“So, you are not an Educational Psychologist?” Many times, I have been confronted with this question and found myself at a loss for words. After all, when I was at UBC as a Ph.D. student, everybody seemed to understand what I was doing.  Who cared as long as the research question was interesting and I was OK with the statistical analyses!

Out here in the “real” world, “end users” such as parents and educators are concerned about “funding” and “labeling.” If there is a name for the problem, there is the possibility for accessing “funding” and getting additional educational support for the child. I can’t blame them for being practical and so, I’ve decided to try and make myself useful by doing a little “Adult Education” here.

Here is a simple “memory aid” for all you confused folks: ☺

1. Educational Psychologists are supposed to be “experts” in testing. They know what tests screen what. They test everything from “depression” to “dyslexia”.
2. Dr. Winnifred Tang, yours truly, has a Ph.D. from UBC in Special Education dealing with learning disabilities. Her doctoral research examined the cognitive profiles of learning disabled children from an ESL (English as a Second Language) background. These are the children with reading disability (dyslexia) and arithmetic disability (dyscalculia).

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Summer went by quickly like a fast-forward movie. We barely had time to catch our breath and before you know it, the children are back to school and everything is all of a sudden happening in full swing!

Here, I think it is the right time to do a little refresher on what “reading disability” is. The following was written for the benefit of our readers who are teachers or parents of dyslexic children:

Medical Name: Dyslexia (reading disability)

Clinical Features
Cases usually present themselves as seemingly normal children whose reading ability lag behind that of their peers. Characteristics include:

• Poor spelling
• Early word recognition
• Poor grammar (e.g. syntax)
• Poor recall of content read
• Speed of reading extremely low
• Inaccurate reading (e.g. skip lines and words)
• Hesitant reader
• Nervous during reading
• Avoids and dislike reading
• Poor recall of verbally given information/instructions
• Uncomfortable in noisy environment where reception of audio information may be more difficult

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