Three Primary Types of Reading Disabilities
There are numerous types of reading disabilities and learning disabilities, but most of them can be found in one of three distinct and overlapping categories. This is valuable information for educators because knowing what framework each type of disability resides in can help parents and teachers to provide specific and researched based interventions that will make a difference with their struggling reader(s) as they develop oral and written processing skills.
Tolman & Moats (2009), in their research article The Challenge of Learning to Read, summed up the three main areas of reading disabilities in this way:
Phonological deficit
This type of reading disability implicates a problem in the phonological processing system of oral language. Early intervention that is specific in its design for the individual child is the most effective resolution to this type of learning disability.
Processing speed/orthographic processing deficit
This particular reading disorder affects the speed and accuracy of printed word recognition (also called naming speed problem or fluency problem).
Comprehension deficit
This common reading disability often coincides with the first two types of problematic reading disabilities, but is more specifically found in children who are considered disabled readers with social-linguistic disabilities (e.g., autism spectrum). Comprehension problems are also common in children with vocabulary weaknesses, generalized language learning disorders, and learning difficulties that affect abstract reasoning and logical thinking as well as readers who have other specific learning difficulties.
Within each of these three categories of general reading difficulties you will find each specific learning disability: autism, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory problems, vision problems, problems with processing, problems with tracking, problems with fluency, language deficits, problems with comprehension and any combination of these learning disabilities in students with intellectual disabilities.
Armed with this knowledge, it is far easier to implement specific learning interventions for disabled readers which benefit individual struggling readers and help these students to develop early literacy skills that will serve them well throughout their education in school and beyond.
Phonological Deficits
If a child has a phonological disorder, they may be struggling with processing speech correctly. Phonological disorders can be completely independent from any other reading disorders and deficits. These learning disorders are commonly referred to as a Specific Language Impairment (SLI) which can occur without any type of vision or hearing loss or intellectual disability.
A child with a phonological processing disorder is affected in their speech, listening, reading and writing skills. These children may struggle to learn new words and may have trouble processing words together to form sentences. This inevitably affects the individual student’s ability to maintain a conversation. Students can also find it difficult to follow directions due to an individual lack of understanding rather than any sort of stubborn refusal. Frequent grammatical errors can also be indicative of a reading disorder with phonological deficits being at the root of the problem.
If a child has not been identified with a specific reading disorder, such as phonological deficit, in the early elementary school years and if that student fails to receive early intervention, the same signs of that reading disorder will be evident with more advanced symptoms in the secondary school years. Without intervention, the older child will continue to struggle with forming sentences and lack the ability to form more complex age appropriate sentences. These students may have trouble finding the right words while speaking, and as a result exhibit frequent grammatical errors (which appear as spelling errors in the written form).
Figurative language, in oral and written form, is confusing to children with specific phonological deficits or disabilities in reading, writing and storytelling. These early literacy skills can be an insurmountable task to a child who struggles with this particular type of disability.
Orthographic processing deficit
Orthographic processing deficits are another type of specific reading disability that cause difficulty for students who have learning disorders such as dyslexia. In addition to being able to make use of early phonological sound-based decoding strategies, a child with a reading disorder also needs to be able to recognize phonological patterns and shapes of whole words in order to move away from the struggle of decoding.
It doesn’t stop with word recognition. Orthography also includes being able to recognize spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Being able to recognize the specific phonological rules and conventions of writing while reading are important in order for your student to avoid struggling to decode each individual word which leads to a slower and broken style of reading.
One of the early signs of an orthographic processing deficit is letter reversals due to a student’s inability to recognize letter shapes or letter orientation. A student’s quick recognition of words is key to early fluency development because fluency happens when a child automatically recognizes each specific word (rather than decoding it) and keeps a steady reading momentum. If reading fluency is hindered, reading comprehension skills are affected.
Spelling and written expression will also be affected if an individual student struggles with fluency and with correct spellings while trying to formulate complete sentences.
Comprehension deficit
Comprehension problems are a direct consequence of struggles with phonological and orthographic skills in reading. Most comprehension problems involve language processing and visual processing centers of the brain. Attention deficits and dyslexia are two of the most common reading disorders that can affect a child’s ability to process correctly and fluently enough to understand what they are reading. Without fluency, most of their energy is spent on trying to decode or trying to focus on the task of reading. This type of reading disability can be improved by increasing reading fluency.
Comprehension deficits are evident when a student has difficulty understanding the main ideas in a body of text. This reading disorder is evident if the student struggles with word and recognition of context, if the student lacks understanding despite the ability to read out loud with fluency, or if they are easily frustrated while reading or showing signs of weak phrasing and fluency.
Early and intensive intervention is important because comprehension is the key to all other academic subject areas. Without the development of reading comprehension skills a student is likely to struggle overall in school with continued problems and reading disorders.
One of the best exercises in developing good comprehension skills and overcoming specific learning disabilities is through the use of oral language development. It is surprising how little conversation is exchanged between children and parents in the early years of development. There is a substantial amount of research in the field of education to support the concept that the more a parent speaks to their child as a baby, toddler and early years of elementary school, the better the chances are that the individual child will develop higher vocabulary skills, read more books, ask more questions and thereby understand more.
Helping Children with Phonological, Orthographic & Comprehension Disorders
Oral Language
Building good reading and vocabulary skills begins in infancy. Every healthy interaction with a baby usually includes verbal and gestural communication from parent to caregiver to baby. Babies watch mom or dad’s mouth intently as they speak and they quickly begin to make their own attempt to imitate those same mouth movements and sounds as soon as they discover that they can make sound.
