The Dyslexic Advantage (18 page)

In short, N-strengths can be useful in any job or task where past personal experiences can be used to solve problems, explain, persuade, negotiate, counsel, or in some way form or shape the perspectives of oneself or others.

Trade-offs with N-Strengths

I
n addition to the many abilities, N-strengths can also bring trade-offs. The most important—and most common—trade-off is reflected in the following comment: “Sammy never remembers anything from school. He forgets what's been taught, and whether there's an assignment or a test. And when we ask him to do something at home, it's always in one ear and out the other. His memory is horrible! Only, the strange thing is, Sammy's also our family historian. He can remember what we've done on every vacation, and who gave what present at his brother's birthday party five years ago, and what kind of pet every kid in his class has. So why can he remember all those kinds of things but he can't remember his times tables or the names of the state capitals?”

This classic, but seemingly paradoxical, description of the “family historian with the poor memory” is one we hear from countless families. It becomes easier to understand when you remember the different types of memory we described at the start of the previous chapter.

All individuals, whether dyslexic or not, show a distinctive blend of strengths and weaknesses in episodic, semantic, and procedural memory, and this blend greatly affects their learning and memory styles. Like Sammy, many individuals with dyslexia have a much stronger episodic than semantic memory and a relative weakness in procedural memory (as discussed in chapter 3). Dyslexic individuals with this memory style are typically very good at remembering things they've done or experienced, and often also at remembering stories that they've heard or information that's been embedded in a narrative context. However, they're much weaker at remembering “bare semantic facts”—or facts that are abstract, impersonal, and devoid of context.

Anne Rice is a perfect example of an individual with this memory pattern. As we mentioned earlier, Anne has a phenomenally good memory for episodic and personal details—that is, for things she's experienced; yet Anne also has a poor memory for abstract, impersonal facts. As she told us, “I don't think abstractly at all. Everything is image and narrative with me. I can't remember numbers at all and make huge errors, sometimes doubling prices or amounts as my memory of them gets hazy.”

It's critical to identify students with dyslexia who show a primarily narrative processing and episodic memory style, because their N-strengths can provide the key to unlocking their learning potential. This is true both for the ways they take in and the ways they express information.

When taking in new information, students with dyslexia who show a strong episodic memory bias and narrative processing style will typically learn much better if general or abstract definitions are supported by scene-based examples or depictions. When information is embedded in a context that the student finds meaningful and familiar, and which incorporates experiences, cases, examples, stories, or personal experiences (including humor, participation, novelty, “strangeness”), many students with dyslexia will learn it more quickly and retain it more durably.

These points are reinforced by the following experience, shared by the mother of a dyslexic child. She told us that as a student she'd always excelled at remembering facts, definitions, and formulas, while her dyslexic husband had always struggled in these areas. She'd been the honors student while her husband had barely made it through school. So she naturally assumed she'd be a better tutor for their dyslexic son. She was surprised, then, to discover that her husband was a
much
more effective teacher, especially for concept-rich subjects like history, social studies, and science. Eventually she realized this was because her husband taught almost entirely using examples, cases, and analogies, while she tried to “trim the fat” from her lessons and present only the bare minimum of “simple facts” so their son would have less to memorize. However, it wasn't the
quantity
of information that their son struggled with but the
form
. He could hold on to facts that were embedded in a meaningful story or context but quickly forgot facts that lacked context or significance. This is a common experience for students with dyslexia.

Dyslexic students with Narrative reasoning styles also face important challenges when trying to express their ideas. Since their conceptual knowledge is often stored in cases, images, or narratives rather than in abstract principles or definitions, when asked to answer questions on exams or assignments or even orally in class by stating the relevant abstract or general principles, they may respond instead with stories or examples. As a result, their answers may appear loose and unstructured. They may seem to “talk around” their answer and appear to have difficulty “getting to the point.” Douglas Merrill shared one example of how this happened to him.

“When I took my qualifying exams in graduate school, I was asked a question about the development of cognition; and I was supposed to start with Piaget, then go to Erikson, then go to modern cognitive problem solving. I understood all the important concepts, but I hadn't really been able to memorize all the little details, so instead I wrote a story about the different developmental paths of two people. I covered all the right concepts, but they failed me on that question because I didn't give them all the specific details that they wanted.”

As we mentioned earlier, this dyslexic tendency to think in examples or stories rather than in abstract definitions can also result in the loss of points on standardized tests, including (and perhaps especially) the vocabulary portion of IQ tests.

Schools and exams often treat abstract facts and principles as if they were the only forms of knowledge that really “count”; they assume that if students can't memorize and regurgitate facts in their “purest” and most noncontextual form, then they don't really
know
them. While abstract definitions are important and useful, we must not undervalue knowledge that is embedded in experiences, stories, cases, or examples. Such
case-based knowledge
is highly valuable in its own right, and it is more easily mastered than abstract information by many students with dyslexia.

It's also important to recognize that individuals with a largely narrative or case-based reasoning style will often show a very different trajectory of cognitive development from individuals with a more abstract or semantic reasoning style. This is particularly true of the growth of their conceptual knowledge. At younger ages, individuals who store concepts as cases and examples can appear concrete because they have few cases and experiences to reason with, so they may seem “stuck on” overly specific cases when asked to think about a broad concept. Early on, such children often have more difficulty generalizing their knowledge than their peers. Fortunately, as their experience increases, so will the fluidity of their thinking. In fact, once they have accumulated a broader set of experiences, they will often be
less
concrete than others because their concepts include a wide range of cases rather than a single generalized principle. This also makes them less likely to mistake an abstraction or generalization for a full description of reality.

