Dyslexia

The mystery of dyslexia unraveled

Today the written word is at the center of life more than ever before, and therefore disorders connected with understanding written texts can be of key importance to an individual’s personality development. Most people do not have major problems when they learn how to read and write, but for some this complex cognitive process remains a major and even completely insurmountable obstacle. This even includes people who are not mentally handicapped or less talented, and often even highly intelligent people.

There are several perspectives on dyslexia. Psychologists believe that this disability connected with learning how to read and write lasts one’s whole life.

There are many theories about dyslexia, but to date none of them have explained dyslexia in a way that makes it possible to eliminate it completely.

Having understood the new REI theory, I was able to obtain insight into this disorder. Based on this theory I developed an explanation, from which I derived a simple method that I then used to help a dyslexic child. The explanation of dyslexia and the method for curing it are presented below, and exercises with instructions are provided in the appendix.

There is currently a patent pending on this method but because I believe it should be available to everyone I’m offering it here for free so it can be used by everyone who needs it. It is not permitted to use it for profit.

                                                                     Eros

REI

The REI theory offers a completely new perspective on the human psyche and consequently psychology. It was first presented in 2010 in the book [psi], which is also the only place you can find this new knowledge. Even though it is very scientific, this theory isn’t presented in a way we’ve been accustomed to—that is, in a way that only a small group of intellectuals can understood. [psi] presents this knowledge in a form accessible to anyone. This book concept was delivered to the author in a dream.

For those who don’t know about this book yet:

REI reveals that we perform all of our cognitive processes using three completely different mental processors. Each of these is autonomous and self-aware, and we can only be aware of the thinking of one of them; we aren’t aware of how the other two think. REI is an abbreviation made up of the initials of these three mental processors (or minds): Reason, Emotion, and Instinct; however, their characteristics do not match the meaning of these words as known to date.

These three minds each have their own specific areas of operation, but for our functioning it’s necessary for them to interconnect and cooperate. Each one of them understands the developments in our environment in its own way and can make independent decisions about everything. This definition isn’t new in general terms because we can find similar versions of it in numerous other theories. The as-yet unidentified key of our mind hides in the mathematical distribution of power of these three autonomous systems of thinking. This distribution takes into account three possible relations: one mind is more powerful than another, one mind is equally powerful to another, and one mind is less powerful than another. According to the mutual power ratio, these three mental processors can be divided into precisely twelve different types and one equal one with symmetrical distribution as shown below. The size of the letters indicates the importance of an individual mind’s power:

In each one of us, this ratio stays the same for our entire lives. Due to differences between these three minds and the special features in their ways of thinking, each of these distributions represents a special or unique pattern of thinking and one of the twelve different human characters, and one symmetrical one. The twelve different characters are equally represented in nature, whereas the thirteenth one is extremely rare. The majority of men have one of the characters presented in the second line, and the majority of women have one of the characters presented in the third line.

Understanding the REI model is key to understanding the human psyche. Due to the unique nature of each character and the typical differences in their way of thinking, the majority of studies on human behavior patterns that have been carried out to date without taking into account this model have no value. Specifically, empirical comparability is only possible if a study is conducted within a group of people with the same character.

None of the three mental processors is better or worse that the other, but they do differ greatly from one another in the way they operate: Reason represents the logical-analytical part of our thinking and it is the only mind we are aware of, Emotion thinks in pictures, and Instinct thinks with the help of sensations and fears.

By understanding this simple model it is possible to understand and explain almost all of the phenomena connected with the human mind. REI can easily explain the condition of falling in love and dreams, it makes it possible to understand depression, autism, and Asperger syndrome, phobias, and dyslexia, as well as all the problems of modern man such as infidelity, loneliness, addiction, and sexual dysfunctions. The REI theory offers such a basic finding on the operation of our mind that it can be used to understand even complex social phenomena and economic systems. What may prove to be the greatest special feature of this new theory is the fact that for the first time one can really predict mental processes and also understand their causes and effects.

