Dyslexia is one of several distinct learning disabilities and is said to affect around 4-10% of British children, it is a brain-based type of disability that specifically impairs a persons ability to read. ... An increase in the number of children and adults who have difficulty reading has become a serious social and workplace problem. The etiology of reading disorders is not completely understood and the causes are multifactorial, as are the treatment methodologies. Recent evidence suggests that physiological and visual deficits exist in the majority of reading disabled individuals. “Since the reading process begins with the analysis of printed patterns on a page and thus is intimately tied to visual processing mechanisms, it is not unreasonable to suppose that reading difficulties may be, at least partially linked to visual processing deficits. ...
One method that can be used in the treatment of reading difficulties, dyslexia or other related reading problems is the use of specially tinted lenses or coloured overlays. These lenses and overlays are alleged to improve reading ability and visual perception, increase sustained reading time, and eliminate symptoms associated with reading such as light sensitivity, headaches, blurring of print, and watery eyes. These symptoms and reading problems are reportedly due to an underlying visual perception dysfunction described as ‘Meares-Irlen syndrome’ after the people who identified the condition, Olive Meares and Helen Irlen. Meares’ work in 1980 in a New Zealand clinic led her to realise that the brightness contrast of black-on-white print is a major contributory factor to the reading difficulties of some children. Irlen first described the syndrome in ‘Reading as Colours’(1991) as, ‘Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome’, but this is thought to be misleading and inappropriate, therefore, ‘Meares-Irlen’ is used (Stanley,1990). The syndrome is said to affect 12-14% of the general population and 46% of those with dyslexia. ... In reading, light strikes photoreceptors in the retina; magno cells and parvo cells in the brain then process the information. In a study of dyslexics, the magno cells were found to be smaller than normal, as was low-contrast information processing. ...
The research on the effects of tinted lenses and coloured overlays in treating reading disabilities has produced contrasting evidence. ...
A study carried out in early summer 1995 by Wilkins, Jeanes, Pumfrey and Laskier, tested 77 primary school children aged 8-11, using 30 colour overlays or combinations of overlays to find out which colour if any aided their reading ability best. Once the children had selected the colour which bettered their performance they were tested on the ‘Rate of Reading Test’, which is a test formulated to test children’s reading because, it is simple, “it minimises the linguistic and semantic aspects of reading but maximises the visual difficulties. ... Three weeks after testing, children who had reported improved clarity with a particular colour were given the overlay free of charge and encouraged to use it.
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