HEY. Dyslexia is real.

Dyslexia is caused by the processing centres of the brain not being linked in quite the same way as with other people.

This guy's logic and reason centre is connected to the centre of his brain that processes vision.

so when that part of the brain is linked to the logic centre, it allows for incredible calculations to be done without conscious effort or thought. This guy can learn a language in a week and recite pi to 22,000 places, from memory!

If someone can 'process things' twice as fast as the average student, does that mean they should get reduced time?

When i see multiple kids taking tests, getting thousands of pounds worth of free equipment, money which could be spent somewhere else, and yet i have seen these guys do work, essays and everything else and at most their is a small difference.. i have a right to hate people with dyslexia.

Ok, i don;t hate people with it.. just the ones who hardly have it and get all this stuff.

Get imacs, macbook pro's , laptops etc etc etc .. all because it takes them a free extra seconds to process.

I'm a deep thinker, i process everything slowly because i go through a thought process about it.. i have had a psychologist say this to me and multiple teachers etc, i don't 'jump' at questions, even very short ones, like people seem to do during exams with 2 - 5 mark questions, it takes me double the time of everyone else, can i have free stuff please?

Yes, dyslexia is indeed real. So do other conditions which hinder exam performance, such as low IQ and general stupidity. People affected by the latter have to just cope without extra time, why should you get special dispensation? Life does not give you extra time. When, for example, you're pushing through a last minute deal on the stock market, you can't blurt out "Oh sorry, give me 25% more time to get it done, I'm dyslexic". I have sympathy for those who struggle as a result of dyslexia, but life is not always fairs and you just have to deal with it.

I think that the academic difference caused by dyslexia to each sufferer is different, and therefore giving each of them an arbitrary 30 minutes (or however long it is), no matter how slightly or severely they are affected, is a ridiculous way of doing it.

It's a sensitive issue I understand, but it's also my feeling that a qualification should be without personal context and simply a recognition of reaching a set academic benchmark, otherwise if the boundaries are moved for certain candidates then can the two qualifications still be compared and considered equal? Or does that qualification actually cease to mean anything at all?

When i see multiple kids taking tests, getting thousands of pounds worth of free equipment, money which could be spent somewhere else, and yet i have seen these guys do work, essays and everything else and at most their is a small difference.. i have a right to hate people with dyslexia.

Ok, i don;t hate people with it.. just the ones who hardly have it and get all this stuff.

Get imacs, macbook pro's , laptops etc etc etc .. all because it takes them a free extra seconds to process.

I'm a deep thinker, i process everything slowly because i go through a thought process about it.. i have had a psychologist say this to me and multiple teachers etc, i don't 'jump' at questions, even very short ones, like people seem to do during exams with 2 - 5 mark questions, it takes me double the time of everyone else, can i have free stuff please?

But could unintelligent people, or people with bad memories, not just argue that exams "aren't testing them in the right way"?

Eg, someone with an awful memory could say it's unfair that exams rely so much on factual recall. But they wouldn't get extra time for being "naturally unintelligent".

(I don't disagree with you btw, I'm pretty undecided on the whole extra time thing for dyslexics.)

Are any other dyslexics pissed off at people's ignorance with it?

Most of my friends don't even think dyslexia is 'real'.

Dylexics take onaverage TWICE the time to process things as the rest of the world so we definitely need the extra exam time and it bums me out when people say that dyslexia is just some bull**** ploy for more time and free laptops.

I process things really slowly, it takes me twice as long as everyone else to get a joke or to work out an answer to a problem, even in an argument I space and can't think of my reasoning when I have good reasons! It is pissing me off that I am just getting Bs in my exams when I can get As (that I need for uni!) all because I am dyslexic.

Sorry this turned into a bit of a crazed rant as my boyfriend just pointed out!

If someone can 'process things' twice as fast as the average student, does that mean they should get reduced time?

What does that even mean? It's so vague that you may as well have not even said it. What processing centres are you referring to? How are the connections 'different'.

It doesn't offer any real explanation because, if you take individual A and B: A studies really hard and B doesn't. Essentially, their "processing centres" are going to be "connected differently" through the process of learning. What this is caused by, however, is a differing level of dedication. It doesn't neccesarily mean that B is pathological.



Logic and reason centre? No such thing. Was the person who made this film a phrenologist or is it just complete pop-neuroscience?

And the centre of his brain that processes vision? What are you referring to here? The visual system is highly organised and distributed in a hierarchical fashion. What you are saying here makes no sense in the context of that. However, the statement is so vague that there is no real meat to haggle with in the form of a detailed debate.



Logic centre again.. No such thing. Complete pseudo-science. Please tell me where this 'logic centre' is again and how and where it interacts with the visual system.

Dyslexia is very real and very easily measurable now. Typically, genuine dyslexics have a phenomenal ability to visualise things in 3d and find solutions to problems, but have trouble with text and formulas in 2d. Revising from plain text books is very hard,

You shouldn't dismiss something as being pseudo-science just because you either don't understand it or haven't taken the time to research it.

Up until the age of puberty, neurons in a specific area of the brain are allocated to process specific complex tasks (processing centres). This is very apparent with both speech, vision and logic tasks, all of which have been accurately identified using MRI. Once puberty is reached, it’s no longer possible for new complex processing centres to be created.

To read details of the evidence for this, read “Crashing Through” by Robert Kurson. It’s an account of the case of Mike May, a man who was blinded at the age of three in a chemical accident and then regained his sight with new stem cell technology at the age of 42. Whilst his eyesight was perfect, he was unable to see. What I mean by that is his eyes were transmitting the images to his brain perfectly, but the centre for processing that information was never formed, so all he “saw” was a mass of different shades of moving colours which meant absolutely nothing to him. After several more years research, doctors came to realise he will never be able to see, because his brain simply no longer has the capacity to create an area specifically to process the mass of information that his eyes were sending. The images that Mike May “sees”, which of course are received inverted, will never represent his surroundings to him.

Another example is the reason adults, who move to a foreign language country, are never able to speak the new language like a native. For example, a 50 year old woman who moved to England from China will not be able to speak the local language anything like as well as a ten year old native, despite the fact that she has been speaking the local language twice as long.

In order to learn a foreign language, an adult needs to use areas of the brain that they use for logic (reasoning, problem solving) etc to make the translation. They can learn process the translation quickly and speak the language very well, but never without any effort like we speak our native language. If you know a foreign national who has lived here say 30 years and seems to have a perfect command of English, ask them what language they use when they do mathematical calculations – it will always be their native language.

The way that different areas of the brain communicate with each other is crucial. For example, you can imagine that when reading a mathematical problem in text (rather than in numbers) the area for processing language needs highly developed pathways to the area which process logical problems. That’s why a foreigner will revert to their native language when solving mathematical questions.

Just how these different centres interact with each other and how they differ in dyslexics is still being researched but more is being learnt about it all the time, especially with the help of MRI. There is masses of information available on the subject and I can point you are more texts if you are genuinely interested.

Please give me some specifics that I can actually consider, instead of using defunct terms like 'processing centre'.

In your initial post, by using this strategy, it seemed as though you were trying to sound learned without actually making any solid references that someone could pick you up on.

Have you read my first post in this thread? The students who assumed all the equipment I had (laptop, IPad, voice recorder) was given to me "for free" because (they assume) I have a disabiity? How do you know all of this equipment is provided through DSA?
:

Maybe because they have all told me?
When a guy comes back from having his test, then has that meeting where they discuss what he is going to get, and then one day randomly gets an imac and a laptop .. i dont think any more discussion needs to be made.