Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

One of the things about being dyslexic that is very hard for non-dyslexics to understand is how simple things need to be before you learn. By simple, I’m not talking about the subject matter but rather how they are taught.
When I was young, my Mother made me have piano lessons and I hated them. I kicked and screamed, making my Mother’s and my piano teacher’s life hell. It wasn’t until a year or so ago when I had a go at teaching myself the piano that I worked out why it had been such an ordeal as a child. When being taught the piano these are things you have to be able to do simultaneously:

• Look at the music and keep track of where you are in the piece
• Translate the symbolic music into a physical key on the piano
• Press the right key at the right time for the right length of time
• Listen to the note you playing to make sure its the right one
• Pay attention to what the piano teacher is saying
• Translate what the piano teacher is saying into action

Anyone of these tasks can be challenging to a dyslexic but together I found them completely overwhelming. Part of dyslexia (and some would say most of dyslexia) is a problem processing information quickly, especially from multiple senses at once. This is why many approaches to learning difficulties focus on multi-sensory integration.
I was reminded of this by a new study which looked at teaching normal, undergraduates a mathematical problem. They split the students into four groups and taught each group the same way except in each group they used different symbols to illustrate the problem, ranging from the simple to the realistic.

When tested on the maths problem, those taught using the simplest symbols scored significantly more that any other group.

It is easy to speculate that the richer and more complex the teaching aids, the more brain power or attention the students has spend on them rather than what they are meant to be learning. In effect realistic or complex symbols are distracting even to non-dyslexics.

Full Study: The advantage of simple symbols for learning and transfer [PDF]
(Thanks Eide Neurolearning)