THE 3 R’s

READING RIGHTING REHABILITATION

Neurological Rehabilitation
THE DELACATO METHOD

Contents.

Chapter 1 THE ONTOGENY OF READING PROBLEMS

Chapter 2 NEUROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER ONE

THE ONTOGENY OF READING PROBLEMS

Dr Carl H Delacato

The ability to learn to read, the ability to learn to express oneself starts from birth on. If one is not afforded the opportunity to develop total neurological organization, the child cannot become totally human and as a result cannot communicate at the level, at which the child might have been able to, had neurological organization been completed.

Based on the rationale of neurological organization, prevention of communication dysfunction is very possible. It must be based, however, on the premise that there are significant developmental stages of neurological organization which cannot be bypassed, and as the child reaches each stage chronologically he must be given every opportunity to master the functional neurological activities at that level before moving on to the next. With such a logical approach to child education we could, in the future, become able to prevent the problems which face us today by seeing that every child is given opportunity to develop wholly and completely in terms of functional neurological organization.

The title, ” The Ontogeny of Reading Problems” is I am sure somewhat surprising. Instead of this title, we could entitle this paper, “ The Development of a Reading Problem”. In the field of the language arts, we have spent our greatest efforts in attempts to ameliorate such problems and it is my purpose here to present to you the development of such problems. Perhaps, viewing, our language problems from this point of view might give us a somewhat different form of insight into the types of problems which we encounter with children who are disabled in some phase of language and communication functions.

We would all agree that reading is a developmental process. I am sure that we would all agree that agree that reading is basically a receptive act, that it consists primarily of visual reception and, at some levels, auditory reception and perhaps kinesthetic reception are involved. We also know that we, as educators and as a reflection of a culture, measure the proficiency with which a human being deals with the process called reading, via expressive modalities. We, therefore, measure what is basically a receptive act by its expressive concomitants.

If we follow this sequentially we have the fact that the reading process is basically receptive and that we measure the effectiveness of the reading process primarily expressively .If one, therefore, has difficulty with the reading process, we know that he has difficulty with it because he lacks expressively, since we measure his function via an expressive mode.

Carried on step further, we ascertain the aggregate expressive distillate of the perceptual process of reading. We evaluate the percepts by measuring and evaluating the concepts formed on formed on the basis of those perceptual skills.

In the past we have confused the process of learning and mastery of communication skills by going from concept, which, we use as our measuring technique, back to percept. We must all agree that logically we develop perceptually and then move on to concept in the development of language abilities.

The great majority of our reading problems are receptive problems. They are problems of perception .We find that, even those children suffering from a lack of comprehension, which certainly indicates a conceptual lack, are suffering, not from conceptual problems but from perceptual problems. When we give such children instructions orally we find that they can understand and comprehend and conceptualize the same words and sentences which they cannot comprehend and conceptualize via reading. Our natural conclusion must be that this is the result of poor percepts on which they are basing their resulting inadequate concepts.

Receptive problems are the result of faulty or incomplete neurological organization. These problems are created long before educators, ever see the children. These perceptive problems can be diagnosed long before children are generally seen in pre-schools. These problems can be treated long before educators see them in schools. Finally these problems can be can be prevented.

A lack of adequate neurological organization can be the result of a genetic bias. This represents a very small percentage of our problems .A second area of etiology is a trauma This again is a small percentage of our population .The third etiological area is the area of lack of environmental opportunity for complete neurological organization. This group represents by far the greatest majority of our problems in the area of communication.

Diagnostically we can begin to assess the etiology of such problems prior to birth. A family history helps to give us an insight into the existence of that small group which is potentially genetic in etiology. Birth data of early childhood illness and trauma give us an insight into the second small group, the group which is the result of a traumatic etiology.

The third, and by far the largest group (that group which is the result of environmental deprivation) can be seen if we view the child in sequential stages from a developmental and functional neurological bias.

For our purposes of looking at the development of a reading problem, let us look at this largest group. Let us look at the significant stages of development to see how the lack of opportunity for complete neurological organization at each successive stage of neurological development relates to the ontogeny of a reading problem. For our purposes, let look at the successive stages receptively in terms of audition, vision and expressively in terms of movement.

As the child who has had a non-traumatic birth arrives at 3 to 20 weeks of age we find that his mobility consists of creeping on his stomach in a homolateral pattern. That is, the child moves forward with the arm and leg on the same side of the body extended and the arm and leg on the opposite side of the body flexed. His head turns toward the flexed side and as he moves, this body position is reversed. The mobility is aimed in a two-dimensional world toward seeking vital and basically crude comfort. If we view the child at this age from a visual point of view, we note that this body position places eyes in such a position that the child is binocular in visual performance. That is, as the right arm and leg come up, the right eye looks at the right hand, the left eye does not. It remains somewhat strabismic. As the position is reversed, the left eye looks at the left hand and the right eye has no part in the visual process. At this stage the child operates visually binocularly, using only one eye at a time just as one side of the body at a time in the homolateral pattern.

The same is true in audition. At this stage the child cannot place sound in space simply because auditorially the child receives the stimulus from one ear or the other. This total performance lies performance lies in terms of neurological organization at the level of the Pons. This is basically a one-sided level of function. Mobility is homolateral, or one side used for propulsion at a time, vision is binocular, audition is binaural.