From hearing speech to recognition, distinguishing one sound from another, making the appropriate sound/letter connections and understanding alphabetic principles, your child is learning and storing information away until they understand how to make proper use of it. It is important to use continuous verbal communication to help a young child to make helpful connections to everything around them; from family to items at the grocery store- talking to your child develops the oral language skills necessary for vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Writing Intervention
Make as many connections to writing as you can in all areas. If the only exposure to reading and writing is in the classroom, it could easily become tedious and frustrating to a child with reading disabilities or a phonological disorder. However, if a child draws a picture of their favorite animal, take a moment and teach them to spell the name of the animal on the drawing and then ask them to sign it as the artist. Taking advantage of small opportunities to make reading and writing fun can make a difference.
Print Rich Environments
Surrounding your child with opportunities to read is one of the best ways to continually expose a child with a reading disorder to reading. You can help them to read the words on a cereal box at the breakfast table, point out familiar logos that belong to products and restaurants, draw pictures of family members or family pets and ask them to write the name of that family member on the picture. Put on their favorite show and display the subtitles so that they are seeing what they are hearing. Play video games that include characters that talk to one another with word bubbles; help them to read through the scenarios.
It is also important to familiarize them with various types of reading books and teach them about authors, illustrators, title pages, beginnings and endings and what genre a book is: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, or biography. Book series are also a great way to provide recognition of character names and continued themes which will help to build fluency as they read.
Chunking
By giving a struggling reader small doses of text in each sitting, it helps the student to focus better, work through difficulties and finish what they start before any frustration problems or fatigue sets in. By providing children with direct teaching help while they are reading and stopping them within a reasonable amount of time before they become overwhelmed, you can increase the child’s chances of reading to a much higher success rate. Proper intervention and a sense of completion will provide motivation for children to keep using their skills in small, tolerable doses. In time, your struggling reader will begin to tackle more text as they begin to connect with the material and aim to finish a book completely.
Alphabet Knowledge
Before any other reading or language skills can be developed, your child needs to be able to recognize each letter of the alphabet and understand the sounds that each letter makes. Your child needs to know the names of each letter, make sound-letter correspondence by pointing out sounds within words (your name starts with a B- can you make a B sound for me?). Utilize every opportunity to encourage repeated exposure to the alphabet and point out letters and sounds during each opportunity. If there are any signs of difficulty in these early phonological skills it is important to provide early intervention to remedy these learning disorders.
Phonological Awareness
Having phonemic awareness means that a child can manipulate sounds, the sound-structure of spoken words, syllables and phonemes. These early processing skills are vital to future achievement in school. Phonemes are the smallest units of speech like CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words that students become acquainted with in pre-school and the early years of elementary school. As children begin to develop phonemic awareness it is helpful to use songs, interactive learning activities and rhymes to teach word awareness, spelling of simple words, syllable awareness and to provide instruction that teach the context of certain words (example: Dora the Explorer books have a repeated themes of exploring, map, Boots, and backpack). With enough repeated exposure, these words will become familiar and meaningful to the child. As students learn and move into higher phonemic awareness skills, these children learn important phonological processing skills as they learn to match sounds and letters, identify onset and rime, and recognize first and last sounds in a word.
Early Intervention for Reading Disabilities
It is a relief to know that just about all of the learning disabilities and deficits that we have discussed here can be addressed with specific individual intervention by direct instruction. Most learning disabilities respond well to the same early interventions, even though each disorder is distinctly different in its individual characteristics.
For example, developing oral and written language helps with struggling student’s comprehension problems while simultaneously reinforcing phonological deficits. Working on word recognition to help with orthographic difficulties can help with phonological development. Chunking or breaking down text is helpful in all three areas of these specific learning disabilities or when a student has processing problems with phonological, orthographic or comprehension skills.
By following the help mentioned here, you can provide comprehensive literacy skills development without the need to treat each symptom as a separate problem or learning disability. This can be done with direct teaching help, but it is always a good idea to integrate as many resources and applications as possible to provide specific instruction from several angles. Each child responds differently to intervention and most children are a combination of specific individual learning styles that greatly benefit from a variety of teaching approaches to address literacy problems.
Lighthouse Reader Can Help
Lighthouse Reader is an online, personalized reader with an interactive approach to helping any struggling reader with any type of reading disorder to overcome their deficits by the use of audio and visual technology. The program is specifically designed to help any child with problems or learning disabilities and literacy problems.
A child with any type of phonological, orthographic or comprehension deficit can adjust their reading experience in order to successfully read and finish their books of choice from the Lighthouse library.
Children who are struggling with learning disorders can simply download their favorite book from the Lighthouse library and use the customized features to adjust the book to their own individual preferred text presentation by highlighting, shading or using the push and cover feature to reveal the desired amount of text.
Students can listen to a book by audio presentation and receive automatic individual assessments and reinforcement of vocabulary and fluency skills while using the reader to help them with their specific learning disability. Your child’s reading levels are automatically adjusted based on individual cloze assessments that frequently test your child’s early vocabulary skills as well as your student’s comprehension of the text and measures your student’s individual Lexile® growth.
Lighthouse Reader can help any child with reading disorders or learning disabilities associated with dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, autism spectrum disorders, intellectual disabilities, cortical visual impairments, traumatic brain injury and/or any other pervasive developmental disorders which are classified into phonological, orthographic or comprehension categories which require intervention.
