Common Signs of Dyslexia in Adults

Common Signs of Dyslexia in Adults

By Yale University

https://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/

• Reading

  • A childhood history of reading and spelling difficulties

  • While reading skills have developed over time, reading still requires great effort and is done at a slow pace

  • Rarely reads for pleasure

  • Slow reading of most materials—books, manuals, subtitles in films

  • Avoids reading aloud

  Speaking

  • Earlier oral language difficulties persist, including a lack of fluency and glibness; frequent use of “um’s” and imprecise language; and general anxiety when speaking

  • Often pronounces the names of people and places incorrectly; trips over parts of words

  • Difficulty remembering names of people and places; confuses names that sound alike

  • Struggles to retrieve words; frequently has “It was on the tip of my tongue” moments

  • Rarely has a fast response in conversations; struggles when put on the spot

  • Spoken vocabulary is smaller than listening vocabulary

  • Avoids saying words that might be mispronounced

  School & Life

  • Despite good grades, often says he’s dumb or is concerned that peers think he’s dumb

  • Penalized by multiple-choice tests

  • Frequently sacrifices social life for studying

  • Suffers extreme fatigue when reading

  • Performs rote clerical tasks poorly

  Strengths

  • Maintains strengths noted during the school-age years

  • Has a high capacity to learn

  • Shows noticeable improvement when given additional time on multiple-choice examinations

  • Demonstrates excellence when focused on a highly specialized area, such as medicine, law, public policy, finance, architecture or basic science

  • Excellent writing skills if the focus is on content, not spelling

  • Highly articulate when expressing ideas and feelings

  • Exceptional empathy and warmth

  • Successful in areas not dependent on rote memory

  • A talent for high-level conceptualization and the ability to come up with original insights

  • Inclination to think outside of the box and see the big picture

  • Noticeably resilient and able to adapt

• Remember: reading skills can improve substantially at any age, but the most successful results occur when an intervention is started between pre-K and 2nd grade.