Recent research from Vanderbilt University has found that there are subtle differences in the brains of children with reading difficulties.
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2014/10/dyslexia-white-matter/
The article itself is quite technical, so here is the pertinent part for our purposes:
“The typically developing readers showed greater connectivity to linguistic regions than the dyslexic group. Those with dyslexia showed greater connectivity to visual and parahippocampal (memory encoding and retrieval) regions.”
At Easyread, we find that the reason most dyslexic or struggling readers have poor literacy is because they are over-relying on their visual memory to read, rather than decoding words, which activates the auditory/linguistic processing regions of the brain. Therefore the best way to help them is to use a highly visual approach to hook in that underdeveloped connectivity to the auditory/linguistic regions.
Our 95+% success rate has always given us confidence in our methods… but it’s nice to see cutting edge research back up our unique approach!
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Sarah Forrest is a Literacy Specialist for the Easyread System, and online course for children with reading difficulties, dyslexia, weak auditory processing and more. Get a free 10-day trial at www.easyreadsystem.com