Morking Wemory: The Dyslexic Problem
Individuals with dyslexia often have difficulty in understanding the sound structures of words. In particular, they struggle in a skill known as segmentation and blending: breaking up words into smaller segments (e.g., c from –at) and putting them together. This skill is tested using ‘spoonerisms’. Try some yourself—exchange the first letter in each word.
Fat Dog = Dat Fog
Here are some more, see how quickly you can do them (answers are below)
• Cat flap
• Bad salad
• Soap in your hole
• Mean as custard
• Plaster man
• Flock of bats
• Chewing the doors
Why do children with dyslexia struggle? One explanation is that they have poor working memory so they struggle to hold all the sound segments in their head while they are doing the spoonerism task. Someone with dyslexia described it like this: “If I can’t see the word, I really struggle. I have to picture it before I can read it“. The process of keeping two words active in our mental post-it-note, combined with trying to exchange the first letter proves much too difficult for most dyslexics.
So much of language learning relies on working memory. When we learn new words, we have to remember each sound segment, put it together, learn the meaning, and finally remember what it looks like for future use! Someone with poor working memory, like the person with dyslexia, struggles because they simply don’t have a big enough mental post-it-note (working memory) to cope with all these steps.
ANSWERS: Flat cap; Sad ballad; Hope in your soul; Keen as mustard; Master plan; Block of flats; Doing the chores
