I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or in any way a professional in the study of the cognitive functions of the brain. I should not be used as a reference point for symptoms, treatment, or clinical information.
I research and provide references to papers written by those who have invested large amounts, and in some cases their entire working life, to the study of conditions that impact the human brain. What I do is use their work to understand and explain my experiences in life. It’s not easy to accept that there is a classification for my intellectual disposition but, it’s not my place to say that something necessary should be easy.
I’ve opened with a very logical sequence. I have distanced myself from responsibility through being responsible for making sure you understood that the words in this piece are mine, and when I reference something, you can and should investigate that material. I am learning that this is a byproduct of how my brain works. I process differently.
Dyslexia is commonly seen as just a reading issue. I now hold a position on that. My position is that it is not just about reading. It is about how information is ingested and processed. I will use an example of a packet of data being sent from one application to another. To understand this I will very simply explain the Open System Interconnection (OSI) Model.
There are seven layers to it, but since this is a very high-level lesson I will say we only need to address three layers.
The Physical Layer: Layer 1
The Data Link Layer: Layer 2
The Application Layer: Layer 7
Think of two people on either side of a wall, passing puzzle pieces over the top. One person sorts every piece by number before passing anything. The other passes pieces as they find edges that fit. Same wall. Same pieces. Completely different process.
A neurodivergent mind will take from Layer 7, feel the edges and connect them where they fit while looking at the image. When it doesn’t look right it will adjust. There are a lot of times when that adjustment is not realizing that the horse has a zebra’s neck. That’s layer two putting the puzzle together out of order. This is what limits most people to seeing dyslexia as a reading problem.
This limitation is where I was left for the overwhelming majority of my life. This limitation is as external as it is internal. Dyslexics have the most fun with our condition and it’s connected more deeply to the condition than it’s given credit for. Like the time I wanted to buy a shirt that said “Orgasm Donor” because I read it as “Organ Donor” and my wife made me read it out loud so I could understand why she was getting mad at me. We don’t just comprehend words differently; we comprehend external and internal emotions differently too.
The crack era of American history left no urban community untouched. The most deeply impacted was the Black American neighborhood. Being of Puerto Rican descent, I lived in the unmarked border between the Black and Mexican neighborhoods of LA during this time. I can still see the three black bags lying on the floor. They held lifeless bodies in them. The unfortunate victims of a shooting.
Other children my age stayed away from the park and spoke about the bodies for weeks afterwards. It had a major impact on them. I on the other hand was not impacted at all. To me it was fascinating. I wanted to talk to the cops who sent me off to find anything that looked like gold and stand there with my hand up. I found three shell casings and was rewarded with being able to hold the button while one cop spoke to his sergeant.
Sometime within the following year my mother almost died in a car accident. I say this is more a naive six-year-old’s mind than anything to do with being neurodiverse, because when my aunt told me my mother was in an accident I simply asked did she say sorry? When I saw her in the hospital my brother immediately started crying. I immediately made her laugh by calling her my mummy Mami.
However, years later in my twenties the vivid memory of her brought tears to my eyes after my mother scratched her face and said, “I’ve been pulling these little pieces of glass from my face since that accident,” showing me the small dot of glass glimmering between the ridges of her fingerprint.
This is dyslexia.
It’s not the reading that everyone publicizes, it’s the delay.
References
On dyslexia as a processing difference, not a reading problem
Doust, C. et al. (2022). Discovery of 42 genome-wide significant loci associated with dyslexia. Nature Genetics, 54(11), 1621-1629.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01192-y
Gialluisi, A. et al. (2020). Genome-wide association study reveals new insights into the heritability and genetic correlates of developmental dyslexia. Molecular Psychiatry, 26, 3004-3017.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-00898-x
Soheili-Nezhad, S. et al. (2024). Distinct impact modes of polygenic disposition to dyslexia in the adult brain. Science Advances.
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adl2889
Eide, B. and Eide, F. (2005). Stealth Dyslexia. Davidson Institute.
On the OSI Model
International Organization for Standardization. (1994). ISO/IEC 7498-1: Information technology, Open Systems Interconnection, Basic Reference Model.
https://www.iso.org/standard/20269.html
On emotional processing and the delay
Sturm, V.E. et al. (2021). Enhanced visceromotor emotional reactivity in dyslexia and its relation to salience network connectivity. Cortex, 134, 278-295.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.10.022
De Rom, M. and Van Reybroeck, M. (2024). Guessing errors made by children with dyslexia in word and text reading. Frontiers in Psychology, 15.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1195696
Sifneos, P.E. (1973). The prevalence of alexithymic characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 22(2-6), 255-262.
https://doi.org/10.1159/000286529
Palser, E.R. et al. (2021). Children with developmental dyslexia show elevated parasympathetic nervous system activity at rest and greater cardiac deceleration during an empathy task. Biological Psychology, 166.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108203
On the crack epidemic in Los Angeles
Gilmore, R.W. and Gilmore, C. Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, Militarization, and Black Response to the Late Twentieth-Century War on Drugs. Williams College, Davis Center for African and African American Studies.
Reinarman, C. and Levine, H. (1997). Cited in: Sociodemographic, neighborhood, psychosocial, and substance use correlates of cocaine use among Black adults. ScienceDirect.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460318301734
A note on this draft.
This piece was written with dyslexia, not despite it. Before publication the following were identified and corrected:
Substituted words: 5
Inserted or dropped letters: 2
Incorrect word form: 1
Inverted sentence structure: 1
Apostrophe errors: 2
Total corrections: 11
The thinking was never touched. Neither was the delay.
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