Jessica Simpson Reveals She Has Dyslexia After Recording Her Audiobook “Without Hesitation”

Photo credit: Gotham - Getty Images
Photo credit: Gotham - Getty Images
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From Prevention

Jessica Simpson revealed a lot about her past battles with addiction, trauma, and body image issues when she released her memoir, Open Book, in early 2020. In a new Instagram post, she opened up even more: She has dyslexia.

Simpson revealed her diagnosis after the recorded version of Open Book was named one of the best audiobooks of the year from Apple Books. “Turning my fears into wisdom has been a soulful journey to say the least. I appreciate the power of this praise with all of my heart,” Simpson wrote. “Fact: I’m dyslexic and this was the first time I have ever read out loud without hesitation. I did it for the listener. I did it for my family. I did it for myself.”

Dyslexia is a brain-based type of learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). People with dyslexia often read at levels that are significantly lower than expected for their age, despite having normal intelligence.

Simpson didn’t share details of her condition, including when she was diagnosed or how she discovered she was dyslexic. But it is one of the most common learning disabilities that affects children and adults, with up to 17% of school-age children in the U.S. being diagnosed with the disorder, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Here’s what you should know about dyslexia, including its symptoms, whether or not it can affect you later in life, and what treatment looks like.

What are the symptoms of dyslexia?

You may have heard that people with dyslexia see letters or words backwards, but the AAP says that’s a myth. Instead, people with dyslexia often have “significant difficulty” naming letters. Words may also blend together and spaces between words can be lost.

The symptoms of dyslexia vary depending on age. According to the Mayo Clinic, these are the main signs to look out for, broken down by age:

In young children:

  • Late talking

  • Learning new words slowly

  • Problems forming words correctly, like confusing words that sound similar

  • Problems remembering or naming letters, numbers, and colors

  • Difficulty learning nursery rhymes or playing rhyming games

In school-age children:

  • Reading well below the expected level for age

  • Problems processing and understanding what they hear

  • Difficulty finding the right word or forming answers to questions

  • Problems remembering the sequence of things

  • Difficulty seeing (and occasionally hearing) similarities and differences in letters and words

  • Inability to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word

  • Difficulty spelling

  • Spending an unusually long time doing tasks that involve reading or writing

  • Avoiding activities that involve reading

Photo credit: Hearst Owned
Photo credit: Hearst Owned

In teens and adults:

  • Difficulty reading, including reading aloud

  • Slow and labor-intensive reading and writing

  • Problems spelling

  • Avoiding activities that involve reading

  • Mispronouncing names or words, or problems retrieving words

  • Trouble understanding jokes or expressions that have a meaning not easily understood from the specific words, like “piece of cake” meaning “easy”

  • Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing

  • Difficulty summarizing a story

  • Trouble learning a foreign language

  • Difficulty memorizing

  • Difficulty doing math problems

Can you be diagnosed with dyslexia later in life?

While dyslexia is most often diagnosed in school-age children, it’s possible to be both diagnosed with the disorder as an adult and to develop it as an adult, the NINDS says.

Some adults may never have been identified as having dyslexia when they were children or teens, leading to a diagnosis later in life. But those who are diagnosed with adult-onset dyslexia usually develop the condition as a result of a brain injury or in the context of dementia.

While educators and doctors do a good job at spotting dyslexia symptoms now, that wasn’t always the case, says Robert Keder, M.D., a developmental pediatrician at Connecticut Children’s. As a result, it’s possible to be an adult and not realize you have dyslexia.

“If you struggled with reading a lot in school, you feel like you’re continuing to struggle, and it’s getting in the way of your work or life, absolutely talk to your doctor about it,” Dr. Keder says. “There is a chance you might have dyslexia.”

However, simply having difficulty reading isn’t a slam dunk for a dyslexia diagnosis, says Ami Norris-Briliant, Psy.D., clinical director of the Division of ADHD, Learning Disabilities, and Related Disorders in the department of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York “There are many reasons why someone would have trouble reading beyond just dyslexia,” she points out, including ADHD or memory issues.

How is dyslexia diagnosed?

There is no single test to diagnose dyslexia. Instead, doctors may run patients through a series of tests as part of a comprehensive evaluation. “First, we look at the difference between someone’s reading abilities and their intellectual ability. There has to be a significant difference between the two,” Norris-Briliant says.

Then, doctors look for something known as phonological processing. “This is the process by which people hear and interpret sounds and sound blends,” Norris-Briliant explains. “If you do not hear the sounds clearly and distinctly, then it becomes very hard to match sounds and letters appropriately. That’s the process that underlies reading.”

As an adult, diagnosis often includes a consultation and evaluation with a neuropsychologist, Dr. Keder says.

Can dyslexia be treated?

Treatment can vary depending on the symptoms a person is experiencing, per the NINDS. Typically, teaching methods will be modified to help a person’s learning disability, which may involve the following, according to the Mayo Clinic:

  • Learning to recognize and use the smallest sounds that make up words

  • Understanding that letters and strings of letters represent certain sounds and words

  • Comprehension work on what the patient is reading

  • Reading aloud to build reading accuracy, speed, and expression

  • Building a vocabulary of recognized and understood words

Receiving a dyslexia diagnosis doesn’t mean reading will always be difficult. “If someone is diagnosed and gets the proper treatment, which is a specialized, sequential, multi-sensory instruction, reading can get significantly easier,” Norris-Briliant says. “Dyslexic people can become fluent readers with the right intervention.”

If Simpson serves as an example, it looks like they can become top-selling authors, too.


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