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>From: "Jeffrey J. Sable" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Transparencies for dyslexia
>Date: Tue, Apr 20, 1999, 10:27 AM
>
> One of my students (Psychobiology) ask how colored transparencies reduce
> the reading difficulties caused by dyslexia. He said that some of his
> classmates in school once had transparencies of a certain color that they
> carried with them and put over things when they read them. He claimed they
> had gone to a doctor who had figured out what the most effective color
> was. Each of the two had a different color transparency. I had never heard
> of this. Does anyone know anything about this or why it might work?
Jeff,
Your student is undoubtedly talking about the use of what are referred to as
"Irlen lenses/filters" for the treatment of reading disorders (named after
Helen Irlen). In a nutshell, Irlen postulated that many cases of reading
disorder were due to a perceptual problem (she calls it Scotopic Sensitivity
Syndrome). The idea behind the filters is that they would remove specific
wavelengths from the visual information and thereby correct the perceptual
problem. Another possibility that has been suggested is that the filters
work by reducing contrast on the printed page. For more of the background
about this whole idea, try the following web site:
http://www.planet.eon.net/~judypool/irlen.htm
Or, if you prefer Helen Irlen's own words, try this:
http://www.hensa.ac.uk/dyslexia/reports/dartington/confhi.html
For some brief comments on the other side of the story, try:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/eyequack.html
http://www-honors.ucdavis.edu/learning/fulltext.html
When I last looked into this topic (a couple of years ago), Irlen's ideas
were, to put it mildly, controversial. As I recall, I don't think Irlen
herself ever published anything supportive of her theory in the traditional
scientific places (i.e., refereed journals); she published a book entitled
_Reading by the Colors_. There were a number of studies done on the topic by
others, some supporting Irlen, others not. Reviews of the literature were
generally negative.
I don't know what has happened in this area over the past couple of years,
but I did come away from my reading with a pretty low opinion of the use of
these filters. It didn't look like there was any convincing evidence for
their effectiveness (or for the syndrome that Irlen hypothesized). If anyone
is aware of any more recent work on the topic, I'd be interested in knowing
if that situation has changed.
John
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John Serafin
Professor of Psychology
Saint Vincent College
300 Fraser Purchase Rd.
Latrobe, PA 15650
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[He] isn't a genius, he is a professor--a being whose duty is to know
everything, and have his own opinion about everything.
-William James, speaking about Wilhelm Wundt
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