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[erolz66]

One of the clearest manifestations of my dyslexia when I was younger and something common to many dyslexics was the phenomenon of 'flipping' certain written letters, like the letters , p d b q in my brain. The 'flipping' however was always on the vertical axis and never the horizontal axis. Thus I would have trouble with differentiating between a
q and p
or
d and b

Yet I never had any trouble with flipping on the horizontal access. Never any confusion between
q and d

why ? why only on one axis and not the other ? Maybe it is just the 'horizontal' nature of how text is written but I do not think that is it. Even if I were to write top to bottom rather than left to right I think the flipping still happens in the same way.

Another manifestation of my dyslexia and again something that is common to many dyslexics is struggling with 'left' and 'right' and which is which. Yet never any problems with 'up' and 'down'. Why ?

So on to my 'musing'. None of this is anything I have a firm grip on yet in my head but I have some 'feelings' or 'theories' or musings.

There is, I am starting to suspect, a difference between 'left and right' vs 'up and down' that relates to the arbitrariness of one pair vs the other. Not the arbitrariness of the 'labels', the words we use. An arbitrariness of the actual concepts those words represent. It seems to me that concepts like 'higher' and 'lower' have a connection to the physical structure of the universe in a way that the concept of 'leftness' and 'rightness' do not. That the concepts of 'leftness' and 'rightness' are essentialy arbitrary in a way the concepts of 'highness' and 'lowness' are not.

A higher pitched musical note for example relates to the the physical sound waves and the 'highness' of those waves when visually represented vs a 'low' note. There is as far as I can tell a connection between the concept of 'highness' and 'lowness' and the actual universe itself. You can not produce a high pitched note that does not have a physical 'highness' in the wave that produces that note.

I am not sure the concepts of 'leftness' and 'rightness' has this same connection to the physicality of the universe itself that 'highness' and 'lowness' do ? Could this explain why dyslexics like me struggle with flipping letters on the 'vertical axis' and not the 'horizontal axis' ? Why they struggle with 'left and right' but not with 'high and low' ?

Is there a connection between the concepts of 'leftness' and 'rightness' and the physical universe that I am missing ? In politics we talk of 'the left' and 'the right'. Is it just arbitrary which is which ? Or is there some connection to the physicality of the universe itself ? Is left wing politics described as such rather than 'right' because of the left and right nature of the hemispheres of our brains ? Do the left side of our brains control things like 'empathy' and 'compassion' and the right things like 'calculation' that leads to one end of the political spectrum being associated with the concept 'leftness' rather than 'rightness' ?

I am not sure yet and maybe never will be but I do have a 'hunch' or 'sensation' that there is some kind of difference between these two types of concept pairs (left/right and high/low).

[repulsewarrior]

...don't get me started on left, and right, or telling the time; it can be difficult at times.

...images of teachers, and the confusion (for me) they were causing being funny with its contexts, standing facing the class, not a mirror, an opposite to that.

...up and down i suppose requires less intuition, gravity is hard to dismiss.

...port as opposed to starboard is left, only because left and port have the same number of letters, now try and remember these words in French.

...i read time very well, if i am allowed to say for example 5:30 and two minutes, or, quarter to four in two minutes, at times; saying the exact time appropriately is frightfully stressful for me at the most inappropriate times.

I am told that it is due to having a creative mind, and being an innate questioner of authority, stuck sometimes in my own questioning.

[erolz66]

Do you consider yourself dyslexic RW ? Because what you describe are classic symptoms of dyslexia.

re '...up and down i suppose requires less intuition, gravity is hard to dismiss.'

I do get what you are saying here and it makes sense but it does not explain why my (and all I think ?) dyslexia 'flipping' is on the 'vertical plain' and not on the 'horizontal'.

I have long understood that the same thing in my brain that flips letters also allows me to flip 'concepts' and 'ideas', allowing me to, without effort, see them from perspectives that people without such a thing in the brain are unable to do. I am just trying to get my head around why the flipping seems to be only on one axis and not the other. My 'hunch' is that my brain flips when something is 'arbitrary' and not connected to a physicality of the actual universe but does not when it is. I am aware that this 'hunch' may be a function primarily of ego than of anything else but I enjoy exploring such things none the less.

