Severe dyslexia is caused by disorientation, which for dyslexic people means that they have an innacurate perception of the words. That is, they might see the letters of the words jumbled around in all sorts of different ways. There is no way that a dyslexic person who suffers from this sort of disorientation can ever remember a word, because the word seems different every time they look at it.
There is no single pattern of difficulty that affects all dyslexic people. A dyslexic person might have any of the following problems:
- She might see some letters as backwards or upside down;
- She might not be able to tell the difference between letters that look similar in shape such as o and e and c ;
- She might not be able to tell the difference between letters that have similar shape but different orientation, such as b and p and d and q ;
- The letters might look all jumbled up and out of order;
- The letters and words might look all bunched together;
- The letters of some words might appear completely backwards, such as the word bird looking like drib
- The letters and words might look o.k., but the dyslexic person might get a severe headache or feel sick to her stomach every time she tries to read;
- She might see the letters o.k., but not be able to sound out words -- that is, not be able to connect the letters to the sounds they make and understand them;
- She might be able to connect the letters and sound out words, but not recognize words she has seen before, no matter how many times she has seen them -- each time she would have to start fresh;
- She might be able to read the words o.k. but not be able to make sense of or remember what she reads, so that she finds herself coming back to read the same passage over and over again.
The dyslexic people might see the letters of the words jumbled around in all sorts of different ways.