Dyslexia, The Big Picture

A Mulitdimensional Learning Style

by Ray Davis and Suzanne Hailey

If you were to close your eyes and imagine a tiger, you would not begin to create it from the tail and move to the haunches, then to the legs, shoulders, head, ears, nose, and add the stripes to figure out you have a tiger. You would see all the parts at once, and conclude "tiger." If most or all of your thinking is in pictures, you would become accustomed to figuring things out by looking at the whole object or situation at once.

Dyslexics are primarily picture thinkers. Rather than using self-talk (words, sentences, or internal dialogue), they specialize in mental or sensory imagery. This method of thinking is subliminal.

Most dyslexics are not aware that this is what theya re doing. Since dyslexics think in pictures or imagery, they tend to use global logic and reasoning strategies. They look at the big picture to understand the world around them.

Dyslexics tend to excel in areas such as:

• strategizing
• creative endeavors
• hands-on activities
• solving real world objective problems

They tend to have difficulties in areas such as:

• word-based thinking
• sequential, linear, step-by-step reasoning

Thinking primarily with images, dyslexics also tend to develop very strong imaginations. They use a picture or feeling based-reasoning process to solve problems rather than a verbal one. If they are at first confused (or intrigued), they will mentally move around an object and look at it from different viewpoints or angles. From this thought process, they develop many unique abilities and talents in areas such as:

People experience disorientation when looking at an optical illusion, or when exposed to misleading sensory stimuli, such as that created by virtual reality amusement rides. A dyslexic disorients on a daily basis as a reaction to confusion. Disorientation is what occurs when the dyslexic is using their natural problem solving skills. The natural mental response to any confusing sensory information manifests itself as the dyslexic learing style.

Dyslexics tend to have difficulty with unreal (two-dimensional) and symbolic objects, such as letters and numerals. In their effort to comprehend two-dimensional objects or symbols they may become disoriented. This manifests itself as the familiar symptoms of substitutions, reversals, transpositions or omissions in reading or writing letters, words and numerals. Disorientation is not limited to visual input. Many dyslexics commonly garble or mishear words or the sequence of words in sentences. Their internal sense of time can also become distorted and their motor coordination can appear delayed or clumsy.

This same thinking style is categorized under many different labels. Some of these include:

This thinking style an be the cause of a variety of different symptoms. At reading Research Council, they refer to it simply as "the dyslexic thinking style." For more information, read The Gift of Dyslexia and/or The Gift of Learning by Ronald Davis.