Dyslexia in the REI theory

According to studies known to date, the characteristics of people with dyslexia coincide with the characteristics of one of the three minds—that is, Emotion. At the very beginning, this suggested that this learning disorder is connected with this very mind. If we take a closer look at the way the three mental processors work, it becomes clear that only one of them is capable of reading by assembling individual letters into words: Reason. However, in some people reading is taken over by Emotion, who operates completely differently and thus reads in a completely different way. This disorder is known as dyslexia.

Dyslexia most often occurs in people with one of the minds presented in the second line, and never in people with one of the minds from the first or third lines nor with the second character in the fourth line.

In order to understand why these differences and problems with dyslexia occur, one must understand how Emotion operates. Emotion thinks in pictures, which he places in his mental space and between which he creates connections. In this space he doesn’t know any definitions and so he’s also unfamiliar with all forms of division, whether lexical, spatial, or chronological. He knows no “left” and “right,” but only “this” and “the other” direction. Emotion doesn’t define things using centimeters, grams, and seconds, but only more, the same, and less than “that.” He only knows three concepts of time. “Now” is the most important, which is defined by an image from the current moment. “Before” refers to an image that has already passed, and “after” refers to an image that is supposed to occur. Because of this, his way of thinking isn’t systematic and planned, but intuitive because he always orients himself according to his own pictures. However, in order to understand well the way Emotion perceives things, one must imagine that he doesn’t perceive his pictures in the way other people look at pictures in a photo album; Emotion captures pictures three-dimensionally by perceiving every visual “concept” from all three sides at the same time.

How Emotion reads

When Emotion reads he doesn’t compose words from individual letters, but takes in whole words or larger parts of the words (usually their roots) as individual symbols and connects them with the pictures in his memory. Here is where the problem occurs because this demands that he remember several thousand very similar pictures instead of merely twenty-six images of letters that represent sounds and make it possible to compose words.

Even though this seems impossible at first glance, this mind is actually capable of functioning in this way. However, problems occur with words he doesn’t recognize and can’t connect with real images, which he can’t visually imagine because they’re too abstract, or with words that have more than one meaning.

Only when Emotion’s technique for recognizing words fails completely does he use an emergency exit: he lets Reason compose a word with individual letters. But because Reason isn’t skilled at this because of Emotion’s constant interference, a dyslexic stops at this point.

Because of the exceptional scope of the cognitive operations in this type of reading, Emotion is forced to simplify things, and so instead of all the possible inflected forms and various derivations of a word, he only remembers the word’s root without any prefixes and endings. He finds it much easier to “add” them by ear than recognize them in pictures.

John is eating bananas.

John is eating bananas.

Because a dyslexic doesn’t compose words, but identifies meanings (roots) from their pictures, the only thing that first opens up to him in his reading process is what he can recognize. The dyslexic opens up mental pictures for the parts marked in different colors but he doesn’t recognize the parts that are not colored because he doesn’t have a picture he can connect with them. So he recognizes only the following pictures:

John is eat banana.

In the next moment he finds the mistake by ear and corrects it:

John is eating a banana.

This is a typical early dyslexic reading error, which at first glance looks like the reader missed part of the word.

Gradually a dyslexic gets better at recognizing words because his Emotion masters more words and their roots. Recognizing endings remains a problem, but gradually the dyslexic learns how to add them pretty well. In order to make as few mistakes as possible, he starts increasing his preview of the sentence; this preview can encompass several lines. In this preview, he uses a great deal of cognitive effort to put together recognizable parts of the text, and fills the unrecognized gaps with his imagination. He can do this very effectively. But the problem is that he must maintain a constant overview of the sentence and, if the sentence includes several lines, reading becomes an extremely demanding cognitive task and the dyslexic can get lost between the lines even with a slight drop in concentration. Up until now there has been a misconception that dyslexics have problems orienting themselves in the text, but this detail reveals that the truth is just the opposite: dyslexics have an overview of a larger chunk of the text at one time, whereas readers who use Reason for their reading only follow a limited extent of text surrounding the word they are currently reading. Proof of this is the fact that dyslexics often finish reading a sentence without a problem, even if you cover their text when they start reading.

All of this also explains why dyslexics have problems with reading different fonts, why reading exhausts them, and why they can only stay focused for a short time while reading.

