By tracing letters of a word people with "word blindness" can read again, Loyola University Medical Center researchers found.
"Word Blindness" is a neurological disorder where people can write and understand a word but can't read it. This is because they fail to recognize the letters in the word. Researchers of a new study describe how a new technique can help such patients read, according to a press release.
They found that by tracing letters of a word through letters of the alphabet, people with this disorder can read again. For example when a patient is shown the word "Pen", he mentally traces all the letters of alphabet over the letter P until he finally gets a match and then moves on to the next letter in the word. This way he can correctly recognize the word after matching all the letters.
"To see this curious adaption in practice is to witness the very unique and focal nature" Jason Cuomo, Murray Flaster, MD, PhD and Jose Biller, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center said in a statement.
Biller then went on to narrate an incident when a 40-year-old kindergarten teacher suddenly found herself suffering from this rare disorder. Owing to the disorder she was unable to read her lesson plans or tell time. The disorder was caused due to a stroke. Since she was an avid reader, she was determined to find a technique that could help her read again. This inspired her to develop this new technique.
Researchers found that even though she couldn't read, she did show an emotional response to a few words. For example, when she was shown the word "dessert" she immediately said she liked the word and found something "off" about the word asparagus. When shown two letters that came in the mail she could correctly identify which one was from a friend, though she couldn't read which friend it was from.
"When asked who these friends were, she could not say, but their names nevertheless provoked an emotional response that served as a powerful contextual clue," the authors concluded.
