Neurodivergence And Its Impact on Social Skills

 Neurodivergence And Its Impact on Social Skills

 

 

page 248 of Smart But Feeling Dumb by Harold N. Levinson, M.D.

Self-Esteem and Body Image

 

In my clinical experience, the most important symptoms characterizing dyslexic syndrome are those impairing self-esteem and body image, and thus they are the most crucial to effectively treat and eliminate. Self-esteem is significantly impaired when dysfunctioning inner-ear/cerebellar mechanisms result in even mildly decreased sensory-motor and related memory-speech-cognitive functioning--triggering feelings of stupidity, ugliness, and variations thereof. Most important, favorable responses to inner-ear-enhancing medications and nutrients rapidly lead to improved esteem, irregardless of age or how long these feelings were previously present, suggesting a strong physiological linkage. Also reinforcing this cerebellar-esteem linkage is frequent and even normal response to a motor accident or faux pas: reflexively calling oneself "stupid," "dumb," "idiot," and even referring to the accident or dyscoordinated event as "ugly."

My studies and those of prior scientists (i.e., Lord Sherrington) recognized that cerebellar integration of [all] sensory [and motor] mechanisms, especially proprioception, or the sensors telling us where all our body parts and boundaries are in space, is crucial for determining the physiological based sense of body image. Accordingly, an impaired integration may result in feeling ugly, as well as related illusions/delusions of having deformed facial and and/or body characteristics, including feeling too fat, too short, having a long or poor nose structure, etc. And as previously indicated, it is quite possible that eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, etc.) are triggered by impaired eating reflexes as well as distorted body image mechanisms, often responding to conditioning and other therapies that may alleviate primary as well as codetermining mechanisms.

 

 

page 232 - 235 of Smart But Feeling Dumb by Harold N. Levinson, M.D.

 

Speech disturbances of varying intensity and quality characterize a majority of dyslexics. While some speech difficulties are readily apparent, the vast majority are subtle and are elicited upon careful questioning.

Many a future dyslexic will have been a late talker, while others will exhibit a variety of articulation or slurring speech errors requring speech therapy.

Episodic stuttering was found to taint dyslexic samples periodically, suggesting that there is a relationship between stuttering, dyslexia, and inner-ear dysfunction. Later studies of mine clearly verified this relationship.

As stated earlier, the inner ear imparts timing and rhythm to motor tasks, speech included. As a result of a disturbance in rhythmic activity, speech functions may become dysrhythmic errors.

The concept that rhythm is impaired in stuttering is supported by an interesting observation: Stuttering frequently disappears when individuals sing. Some researchers even notice improvement in stuttering when a metronome is placed next to the ear; the former acts as a rhythmic pacemaker. If rhythmic activity helps compensate for stuttering, then might we not further assume that a disturbance in rhythm underlies stuttering.

Starting and stopping speech activity in stuttering was found to be complicated by another factor already described--perseveration. In other words, a motor speech pattern becomes stuck and interferes with the normal speech flow. Not infrequently stuttering may also be triggered by difficulty pronouncing or recalling a word or thought. The resulting hesitation will invariably affect speech rhythms, especially if preexisting disturbances are already present.

The most common and subtle disturbances found among dyslexics often leading many to become shy and avoid unnecessary speaking, are input and output speech lages. In the presence of a drifting sound input, many dyslexics will hear the sound and not know its meaning until several seconds or even several minutes later. If the sound sequence coming into the brain drifts, it will take the thinking brain several seconds or several minutes to compensate for the processing disturbance, and the patient will frequently ask, "What?" This reflex response allows the patient time to compensate for the drifting input and eventually know what was said. Not infrequently, dyslexics will speak loudly, perhaps to compensate unknowingly for auditory processing difficulties.