The next problem dyslexics face while reading is reading words with several meanings and words with an abstract meaning. Emotion can remember these words as pictures, but he can connect them with the images in his memory only with great difficulty because he can’t create a completely correct picture for some of them.

The following are examples of such words:

but
be
fairly
how
anything
however
why

Literature on dyslexia to date refers to these words as “trigger words,” which again points to the fact that this problem is not understood correctly because these words don’t trigger anything in dyslexics—it’s their Emotion who has problems remembering them because he doesn’t have an adequate picture for them. There are supposed to be around 200 words like these and what they all have in common is that only Reason uses them in his own language, whereas Emotion doesn’t even need them considering the way he functions because he can easily substitute them by recognizing connections in his pictures.

He recognizes

big

as

dig

He recognizes

dog

as

bog

He recognizes

pig

as

big

Because emotion recognizes words by comparing a large set of pictures, as soon as he can’t recognize an entire word he starts looking for its approximation or similar words. In doing this, he compares the word from both sides and not only the way it is written.

John wondered.

approximate

John wandered.

bib

can be read in reverse as

did

on

reversed is

no

bob

reversed is

dod

The next problem the mental processor Emotion encounters in reading is that he connects the recognized picture of a word to the wrong picture in his memory. This most often involves words with a similar meaning, for which Emotion stores very similar pictures. This explains why a dyslexic easily reads the word

father

also as

daddy

yard

as

playground

It is possible that he has the same image stored in his memory for both words—that is, the picture of his dad or the place by the house where he plays with his friends. A dyslexic can read the entire word so that not even a single letter matches, but the meaning does. Because he also looks for words based on the meaning of what he’s read, a difference in the grammatical number can also appear:

He can read

man

as

people

Because dyslexics don’t compose pictures from individual elements, but form overall pictures, they can also have problems identifying numbers. Because of their three-dimensional perception of symbols they usually don’t have problems with symmetrical numbers such as 11, 22, 333, and so on, but they can mix up the numbers 6 and 9 as well as the order in symmetrical numbers like 8 and 0, which look the same from the right and left. Some dyslexics compose numerical signs by breaking them down using the decimal system. They see 1180 as three numbers: 1000, 100, and 80. In his world Emotion perceives objects three-dimensionally (i.e., from all three sides at the same time), and so to him 80 and 08 look the same because he isn’t aware which direction he’s looking at this visual object from at a given moment. We can picture this being as if we had the number 80 written on a transparent sheet floating in the air while our thoughts were wandering in our mental space between various numbers and we weren’t able to be aware of the direction we were looking at the sheet from. Dyslexics can thus also perceive the number 180 as 108.

According to the REI theory, dyslexia is connected with the human character, which is defined by the power ratio of the three mental processors. Dyslexics are always people ruled by the mind called Emotion. They therefore use this most important mental processor of theirs for reading letters, but Emotion is not as well suited for this task as Reason, whom the majority of people use for reading. There’s nothing wrong with dyslexics at all; the thing is they merely use a less appropriate mental processor for reading.

Eros’ method for eliminating dyslexia

Before we turn to ways of eliminating dyslexia, we must know whether the person in question even has dyslexia in the first place. Due to a lack of understanding this phenomenon, today many people that have other types of reading disorders not related to the true nature of dyslexia also end up in the same basket.

According to the REI theory, dyslexia only refers to cases when readers use Emotion instead of Reason for processing data from a text. This can be detected by the typical mistakes that can occur quite early:

– Frequently mixing up the order of the letters,
– Letter reversal (d = b),
– Disregarding prefixes and endings,
– Guessing the meaning of unrecognized words,
– Mixing up words with synonyms,
– Seeming disorientation between words and lines,
– Taking in a large part of the text at a glance around what’s being read (preview),
– Slower reading progress compared to peers.

Does it make sense to eliminate dyslexia?

With intensive work and practice, the majority of dyslexics gradually overcome their problems and find a way to read relatively well with Emotion. The number of reading mistakes decreases and thus also the difference compared to those who read with Reason. Perhaps the greatest problem that continues to bother most dyslexics for their entire life is their lack of concentration and exhaustion with extended reading. Because they use a less appropriate mental processor for reading, this overloads its capacities and thus these readers can’t follow the text as well as others.