Finally, because narratives speak so powerfully to individuals with dyslexia who possess prominent N-strengths, it's crucial that
the narratives we tell them about dyslexia
are both accurate and appropriately hopeful. One of our chief goals in writing this book is to correct the common and deeply misleading narrative that dyslexic differences are primarily, or even entirely, dysfunctions. The “story” we should read in the lives of the individuals with dyslexia isn't a tragedy; it's an exciting story filled with hope, opportunity, and promise for the future.

N-Strengths in Action

L
et's look in detail at the many uses to which one highly talented individual with dyslexia has put his N-strengths.

Blake Charlton was diagnosed with dyslexia midway through first grade. Despite being passionately fond of hearing and telling stories, Blake made little progress with reading and writing, and he struggled with basic math.

Blake spent two years in a special ed class, where he began to make progress. He enjoyed feeling like the “smart kid” in class and was pleased when he could finally start putting stories down on paper.

By fourth grade Blake had progressed enough to be mainstreamed back into the regular education class. His sense of accomplishment quickly vanished as he went from being the “smart kid” to the “class failure.” Only his skills in sports and drama—which earned the admiration of his classmates—allowed him to keep a positive self-image and respond to his classroom setbacks with a determination to improve.

In middle school this resolve helped Blake boost both his reading speed—largely by consuming the fantasy novels that gripped his imagination—and his pace of work. However, Blake continued to make “silly” mistakes in writing and math, and they chipped away at his grades.

Blake finally experienced a breakthrough when he was allowed to use a calculator and spell-checker for his work. His grades shot up, and so did his self-esteem. “Suddenly, I was a geek again!” Blake enjoyed being recognized for his intelligence, and he began to apply himself with even greater determination. With accommodations in place for his College Board exams, Blake did well. So well, in fact, that he was admitted to Yale University.

Though Blake retains fond memories of Yale, he also remembers college as a time of terror. He was so concerned that his remaining dyslexic difficulties would defeat him that he compensated by spending “every waking moment of the day” on his studies. Fortunately, Blake received invaluable assistance from Yale's Resource Office on Disabilities. The staff helped him obtain classroom accommodations such as a keyboard for in-class work, extra time on tests, and out-of-class assistance with proofing papers, planning, and scheduling.

Because he'd long dreamed of becoming a doctor, Blake began to take science courses, and he discovered that he had a special knack for chemistry. Blake particularly excelled in organic chemistry, with its heavy emphasis on three-dimensional spatial reasoning, and he actually earned the top grade in this very difficult and competitive class. Blake also did well in inorganic chemistry, because even though his rote memory was weak, he was still able to remember an astonishing number of facts about the chemical elements in the periodic table by creating fanciful stories about them. He gave the elements personalities, past histories, motivations, and goals, and these narrative details helped him remember their “behaviors” and their positions in the rows and columns of the table. Blake used similar narrative-based memory strategies in his other courses, too. As a result of these successes, Blake told us that for the first time in his life he felt truly “intellectually talented.”

Blake might have been happy as a chemistry major had his love of stories not been so strong. Instead, he majored in English, and with persistent effort his writing skills began to blossom. In fact, he won two writing awards while at Yale.

Following his graduation in 2002, Blake took a job as an English teacher, learning disabilities counselor, and football coach, then returned home to care for his father, who was battling cancer. In the few spare moments he somehow managed to find, Blake wrote stories about the imaginary worlds he'd dreamed of all his life, while continuing to dream about becoming a doctor.

In 2007 Blake finally entered Stanford Medical School. At the same time he also signed a three-book deal with a publisher specializing in fantasy fiction. Blake's first novel,
Spellwright
, was published in 2010. Fittingly,
Spellwright
is the story of a magician-in-training with dyslexia who must solve the riddle of his own “cacography”—or inability to handle text-based spells without “corrupting” them—to prevent the triumph of evil over good. It's an absolutely thrilling read, and the elaborate system of magic Blake creates is astonishing in its inventiveness.

When we spoke with Blake, he was taking time off between his second and third years of medical school to teach creative writing to first-year medical students (as a way of encouraging their use of Narrative reasoning in clinical medicine) and to publish an analysis of literary narratives related to medicine (such as Tolstoy's story
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
). During our conversation, Blake told us how useful he'd found narrative-based memory strategies for dealing with the overwhelming amounts of memorization he'd faced in his first two years of medical school. He even shared several of the stories he'd developed to help remember the branches of arteries and nerves. Narrative reasoning is clearly still a dominant theme in his life.

Oh, and in his “spare time” Blake was also completing the second novel in his planned trilogy,
Spellbound.
Like his first, it combines elements of Blake's experiences with dyslexia and the remarkable system of magic he created. Of course, we shouldn't be surprised to find that someone who can transform himself from a special education student to a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale knows a thing or two about magic.

Key Points about N-Strengths

N
arrative reasoning plays a key role in the thinking of many individuals with dyslexia. Key points to remember about N-strengths include: