Situated on that pink cloud right outside of reality.. On reading : comments.
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(no subject)
We decided we read in four different ways, depending on what we're reading and why:
1) Reading each word out loud in our heads at speech-rate - usually if we're really enjoying the language of something, the same way you'd eat a really tasty chocolate, or luxuriate in a bath. Or if it's something we want to remember, or are having difficulty understanding. A bit like when you see a photograph or painting and think 'wow, great use of light' or 'lovely colours'.
2) Reading out loud in our heads, but faster - you do see every word, but you get lost more in the meaning than the words, so your mind focuses on the story rather than the language itself. (As magicalmongoose described really well further up the comments.) (To use the visual analogy again, when you see a photo and think 'oh, she's thin', or 'that reminds me of the house where I grew up'.
3) Skim-reading - where you read without really focusing on individual words or even the thread of any story or argument, but just select the key points on a 'need to know' basis and disregard the rest. A lot of academic study relies on this sort of reading, which is hard for most dyslexics (see below).
4) Scanning - where you cast your eye over words hunting for something specific, like looking up a name in the phone book.
The Man and I agreed that in our experience of working with dyslexics we see the main problem with 2-4 above being that it relies on advanced pattern-matching, and most dyslexics just don't see patterns in words and letters the way others do - for example words don't look the same if they're in different fonts, or in different places in a sentence. So, as the Man put it, ordinary reading for dyslexics is like reading really bad handwriting or poor spelling for the rest of us. Hence more time needs to be taken and reading is a more conscious process. However, the reward for that is that when they do read they miss far less and often appreciate detail in language and composition that elude those who skim or read more by pattern-matching and guesswork.
This is a really fascinating topic. Do you mind if I repost the question in my LJ? I'd love to know more about others' experiences! (As writers I think we can learn a lot from how others access our work, for one thing!)
(no subject)
As a psych major, I learn a lot about how people with specific disorders function differently. (well actually, you read that between the line while getting lists of symptoms, but yeah) but I often miss the apposing 'normally'. I mean, I know how I read (more or less). I can better understand how my extremely dyslectic brother reads and spells than even our mom, who has a minor case of dyslexia herself and has been tutoring him since he was 6 and needed to start learning to read... But I'm curious to know how other, 'normal' people read. What is normal in my reading despite the dyslexia? What IS affected?
You're completely right when you say that I take in more of the detail. Since I can't skim, scan, or even read faster, I take everything in in great detail. I spend a lot of time reading my study books during the course - that I than don't have to spend rereading them by the end of the semester because I need to focus so much on the pure reading.
most dyslexics just don't see patterns in words and letters the way others do
This is so very true. I often say that when writing, I can write the same word three times within a sentence, and white it different and wrong every time.
My brother's teacher once had a boy who teased him about his dyslexia read with a peace of paper that had a hole cut into it just big enough to see one letter a time. The boy was dead tired after the midday and I don't think he ever said a word about my brother being over-privileged after that.
(A bit of background info; while I'm fairly dyslectic, my younger brother is ten times worse. When he first made it to highschool, the remedial teacher told my mom that she'd never, in her 20 year career, seen a student as bad as him. Where in maths and such he's close to brilliant (he manages to score perfectly on whatever test they give him and solves rubics cubes by making up formula's for them), he still asks people to read stuff aloud for him at 18, because having someone read it to him is twice as fast as actually having to read it himself).
It's a good thing both my brother and me are such extreme lovers of books, or neither of us would have come to anything :P