Balance, Motor Control, Dyslexia, Children and Adults
For thirty years a strong correlation between the cerebellum, poor movement skills and educational problems has been shown over and over again. Now two recent study show further evidence.
In Impaired balancing ability in dyslexic children 16 dyslexic children tested with a simple balance test along side 19 children of normal reading ability.
Incidence analysis showed that 50% of the dyslexic group fell into the ‘impaired’ category on the eyes-open balancing tasks; when the mean balancing scores and the foot drops were considered, only three of our [16] dyslexic children showed no evidence of balancing difficulties. There were strong correlations between reading and spelling scores and the mean eyes-open balancing score (r=0.52 and 0.44, respectively). Thus, while not all children with developmental dyslexia show impaired balancing skills, low-level motor dysfunction may be associated with impaired literacy development. This could be due to several factors, including the involvement of the cerebellum, the magnocellular system, or more general developmental immaturity.
Implicit motor learning deficits in dyslexic adults looked at motor control skills in dyslexia adults. It found.
…there was a significant difference between good and poor readers on the degree of learning during the task (p = 0.015). This suggests that some dyslexics may suffer from an implicit motor learning deficit, which could generalize to non-motor learning.
Neither study proves any sort of connection of a link between balance, motor skills and dyslexia but they provide additional circumstantial that there is a link and that treatments such the Dore Program may help.
Find Out More:
Books:
- Physical Activities for Improving Children’s Learning and Behavior
- Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level
- How To Reach and Teach Children and Teens with Dyslexia: A Parent and Teacher Guide to Helping Students of All Ages Academically, Socially, and Emotionally
- Steps to Independence: Teaching Everyday Skills to Children With Special Needs
- What Does Everybody Else Know That I Don’t?: Social Skills Help for Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
December 2nd, 2006
Dyslexia, Dyslexia Treatment, Dyslexia Testing & Diagnosis
Comments on: Balance, Motor Control, Dyslexia, Children and Adults
Chris, I recently came across an interesting correlation and angle, and that is that those with impaired vestibular cerebellar dysfunction (caused by stroke, disease, infection, trauma, etc.,and who newly present with the types of issues that Dore treats such as onset of learning and behavioural issues, and balance and coordination deficits)participate in rehabilitation called VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION THERAPY, which is based on the science of neuroplasticity and the brain’s ability to adapt and form new connections to compensate for injury. It appears that Dore is very similar to VRT, from the evaluations, to the testings, to the actual exercises.
It seems the process of “rehabbing/stimulating” a healthy cerebellum using protocols such as those found in VRT to treat vestibular cerebellar dysfunction is the premise of movement-based therapies, to even further enhance the role of the cerebellum in vestibular function, cognition, etc., in the healthy individual.
Posted by: Kristina September 23rd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
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