Any of you guys have any experience with Irlen Syndrome? Any opinions or case examples? I have seen a few kids that note that their lives have changed markedly since they began wearing the coored lenses. I nknow there is research out there that is supportive, but there are many that disagree with research methods used. A girl I am in the middle of assessing has images cross over at the 2 inch point (e.g., pick of boy and girl change to girl boy when slowly pulled apart slowly).
Re: Irlen Syndrome
Yah, you’re right, it doesn’t sound like typical SSS cases (no movement of letters, etc). However, she mentioned that she has a Mary-Kate and AShleyt Olson book that uses all kinds of different colored pages, and words do not become fuzzy after 5 minutes (like they typically do) on pages colored pink, baby blue, and dark green. She has discussed that at times, it looks like she is looking through a glass pane while staring at a page, and on a page I presented with many small dots, she saw one thick line that kinda looked like the number 7. Also experiencing some depression, and has had visual and auditory hallucinations.
Re: Irlen Syndrome
She could have both problems, I suppose. What I would do is experiment with colored overlays first.
Auditory hallucinations are an indication of mental illness. Hope she’s getting some treatment! I think visual hallucinations are much more rare.
Nancy
Re: Irlen Syndrome
Hi,
I’d second on trying overlays. BTW, visual hallucinations *might* be a symptom of psychomotor (aka temporal lobe or partial complex) seizures
as is depression.
—des
Re: Irlen Syndrome
Both visual and auditory hallucinations can by symptoms of a wide number of things, including sleep deprivation and the kind of digestive disorder (severe celiac) that I suffer from, or vitamin deficiency, among other things. Medical advice is absolutely required!!!
I have never seen anything from Irlen that I trust or believe in. I have one student right now who had been given a green overlay. I had him read both with it and without it, sitting back and not letting him know he was being “tested”; there was absolutely zero difference in his abilities either way, except that mucking around with the overlay gave him yet one more excuse to delay and lose track and get off the topic. Teaching him directionality, as I’ve described in other posts, has made all the difference in the world in his reading and writing and even his math; the colours etc. had little or nothing to do with it. There’s a center around here that sells this stuff with a very hard sell, playing on parents fears, and at a very high price; we haven’t seen any huge miracles coming out that anyone has yet shown me.
Re: Irlen Syndrome
I’ll drink to everything you say here! :-) I have certainly read that scotopic sensitivity *can* effect reading skills. But frankly, I am a bit torn on it. I have, according to what I read, at least moderate scotopic sensitivity and I am/always was a great decoder. I would bet if anything that the kids with this might have headaches, fatigue, that type of thing.
—des
Re: Irlen Syndrome
The funny thing about this is that I would really like to believe in Irlen, but sorry, I just can’t. My whole family has a list of eye problems that would fill this page and numb your mind, so I’m really into this issue. It would be so nice to find a cure for all this, and one always hopes. I have never seen, with any of us *or* with any of my students, any improvement whatsoever with coloured overlays and lenses. I have also never seen either any acceptable research or any really believable anecdotal evidence to back up their claims.
Except that coloured overlays and lenses, by their very nature, must reduce the amount of light input to the eye, and for me personally they do make things much worse.
Re: Irlen Syndrome
There is also the rather obvious issue — lenses will not teach you to read, even if they do make it easier to see the words. I have known individuals who found overlays and/or lenses very helpful in making reading more comfortable, but I also despair when an Irlen proponent seems to think they will solve the difficulties for a college student reading at a sixth grade level.
Re: Irlen Syndrome
I have no doubt that by reducing the contrast the Irlen (or just plain colored overlays) would help some kids read better, ie because they could see. I don’t believe in any hocus pocus on the colors just anything that would make the print not so contrasty.
And no I don’t believe it does anything about teaching decoding.
—des
Wow! That sounds like a convergence problem. See http://www.childrensvision.org for more information
The Irlen Institute website is http://www.irlen.com and has some interesting information.
From what I have seen, scotopic sensitivity does exist, but is probably rather infrequent. Rather than spend a lot of money on lenses, I think it is more useful to try colored plastic overlays. I know one family that spent in excess of $2,000 on Irlen testing and lenses. They got very, very limited long-term improvement for their investment. Also, I have heard that the color need can change over time. It’s inexpensive to experiment with different colored plastic overlays, especially compared to the cost of the special lenses. My understanding of scotopic sensitivity is that it is a hyper-sensitivity to levels of contrast. Colored overlays and lenses change the degree of contrast, making it easier for someone with this problem to read lines of text without strain.
What you describe does not sound like scotopic sensitivity, but does sound like convergence insufficiency. A developmental vision evaluation would be a good idea. See http://www.covd.org for board-certified developmental optometrists who perform this kind of eval.
Nancy