P is for Patterns
Dyslexic brains see patterns, and patterns in patterns. Consider it your Superpower.
One of my daughters, Peri (not her real name, but of similar origin), is tremendously good at puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles, Rubik’s cube, getting out of escape rooms. During her neuro-psych screening, she got the highest score ever at taking 12 scattered squares and re-arranging them into a coherent picture. Her favorite card game is Set, in which you match cards based on patterns. She loved Legos and building toys.
In college, Peri took advanced physics classes as a ‘break’ from the required heavy-reading courses in English Lit, History and Sociology. Peri majored in Chemistry, and wondered why everyone thought Organic Chemistry was such a hard class. She once explained to me that she could envision the organic compounds and how the atoms fit together.
Peri never gets lost. She claims she has all the maps in her head. She’s good with orienteering and spatial awareness. She hikes, bikes, and takes trains and subways everywhere. She’s the first one out of the corn maze every fall. She wouldn’t even get lost in the Louvre.
She got her master’s in engineering, and she now works with lasers, building and manufacturing them to work perfectly every time. She puts these puzzles together everyday and is very good at it.
Many careers need 3D thinkers
Do you like design, architecture, photography or engineering? Educators and Learning Specialists, Sandra Rief and Judith Stern, identify in their book, The Dyslexia Checklist, a number of ‘strengths and positive characteristics’ that are common to people with dyslexia. Among them, Rief and Stern list ‘special aptitude in visual-spatial thinking or three-dimensional awareness.’ The authors identify professions that require these strengths, including ‘design, architecture, engineering and photography.’ (p 25)
Even outside these more common fields, are many diverse opportunites for dyslexics passionate about patterns. My other daughter, a writer (not the most common career for a dyslexic), likes finding patterns in language and narrative to help her plan the path of a story or scene. Even in the UK’s GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), home of UK Intelligence & Security, including MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, it’s cool to be dyslexic. The Guardian reports that apprentices are 4X as likely to be dyslexic. Why do intelligence agencies value neurodiversity? Jo Cavan, director of strategy, policy and engagement at GCHQ, says, “We’re looking for people who can see something that’s out of place in a bigger picture, who have good visual awareness and can spot anomalies.”
Visual-spatial learners
Dyslexia advocate, attorney, and parent Abigail Marshall, in her book The Everything Parents Guide to Children with Dyslexia, describes eight different types/modes of intelligence that people may have, and which of these are often stronger in dyslexic learners.
Marshall, combining the concepts of both Psychologist Linda Silverman and Dr. Howard Gardner, contrasts the typical learning and testing of most schooldays with the typical strengths of dyslexic learners. Much of school rewards the ‘auditory-sequential learner,’ who ‘thinks primarily in words, learns step-by-step, attends well to detail, learns phonics easily, and excels at rote memory.’ In contrast, much of life rewards the ‘visual-spatial learner,’ who ‘thinks primarily with images, learns concepts at once, sees the big picture, learns best by seeing relationships, and learns complex concepts easily’ yet may struggle with certain basic skills that seem ‘easy’ to others (p7).
A friend of mine who teaches college in downtown Boston describes the frustration of some high-performing high school students once they hit college. Her students often want to learn ‘the facts’ and act as though their role is to learn the ‘correct’ history and then write essays that reflect that. She teaches history, and wants the students to think for themselves, debate key ideas, and form relationships among time periods, peoples, social and economic systems, how history is recorded and received, and other ‘big picture’ modalities. She finds that the students who may have struggled due to dyslexia, ADD, or their tendency for visual thinking are often the ones who lead the class into new ways of engaging with our history.
Most dyslexics — some studies show more than 80% — think in pictures.
Dyslexic M-I-N-D Strengths
Educators Brock and Fernette Eide, in their book The Dyslexic Advantage, delineate four major categories of strengths common to dyslexic thinking. They call these MIND:
- M for Material Reasoning
- I for Interconnected Reasoning
- N for Narrative Reasoning
- D for Dynamic Reasoning
In my reading of the Eides’ MIND model of dyslexic reasoning types, each points to a different and extremely valuable aspect of perceiving and understanding patterns, patterns within patterns, and big picture concepts, with the ability to combine and recombine, think ‘outside the box,’ and excel with problem solving and sparks of creativity.
Material Reasoning includes ‘three-dimensional spatial reasoning and mechanical ability,’ ‘ability to perceive analogies, metaphors, paradoxes, similarities, differences, gaps and imbalances,’ as well as ‘ability to perceive and take advantage of subtle patterns in complex and constantly shifting systems or data sets.’ (p5).
The Eides describe the ‘3-D Advantage’ of M-strengths as superior reasoning around ‘the shape, size, motion, position, or orientation in space of physical objects and the ways those objects interact.’ (p 49)
Dyslexic Albert Einstein had some of his greatest breakthroughs in dreams, and envisioned them fully formed before doing the math. The dyslexic physicists I know could add ‘4-D Reasoning’ to their list of M-strengths!
Interconnected Reasoning includes ‘spotting connections between different objects, concepts or points of view,’ including being facile at finding relatedness among ‘objects, events, experiences,’ and finding cause-and-effect. People with these I-Strengths find the meaning in patterns that are not immediately apparent, and are often good at explaining concepts and big picture ideas using analogies and stories. (p 83–4)
Gift of Creativity
I once heard creativity defined as ‘making order out of chaos.’ This is the essence of recognizing deep patterns and making connections that solve something, reveal something, or illuminate something.
Ronald Davis, founder of Davis Dyslexia Association and Exec Director of the Reading Research Council, describes the ‘picture thinking, intuitive thought, multidimensional thought and curiosity’ as the cornerstones of dyslexics’ strong creative drive and inherent creativity. (The Gift of Dyslexia p 109)
More than 80% of dyslexics score above average on ‘imaginative skills.’ Many famous artists, actors and actresses, entrepreneurs, composers, inventors and designers have been dyslexic. Consider Leonardo Da Vinci, whose spelling was describes as ‘erratic and strange,’ and who often wrote in mirror writing!
Takeaway:
Maybe you think in pictures. Can understand complex concepts quickly. Are curious and creative. Can see the big picture when others seem to only notice the details. Find solutions that no one else does. Recognize and map out intricate patterns. Find the piece (in data, models, stories) that doesn’t quite ‘fit.’ Have great spatial awareness. Come up with new business ideas. Envision things that seem difficult to others. ‘See’ the answer or solution, even if you have trouble putting it into words.
You’re a Pattern Master! Consider it your superpower.