If the motor speech responses drift, or if there are impaired word memory or concentration mechanisms, then there will be a lag between the intention to say something and the actual motor speech response. Memory disturbances for word and thought recall may so complicate the spontaneous speech flow that many dyslexics develop "loose," rambling, and disjointed speaking styles and are naturally viewed as scatterbrained. Some dyslexics often talk rapidly and even interrupt others before forgetting their thoughts. This "dyslexic speech style" must be clinically differentiated, by a clinician, from more serious neurological and psychological disturbances affecting speech process, such as those that underlie the loose and rambling speech of psychotic or aphasic patients. Not infrequently, dyslexics report a dyscoordination between the speed of their thought process and the speed with which their motor speech mechanisms are capable of working, often resulting in symptoms such as stuttering, word hesitation, and word or thought forgetting--resulting in speech or social phobias. (Similar mechanisms result in writing symptoms)

Directional disturbances frequently affect speech processing and result in word and even thought reversals. For this reason dyslexics are prone to slips of the tongue, saying words out of sequence, or reversal of directions such as up and down.

Concentration and distractibility disturbances may further complicate all of the above speech disturbances and give the mistaken impression of a hearing loss. Hearing tests are recommended in these circumstances.

The inability to inhibit or block out extraneous background noises or speech patterns while listening to someone nearby or in the foreground may result in severe confusion for some dyslexics. The background contaminates and scrambles the foreground sound sequence and results in an overall sound blurring. This type of situation is frequently present in crowds and restaurants and was found to result in crowd and restaurant phobias, etc.

 

 

page 265 of Smart But Feeling Dumb by Harold N. Levinson, M.D.

Perceptual and Crowd Phobias

 

Perhaps you are now curious about the relationship between crowd phobias and dyslexia. I was, too!

Dyslexics have reported experiencing sensations of dizziness, imbalance, almost a loss of consciousness, while looking at certain wallpaper designs, book patterns in libraries, can configurations in food stores, clothing patterns in department stores, or "moving-people patterns" along New York City's crowded streets. Upon testing a wide range of these dyslexics with my 3-D Optical Scanner, I advertently provoked these very same responses. It became apparent that visual patterns or visual crowds may trigger motion sickness and anxiety reactions in a fashion similar to the motion triggers--buses, cars, planes, elevators, escalators, and carnival rides. Moreover, these visually triggered symptoms frequently responded very favorably to medications, and the phobia either lessened or disappeared.

Noise patterns or crowds, even smells, may serve to discombolate some dyslexics. They will avoid parties and restaurants and hence suffer from social phobias, restaurant phobias, etc.

 

 

page 266 of Smart But Feeling Dumb by Harold N. Levinson, M.D.

Speech Phobias; Public Speaking Phobias

 

The recognition that auditory discrimination and speech mechanisms of an inner-ear origin are often subtly impaired in dyslexics, and that the resulting symptoms and associated anxiety improve significantly on inner-ear-enhancing medications, led to a simple insight: that speech and social phobics may have an inner-ear dysfunction and thus dyslexic-related symptoms. Indeed, a series of research efforts over many years has proven this insight to be scientifically valid.

 

 

page 41 of A Solution to the Riddle Dyslexia by Harold N. Levinson, M.D.

 

Occasionally, dyslexics were considered to be negativistic on the basis of their hesitant, ambivalent, and anxiety-laden avoidance of handshaking and/or eye contact. Only in retrospect were these "anti-social" avoidance symptoms recognized to be due to primary somatic, rather than primary psychogenic, disturbances. Thus, upon neurodynamic exploration, hand contact was avoided because of right/left uncertainty and the anticipated embarassment of using the wrong. hand. In a similar fashion, upon analysis, eye contact was avoided in order to minimize (1) ocular perseveration, (2) directionally confused and dysmetric ocular ocular scanning mechanisms, and (3) the catastrophic discomfort triggered when "forced" to fixate moving facial features during communication.

For some dyslexics, simultaneous listening and looking were more than they could "take" physiologically, and as a result they tended to sacrifice direction-dependent looking or eye contact in order to preserve the direction and sequence of auditory verbalizations and comprehension. In retrospect, it appeared as if dyslexics could not simultaneously coordinate and integrate directional and/or sequential visual, auditory, proprioceptive, and motor processing.