Finally, a free Friday morning to myself, not cooped up in the dentistry lab getting experimented on.
I'm currently researching on Dyslexia and boy, is it a window into a problem of the internet.
It's a really confusing place if you're looking to learn more about Dyslexia, some sites are very lay man and some sites very scholarly. Some are a mixed bag of both, throwing both together as though they belong to the same basket.
From what I gather thus far, the lay person thinks of dyslexia as a sort of learning disability and this disability ranges from reading to math, and even motor movement. So clumsy people can be considered dyslexics.
Meanwhile, the academic world defines dyslexia in a more restricted manner. It is, as its name suggests, problems with reading, a reading dysfunction.
It is also the case, as suggested by a particular neuro science blog, that dyslexia is thought to be mainly a phonological deficit. You know how you hear your own voice in your head when you read words? Yeap, you're beginning to understand why phonological deficit can result in reading deficit.
Imagine if that voice in your head is uttering nonsense to you, things you can't quite match to the catalogue of words you have in your head.
Imagine now also that these voice is giving you wonky pronunciations of words, what ultimately comes out from your mouth will be pretty odd too, right?
But then the public sentiment is that dyslexics see words funny. Like they're all over the place, upside down whatever.
Some academics propose a visual explanation for dyslexia. In our heads we have a ventral and a dorsal visual path. The ventral stream processes object identity while the dorsal stream processes the object location. Now suppose that your ventral stream is working perfectly fine. You're reading the letters and they look like how they look like to everyone else. But suppose your brain isn't quite sure where the letter is, suppose it's not sure if the letter is attached to the next word or to the previous word... you'll start experiencing reading difficulties.
So anyway, that's a quick review of what I've learnt about dyslexia thus far.
Now people have asked me how my semester is. I think, it's not the best of semesters. The modules I'm doing aren't exactly my favourite (especially critical discourse analysis and language and the internet) and some are just pretty downright new field. Neurocognition of language for instance is so loaded with cranial jargons that I don't understand what the teacher is talking about half the time because I'm just thinking...
left, okay left of the brain, posterior.. post means back, okay back, occipital temporal... okay somewhere at the back of the head, lower half, sulcus. oh the valley okay... so the left side, back of the back of the head in the valley between the occipital and temporal lobes?
Yeah okay, but as I processed that I missed out the other 2-3 names down the line and now I'm completely lost. I can't seem to write fast enough on my notes either and then I just feel like not writing anymore.
It's a completely new field. Yes, everyone is feeling disadvantaged but still that doesn't make it any more enjoyable.
The worst part I think, is how my brain is confidently telling me that these things would be of no kick to me if I just spent a little more time pondering over them.
Which is... well, kind of true. So now the fault actually lies squarely with me.
Okay, back to work.
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