When does it make sense to eliminate dyslexia?

It makes sense to eliminate dyslexia when it is detected early on—that is, before Emotion has already made significant progress with his reading method. The second group suitable for this method includes people in whom, despite hard work and efforts, Emotion failed to find a way to identify symbols, and so they remained illiterate. With well-developed dyslexics, the use of this method is a matter of personal decision because it demands a person invest a considerable amount of time and effort, and the results are more difficult to achieve. The method is not suitable for those who have reading problems due to other mental disorders.

When is the method effective?

The best time to use the method for eliminating dyslexia is at its earliest stage—that is, as soon as this learning disorder is detected.

All the instructions must be carefully read and consistently taken into account. Regular and intense work under the supervision of another (adult) person is required. The person with the problem must be prepared to work an hour every day for several months.

While working according to this method, the dyslexic does exercises with specially adapted texts. Until the learning process is finished, he should not read other, normal texts.

If these requirements aren’t taken into account, the method won’t yield the desired results.

The goal of Eros’ method for eliminating dyslexia is to transfer the reading function from Emotion to Reason. One must be aware that at the moment dyslexia is detected Emotion already has the basic idea of reading stored. The method has been designed such that the child learns to read using Reason and at the same time Emotion is prevented from making any progress in this process. When the child’s Reason perfects his reading to the extent that Emotion no longer interferes, we can say that this reading disorder has been eliminated. For the rest of his life the child will read without any dyslexia-related problems.

The method doesn’t interfere with the child’s way of thinking and it so doesn’t weaken other cognitive advantages that are generally typical of Emotion. It has been composed such that it influences the cognitive processing of reading and doesn’t limit an individual’s way of thinking in any way.

How does Eros’ method for eliminating dyslexia work?

By understanding the differences in how Reason and Emotion work, we can use a very simple way to prevent Emotion from reading without making the reading too hard on Reason.

For Reason reading is a very simple process, but even he needs quite a bit of practice to perform this task with the desired speed and accuracy. Compared to him, it’s nothing short of a miracle for Emotion to obtain information from symbol-based text. The case is completely different when reading Chinese characters and hieroglyphics because such scripts are read using Emotion. And that’s why the Chinese don’t have any problems with dyslexia.

English uses twenty-six letters for denoting sounds and can be used to compose all English words. Because Reason uses numbers and words, this task is fairly logical and simple for him.

So with Reason we can introduce two different symbols for each phoneme without a problem. Because most dyslexics also learn numbers while they learn how to read, these can be used as the second symbol.

A, a = 1
B, b = 2
C, c = 3
D, d = 4
E, e = 5
F, f = 6
G, g = 7
H, h = 8
I, i = 9
J, j = 10
K, k = 11
L, l = 12
M, m = 13
N, n =14
O, o = 15
P, p = 16
Q, q = 17
R, r = 18
S, s = 19
T, t = 20
U, u = 21
V, v = 22
W, w = 23
X, x =24
Y, y = 25
Z, z = 26

We can now write the word:                                    people
also as:                                                                       16/5/15/16/12/5

With some practice, reading a double number of signs doesn’t make any real difference to Reason and so every child learns how to do this fairly quickly.

A double number of signs also makes it possible to write down every word in several different ways.

If we used the available twenty-six letters to write the word: rider

only in this way, which allows Emotion to memorize the word as a picture, we can now use the double signs to write it in several ways:

Picture 1: rider
Picture 2: r9d5r
Picture 3: 18i4e18

This way we get a different picture of the same word for each form.

We can naturally only write a word with numbers or combine them with a random number of letters. In order to distinguish between one- and two-digit numbers, these must be separated with a space or a punctuation mark. But it suffices to merely alternate between letters and numbers because this way one- and two-digit numbers are separated by a letter on each side and so it is no longer necessary to separate them further.

What does this type of transcription mean for Emotion?

