposed you are when you post text
that is full of spelling mistakes on a social media platform.
Or imagine you cannot place an order in an online shop
because you are unable to solve
a simple addition problem
that is required in a number capture.
A substantial proportion of children who go on
to develop dyslexia already come to attention
during language acquisition.
So for example, they might find it more difficult
to understand speech, to build a vocabulary
or use grammar correctly
and later they may be slow to say aloud
a particular word corresponding to a picture in a picture book,
or they may overhear rhymes when singing songs.
Children who go on to develop dyscalculia
may be slower, or they may be less efficient
when playing puzzles
or playing with blocks or with board games
in which they have to compare numbers.
But none of these signs, I would say, are
necessary or sufficient.
So I consider a comprehensive, but at the same time sensitive
early risk assessment as really important.
So I think it's very important to support children
who are at risk or affected by dyslexia or dyscalculia.
But at the same time, I also consider it as very important
to support all children individually
who struggle during learning in school
and to provide them
with individualised adaptive resources that helps them
to make the best out of their potential
and really be sensitive to their individual risks and resources.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you want to learn more
about dyslexia and dyscalculia research,
you can go to our website skeidelab.com
and to Bold on bold.expert