When the child moves on to the level of the mid – brain at the age of 7-9 months, we find a whole new area of function arising. The child, in terms of mobility, adds the third dimension to movement. The child now crawls on hands and knees and the stomach is no longer in contact with the floor. Significantly, as the child moves now, the opposite appendages are used for propulsion. In other words as the child moves, the right hand and left knee are used at one time and then the left hand and right knee are used for propulsion. The child has become a cross- patterned organism. The child no longer one-sided, but now is distinctly two -sided. The child has become a bilateral human being.

In vision, at this stage, the child begins to use eyes in concert. The child no longer uses one eye at a time in a monocular fashion. Instead, the child uses the two eyes in concert and here is the beginning of binocularity. Those children who present to us later in the developmental picture a lack of good binocularity are children who have not been given adequate opportunity to develop binocularity at this stage of development, which is the responsibility of the mid-brain. Such children, who are not given adequate opportunities for creeping, later develop problems for which binocularity is a variable.

In audition the same phenomenon takes place at the level of mid-brain. During the 7 to 9 month development levels the child learns to place a sound in space. The child becomes binaural, that is, tends to use two ears in concert. The stimuli are mediated and the child can place a sound in space.

We have all seen these children to whom we could not teach phonetics, no matter how hard we tried. In our investigations we find that those children are lacking in this very basic binaural skill, which is a function of mid-brain and not of the cortex, as we had assumed in the past. Children who are not afforded the opportunities for development at the level of mid-brain in the area of vision, mobility and audition at the ages of 7 to 9 months are beginning to develop significant problems in communication. If they lack binocularity, binaural function and mid-brain overall responsiveness we have started them on their way toward a disability in language.

As children reach one year of age they become cortical creatures and they move from bilateral activity, binocular and binaural, to a new level of function, that is stereo or depth within their receptive and expressive mobilities. Children from the age of one on begin to develop stereopsis in vision. This must be superimposed upon strong binocularity. They begin to develop stereophonic abilities in hearing which must be superimposed upon strong binaural activities. They begin to develop true cross –patterned walking which must be superimposed upon the more elemental mid-brain cross-pattern crawling. Indeed at this time in the other areas of receptiveness they have developed from the level of the Pons, at which they were able to receptively discriminate between very painful and very strong stimuli along to the point at the level of the cortex wherein they have developed complete stereagnosis receptively.

In a few short years from birth the child has moved from being one-sided to being two-sided and now must move on to the final human level, that of developing or superimposing upon this developmental continuum cortical hemispheric dominance. Here is where man is unique in neurological terms. Man is the only creature who has developed one hemisphere, which is dominant over the other hemisphere. As a result man is the only creature who has a symbolic language.

As a child begins to make early choices of sidedness, the culture must give opportunities to reinforce this sidedness so that the child develops complete unilaterality, which results in one-sidedness, the child can begin the process of becoming completely human in terms of his receptive and expressive abilities.

This sequential continuum, called neurological organization, ends at about the age of six, or about the age when generally we begin the formal teaching of reading. To recap, the whole process of development of readiness to read begins at birth. It goes on to the level of Pons , which functions in an alternating one-sidedness, to the level of the mid-brain which is two-sidedness, to the level of the cortex, which encompasses stereo functions, to the level of the development of complete cortical hemispheric dominance. This continuum forms the basis of human perceptual abilities.

Perception is a fundamental process. We learn to see in varying stages and in varying ways; we learn to move in varying stages and varying ways; we learn to hear in varying stages and varying ways; we learn to feel in varying stages and varying ways. There are no shortcuts to these developmental processes in any of the sensory modalities, sequentially, logically and according to the development of the human nervous system. Only by going through the process as nature intended it to be can we form good perceptual abilities.

Superimposed upon the development of perceptual abilities are the apperception’s which we build from our experiences which, in turn, result in conceptualization and the ultimate in reading, which is human conceptual comprehension. The ability to learn to read and the ability to learn to express oneself starts from birth on. If one is not afforded the opportunity to develop this total neurological organization, they cannot become totally human, and as a result, cannot communicate at the level at which they might have been able to, had the neurological organization been complete.

To diagnose our language problems, therefore, we must start at the age at which we first see the child, but we must look back developmentally to the original area of the dysfunction. As a result, it may be that in terms of the diagnosis, some of our children are not well developed at the level of the Pons, some at the level of the mid- brain, some at the level of the cortex and some at the level at cortical hemispheric dominance. If we are to diagnose validly and reliably, we must go through each succeeding stage to assess the mastery of function at each stage.

Treatment must also follow this sequence. In treatment we must go back to the original point of departure from development norms and we must re-create for that brain level and that chronological level, those functions so that the child can go through the proper developmental stages and begin to move on to the establishment of complete neurological organization .In, we must start at the lowest level at which there appears to be a lack of neurological organization and we must give the child the opportunity to master the activities and functions of that level and of each succeeding level until we have mastered complete cortical hemispheric dominance.

Based on the rationale of neurological organization, prevention of communication dysfunction is very possible. It must be based, however, on the premise that there are significant development stages of neurological organization which cannot be by-passed and as the child reaches each stage chronologically he must be given every opportunity to master the functional neurological activities at that level before moving on to the next. With such a logical approach to child education we could, in the future, become able to prevent the problems which face us in education today by seeing that every child is given opportunity to develop wholly and completely in terms of functional neurological organization.

(Presented to Claremont Reading Conference 1963)

Chapter Two: NEUROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION>>

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