WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

This is on point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi. We're joined today by Tim Odegaard. He's professor of psychology

and chairholder of the Murphy Chair of Excellence in Dyslexic Studies at Middle Tennessee State University.

He's also host of the podcast, Dyslexia Uncovered.

Professor O'Degard, welcome to On Point.

Thanks for having me.

I would love it if you could sort of take us back into your own childhood as a start.

When you were in second or third grade and you were in school

and you had sitting at your desk with a book or an assignment in front of you,

Professor Ottegaard, can you describe to us exactly, you know,

what you saw as you tried to read?

Well, that's a great question. I saw a page full of words, a words that I knew that most of them,

if I couldn't recognize them by sight from memorization, I probably wouldn't be able to read

and pronounce. And I always worried

and dread with this nauseous feeling that a teacher or a classmate or somebody would call on me

and ask me to read those pages, read in front of them. So when you say that it wasn't a word that you

could recognize by sight, so like if you saw the word

school and you had already known, memorized what that whole word was, you were okay. Correct. That's my

compensation as I've memorized and crammed a bunch of words that I've memorized over my life into my head.

Okay. I don't mean to pry, but I think for many people who do not have... crammed a bunch of words that I've memorized over my life into my head.

Okay.

I don't mean to pry, but I think for many people who do not have dyslexia or any kind of word processing challenges, it's hard to understand how when you see the word, you know, for example, university, right?

...