According to psychologist Beverley Steffart, 75 percent of art students at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in the United Kingdom have a mild form of dyslexia. “I found that the dyslexic students processed information differently;” she says. “They were better than average at solving visual puzzles and rotating images in their minds. But was a trade-off: the more lateral thinking and creative the student, the more dyslexic they were!’ Steffart’s work supports other research which shows that the brains of dyslexics aren’t lacking they’re just wired differently.
Most of us hear words as we read them, but a dyslexic may see them. “I don’t see words as words, but symbols’ said one student. “They conjure up images immediately!’What this means is that dyslexic children need to be taught differently;’ says Ian Padgett, Dyslexia Project Director at the college. “A lot of children can learn the alphabet from a wall sequence, but a dyslexic child may need to actually make the letters cut them out, stick them up before they can remember them.” (This may be true of all dyslexics, even though only a minority show the artistic talents of Steffart’s group.)
What else can you do? Early diagnosis helps. If your five-year-old is generally bright hut forgets names or isn’t so good at putting words in the right order, he may be at risk. But it’s never too late to seek help consult a developmental psychologist. It’s possible for mildly dyslexic people to cope fairly well at school, only to come across problem later.” Half my clients are second-year university students, or people who’ve just been promoted and suddenly find that their reading and writing isn’t as good as should be; says Steffart.