[Sotos]

Another manifestation of my dyslexia and again something that is common to many dyslexics is struggling with 'left' and 'right' and which is which. Yet never any problems with 'up' and 'down'. Why ?

I didn't know that this is a symptom of dyslexia. I have that too. Left and Right are not as obvious as Up and Down. I actually have to think about it for a moment! I guess this is because we are symmetrical on that axis, so our left and right are the same, while our up and down are not.

But I was never dyslexic when it comes to letters. My spelling was crap (still is, couldn't live without a spellchecker) but I would never read "crap" as "craq".

[Paphitis]

Another manifestation of my dyslexia and again something that is common to many dyslexics is struggling with 'left' and 'right' and which is which. Yet never any problems with 'up' and 'down'. Why ?

I didn't know that this is a symptom of dyslexia. I have that too. Left and Right are not as obvious as Up and Down. I actually have to think about it for a moment! I guess this is because we are symmetrical on that axis, so our left and right are the same, while our up and down are not.

But I was never dyslexic when it comes to letters. My spelling was crap (still is, couldn't live without a spellchecker) but I would never read "crap" as "craq".

Erolz is very familiar with "craq"

[erolz66]

But I was never dyslexic when it comes to letters. My spelling was crap (still is, couldn't live without a spellchecker) but I would never read "crap" as "craq".

For me, though not for dyslexics generally I believe, I too never had any problem reading 'crap' as 'craq'. For me the problem was when writing 'crap' and not being able to tell if I had written crap or craq by mistake.

[Pyrpolizer]

I don't know much about dyslexia other than the basics.
I met 2 dyslexic persons in my life one was an old man and another a 7 year old girl who was friends with my daughter when she was a hid.
They both had the same symptoms albeit the girl at higher degree. Terrible handwriting to the point you'd need to try hard to read it. Missing letters, and reversed writing for example instead of writing mother they could write moerth, something similar to what Lordo does.
However they were both of high IQ. The mother of the girl was terrified at first, then after she learned most dyslexic people have have high IQ, she started feeling proud of it.
Einstein was dyslexic too.

Nothing to worry about Erolz, it's probably a gift.

[Kikapu]

Probably explains why someone making a right turn with left indicators on!

[repulsewarrior]

...indeed, so i was told.

[supporttheunderdog]

It is important to remember that "Dyslexia" is a label which applies to an obvious symptom of difficulties with reading, writing and spelling, which are most likely down to some sort of Neuro-Visual disconnect. I suspect it is a spectrum condition where different people have different manifestations of reading difficulties, and where there may even be underlying different reasons, but with a common obvious symptom.

I have a 13yo daughter who has sexdaily - oops I mean Dyslexia - she struggled to read and spell: letters were meaningless symbols. She knew for example the concept of "6", so if you asked her to get six items she could do it. However write "6" down and she could not correlate the image on the page (which is but a representation) with the sound and concept of sixness. When it came to letters and words we could be reading a simple text from the early stages of "Oxford Reading Tree" with "Biff and Chipper" but she would miss words, read them wrong, even miss whole lines. We could painfully work out a word but in many cases if the same word appeared just a bit further on she could get it wrong. We used a phonetic reading scheme, Letterland, but still she struggled. I suspect she has two conditions, namely Phonological Dyslexia, which is difficulty with the ability to recognize individual letter sounds in a word and then blend those sounds into a wordand to break words into syllables, and to connect letters and words to the sounds they correspond to, as well as Rapid Automatic Naming Dyslexia, or recognition of letters and numbers where It may take longer for the person's brain to process the information, which may lead to slower reading times.

We found out she may have something known as Myres-Irlen Syndrome. Her reading improved when we got her specially tinted glasses. They were a plain lens as there were no obvious focus or similar vision issues. She told us they stopped the words dancing on the page, and she reads better on a screen.

Left and right? Yes she has some trouble with that and it is quite common in dyslexics/people with Dyslexia but also in people who do not present as dyslexic. The jury is out but I would not exclude that at least in some cases the difficulties with left and right and letter flipping are connected with other left and right issues but then again would not exclude it being a separate co-morbid condition, in other cases, which is why non dyslexics have it .