We established that Emotion learns to identify pictures of whole words or their roots. And he already has considerable problems even with this. However, using double signs and the method described above, every word can be written in at least three ways and so every word is associated with at least three pictures. This makes reading an unsolvable task for Emotion. Emotion would have to remember not “merely” a few thousand words, but hundreds of thousands of similar pictures, and so the reader is forced to read them with the only mental processor that’s up to this task—that is, Reason.

Dyslexics who have already made progress with their own way of reading will start completely at the beginning again with this method. But those who read with Reason will master reading by combining the two types of signs only after a few days of practice.

The method

Eros’s method for eliminating dyslexia consists of seven stages. Because of the differences in how an individual’s mental processors work, the stages aren’t chronologically delineated. When you complete the task or goals of an individual stage, you can move on to the next stage.
It is recommended that dyslexics, no matter how old they are, use this method under the supervision of an adult who helps them complete the exercises or supervises their reading.

Stage one: learning double symbols
Stage two: strengthening knowledge of symbols
Stage three: adding up letters
Stage four: identifying the meaning of words
Stage five: reading texts with double symbols
Stage six: reading nonsense words
Stage seven: improving reading single symbols

Below you can find links to tables and exercises that you must print out for each stage. They are marked blue.

1. Learning double symbols

The majority of people automatically recognize the symbols (letters) representing sounds because Reason considers them the basic word building blocks. However, for dyslexics letters don’t play the same role because Emotion finds it easier to recognize groups of letters as a picture than to compose words from individual letters.

In order for the dyslexics to transfer the reading function from Emotion to Reason, they must master all the basic building blocks (symbols) to perfection. The first and the second stages focus on this task.

The Symbols link takes you to a table with letters and numbers (to view it, click on the blue field). Dyslexics must learn this table by heart so that they ascribe the right number to each letter and the right letter to each number without faltering.

To learn the symbols you must print out the table Squares. Print out the symbols for upper-case and lower-case letters and numbers and cut them out using the lines. Then mix up the squares and distribute them on the table so that the symbols don’t show. Dyslexics should turn the squares around one after the other (like playing Memory) and read out the symbols printed on them. They should only read the numbers as the letters they represent and not as numbers; for example, they should read the number 2 as b, and the number 26 as z.

This stage is completed when the dyslexic identifies all the symbols smoothly without mistakes.

2. Strengthening knowledge of symbols

The parents of dyslexic children often don’t notice that their children don’t recognize individual symbols as well as their peers who don’t have dyslexia. Recognizing letters smoothly and flawlessly is of key importance to reading. The following exercise is used to determine whether the dyslexic recognizes individual symbols well enough. The link Seven Minutes takes you to two pages of randomly selected letters and numbers. The dyslexic must spell all the symbols out loud and we can check his accuracy and time him. He can do this exercise several times a day. A personal record is achieved when the dyslexic makes no more than three mistakes in record time (he always reads the numbers only as letters in this exercise).

In this stage, the dyslexic should practice reading the symbols until he reads all the symbols without mistakes in seven minutes or even faster (with some this stage can last several weeks. Don’t move on to the next exercise until you can do this in the required time!).

3. Adding up letters

The purpose of this exercise is to establish that reading doesn’t take place by recognizing words as pictures and connecting these pictures with suitable concepts, but by connecting individual letters into words. If someone is good at this, this means he can read smoothly.

Because the dyslexic also knows the right number for each letter at this stage, he can also calculate the values of the words.

This means that he mentally converts every letter into a number and then adds up their values to get the total value of a word. He can only get the right value if he converts and adds up all the letters correctly.

banana = 2 + 1 + 14 + 1 + 14 + 1 = 33

With this exercise, the dyslexic gets to know how carefully he must read every letter in a word.

The Adding Up link takes you to exercises that you must complete over the period of seven days. Every day the dyslexic should add up the words from one side. If he still isn’t good at adding numbers in his head, he can write down individual calculations next to the word (the checklist that comes with these exercises is for the person helping the dyslexic do the exercises).

This stage is completed when the dyslexic correctly calculates the values of all the words.

4. Identifying the meaning of words

In this stage the dyslexic focuses on identifying the meaning of words he has composed from individual symbols. In order to prevent him from identifying pictures of individual words, like he has been doing so far, we must use words written in double symbols for this exercise (that is, with letters and numbers). This way every word is written in two ways and represents two different pictures for Emotion. This is enough to stop the dyslexic from learning them by heart.

