Zoe Saldaña Highlights 1 Lesser-Known Dyslexia Symptom In Emotional Golden Globes Speech
Zoe Saldaña delivered an impassioned acceptance speech after winning her first-ever Golden Globe award at the ceremony on Sunday night. During her moment onstage, she talked about living with dyslexia and how the condition played a role into why she was nervous about speaking in front of the crowd.
Her speech was a reminder that there are several symptoms of dyslexia that are less commonly talked about.
The actor won the award for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture for her role as Rita in musical crime thriller “Emilia Pérez.” Saldaña, who has opened upabout having both dyslexia and anxiety before, talked about being dyslexic at the beginning of her speech onstage.
“I know I don’t have much time, and I have dyslexia so I tend to forget when I’m really anxious — and I’m filled with adrenaline,” she said as she fought back tears.
The actor told ExtraTV later that night that she was dealing with anxiety in the days leading up to the award ceremony since she knows her condition can cause her to “go blank,” when “adrenaline kicks in and nerves kick in.”
“I was just so afraid of not recognizing people — acknowledging people onstage that are responsible for me being where I am,” she said about her speech.
Dyslexia is a “learning disability that makes reading and language-related tasks harder,” according to the Cleveland Clinic, which notes that most people learn they have it during childhood, and that it’s typically a lifelong condition.
While many people may associate dyslexia with reversing or jumbling letters, experts have pointed out that that’s not an entirely accurate way to define the condition.
In fact, it is common for people with dyslexia (such as Saldaña) to struggle with “expressing themselves in oral presentations,” according to Dr. Lawrence Fung, a physician-scientist specializing in autism and neurodiversity, and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
“Dyslexic people can ‘go blank’ while on stage, especially in high-stakes situations and especially when they are prone to overwhelming levels of anxiety,” he told HuffPost. “Typically, we describe this as a challenge in rote memory.” (Rote memory is a technique that involves memorizing information based on repetition, and without comprehension.)
Saldaña told Variety in October that she has avoided pursuing certain acting roles with wordy scripts in the past due to having dyslexia, and that she has overcome her concerns about taking on roles with a lot of dialogue by requesting scripts weeks in advance so she could memorize them.
“I would memorize, memorize, memorize, and by the time that scene would come, it was an extension of who I was — like ballet,” she said.
Fung said that it’s common for people with dyslexia to have challenges with presenting many facts orally, and that that is often “due to their difficulties in language processing.”
He explained that another contributing factor for this challenge could be that people with dyslexia have a high co-occurrence of anxiety conditions.
“Too much anxiety can affect a person’s ability to perform, including saying everything that a person intends to say,” he said.
The Cleveland Clinic notes that learning to read involves connecting sounds to written letters, and that dyslexia interferes with how one’s “brain uses spoken language to ‘decode’ writing.”
“Your brain has trouble processing what you read,” the website states, pointing out that the slowdown in processing can cause several symptoms, such as: slowed reading, difficulties in writing and spelling, challenges with how you store words and their meanings in your memory and issues with forming sentences to communicate complex ideas.
According to Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, some adults with dyslexia may struggle with retrieving words, have challenges with correct pronunciations and may have difficulty with remembering names of people and places.
Fung said that some other lesser-known symptoms of dyslexia include challenges with time awareness and challenges with working memory, which refers to one’s ability to briefly retain a small amount of information that’s readily accessible for them to use.
Some people may immediately associate dyslexia with a condition affecting children, but it continues throughout one’s lifetime — and some people don’t receive a diagnosis until adulthood. Moreover, research has suggested that Black children with dyslexia in elementary school may be more likely to go undiagnosed compared to their white counterparts.
Read on to hear from experts in the field about what you should do if you suspect you or your child has dyslexia, and some common misconceptions about the condition:
What are some misconceptions about dyslexia?
Samantha Gesel, an assistant professor of the practice of special education at Vanderbilt University, told HuffPost that she believes it’s important for people to keep in mind that “dyslexia is language-based, rather than visually-based.”
“That means that it isn’t related to visual processing needs,” she said. “Research has also demonstrated the neurobiological genetic links to dyslexia.”
Gesel, who serves as the assistant director to the Roberts Academy and Dyslexia Center at Vanderbilt University, a school for students with dyslexia, said that misconceptions about people with dyslexia were more prevalent in previous generations due to “incorrect assumptions that the difficulties in word reading and spelling were somehow related to a lack of effort or intelligence.”
“We now know dyslexia is not due to either of these factors,” she said.
Gesel said that the common misconception that dyslexia is a visually-based condition can cause an over-emphasis on some characteristics more commonly associated with it, such as letter reversals.
An emphasis on characteristics like letter reversals can cause children with dyslexia, who don’t make letter reversals, to go undiagnosed, DyslexiaHelp, a web-based information and resource center under the School of Education at the University of Michigan, states on its website.
Fung said that he believes the general public tends to know about the challenges people with dyslexia face, but not their strengths.
“Dyslexic people are often highly creative and observant problem solvers and have excellent social skills,” he said. “With determination and adequate support, they can be very successful even in all kinds of careers, including those that require a lot of reading, writing and oral presentations.”
Do symptoms differ between adults and children?
Dyslexia is presented on a broad spectrum, Fung explained. How one is impacted by dyslexia depends on the severity of their symptoms, whether they have co-occurring conditions and the level to which they are able to compensate for their challenges, he said.
Children with dyslexia often face difficulties in reading, spelling and writing, Fung said, adding that they also often have trouble with phonics.
“When children with dyslexia are not supported in the classroom properly, they can exhibit significant frustration and avoidance behaviors,” he said.
Gesel pointed out that the “instruction a child receives matters greatly.”
“When children are more impacted by dyslexia, they may require additional practice opportunities and more explicit, systematic, intensive intervention to build up their word reading skills,” she said.
It may still take adults with dyslexia longer to read, Gesel explained, adding that adults may also continue to have difficulty with spelling.
However some characteristics unique to adults with dyslexia may include difficulty learning a foreign language and note-taking for more advanced coursework, she said.
Fung added that while adults who are dyslexic may have developed “compensation strategies” to help address dyslexia symptoms, they may struggle with work-related tasks that involve writing and deadlines.
What should you do if you suspect you or your child has dyslexia?
There are several evaluation testing techniques to get a diagnosis for dyslexia.
If you suspect your child has dyslexia, Gesel recommends you bring that concern to their school.
“Being assessed is the first step to making sure that the proper interventions and accommodations are in place to ensure your child will be properly supported,” she said.
“The earlier your child can get these supports, the better,” she added.
But Gesel emphasized that while early reading intervention matters, “it is never too late” to get reading support since you “don’t outgrow dyslexia.”
As for adults, she added that there are “so many assistive technologies that exist to minimize” the effects of the condition.
“When people with dyslexia are understood and supported adequately, they can be successful and contribute creative ideas and solutions to the educational and employment settings,” Fung added.