To get to the exercises, click Recognizing

This stage is completed when the dyslexic solves all the exercises.

5. Reading texts with double symbols

This is the central and most important part of Eros’ method for eliminating dyslexia. By reading specially adapted texts that contain double symbols, dyslexics start improving their reading in the manner that only the mental processor Reason is capable of. One must be aware that regardless of their age and the progress they might have made in reading before that, this is the point when dyslexics begin to read from the start. Their point of departure is thus the same as that of a first-grader, but their progress in improving their reading will almost be the same as in children without dyslexia. In this stage the progress depends on persistence and practice, which means that dyslexics must read for an hour every day. If they skip a day for any reason, they must catch up on their reading the next day; this means that on that day they must read for two hours, but not all at once.

It’s also very important that during these exercises dyslexics don’t read other texts because any contact by Emotion with a normal text gives Emotion the opportunity to get better at his way of reading. The goal of this exercise is exactly the opposite: to make Reason overtake Emotion in reading and improve to the extent that Emotion no longer takes part in this function.

The links take you to texts that you must print out in order to do this exercise. Each text is also accompanied by a version with normal text intended for the person who supervises the dyslexic’s reading. If the texts selected here aren’t suitable for the dyslexic, you can click on Program and download a special program that converts electronic texts into versions containing double symbols. This way you can also adapt texts that may attract the dyslexic more than those provided here in order to do this exercise. To make the reading easier, it’s recommended that you use the Arial font because with some other fonts letters and numbers look too much alike, which makes reading more difficult.

Despite using double symbols, in this learning procedure dyslexics also indirectly learn how to read these texts the normal way, but not in the way Emotion does it. Precisely because of this it is especially important that we don’t rush and switch to normal texts too fast. If dyslexics haven’t practiced enough reading, it may happen that, if they switch to normal texts too fast, Emotion will again try to take part in the reading process. This means that, after several weeks, these readers will start having difficulties with reading again. One should be aware that using double symbols doesn’t bother the reader at all while reading and so he won’t have any problems when switching to normal texts and his reading will get considerably smoother in only a short time. Switching to normal texts works the same way as if a reader without dyslexia came across a text that contained only words in which certain letters were missing. The reader probably wouldn’t even notice this because the fact that certain symbols are missing wouldn’t prevent him from recognizing the rest of the symbols and consequently the words and the text’s message. However, this could also be a temptation for the dyslexic because he could come across a normal text and think he no longer has any problems reading. But this can make him get too excited too fast because his reading may not be sufficiently good yet for Emotion not to start taking part in the reading process again.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This stage lasts several months and is only completed when the reader (now we can no longer talk about a dyslexic) can read an average of at least 60 words per minute.

6. Reading nonsense words

Emotion always has problems with recognizing unknown words and therefore an intermediary stage is envisaged before switching to reading normal texts (that is, texts containing only one type of symbol, or letters): reading nonsense words. Emotion can’t connect these words with any picture. To this end, the reader should read the words you can find under Nonsense Words every day for one week.

This stage is completed in seven days.

7. Improving reading normal symbols

Reading is a complex process that we learn for several years until we perfect it to the point that we can gather information from texts completely without any problems. In this stage, readers will no longer have any problems typical of dyslexia, but due to Emotion’s dominance in their character they will nonetheless notice a tendency to recognize certain words as pictures. There’s nothing wrong with that and this won’t cause any problems because by this stage the readers have already trained their more appropriate mental processor to perform the reading. This processor will only allow them to recognize words as pictures when the word will really be correctly recognized as a picture. This is basically a reading method known as speed reading. In this process, readers who use Reason’s method of reading are taught to also use Emotion in reading. Emotion can understand texts faster, but only a limited number of words and with poorer accuracy. For the same reason, reading characters is also faster than reading alphabetical texts, but the learning process is much more demanding and takes more time. The advantage of alphabetical texts is the accurate transfer of information.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the writer Svetlana Makarovič for allowing her texts to be transformed into texts with double symbols for learning how to read.