Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Dyslexia, inconsistent performance, and chess

My son has been diagnosed with stealth dyslexia. He is highly gifted, but shows many of the weaknesses of a dyslexic, including poor handwriting, and poor spelling. He is 10 years old.

He has been playing competitive chess since he was five years old, and is very strong in many ways. His coach feels bewildered, however, by my son's ability to think deeply about the board and understand many things that are going on, but his inability to consistently apply this knowledge.

His coach will show that my son knows something, has applied it before, but then will not apply it at another similar situation in a different game. We are trying to understand what is happening. My son's coach says that he doesn't see other kids do this. I am wondering if it is related to dyslexia.I would like to help my son figure this out. This is frustrating for him. He loves chess, and he works hard at it, and he can beat a very strong player one day, but in the very next game, lose to a weaker player. As a result, his rating is not rising as fast as some of the other kids that he plays with.

I should say that this only matters because it is a life lesson. I want him to realize that if he works hard at something, he will improve. And if he isn't improving, I want to help him understand why, and maybe find a solution. And I want to support him in his love of chess.If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

I haven't seen a lot of consistent information about about the impacts of dyslexia on areas beyond phonological processing. I think perhaps dyslexia so often co-exists with other challenges that accompanying issues can be mixed up with related ones. I for one would very much like to know if there are different needs or approaches we should be taking to math with our DD.

The Eides certainly believe there are rote memory/ retrieval issues associated with stealth dyslexia, and point to a recent article on challenges in math. The Yale centre also has some work around mathematical thinking, though what I've seen so far seems a little ad hoc compared to their reading research. As a final thought, there's some interesting, tentative research suggesting dyslexia may cause visual tracking issues (note: not be caused by!) - which I could certainly see affecting chess performance if true.

It's always said that the hallmark of an LD is inconsistent performance. Some days the stars align, and they can bring all sorts of compensatory mechanisms into play and successfully work around the LD. Other days, they just can't quite pull it off, and instead work to their "normal" level as dictated by their LD. I personally think this goes double for 2E, as their compensatory mechanisms can be so impressive we can easily take for granted that they are working at a "natural level", not one achieved by superhuman effort in using their strengths to bypass their weaknesses.

Eides: http://blog.dyslexicadvantage.org/2015/03/10/students-with-dyslexia-solve-math-differently/

Evans on math: http://www.researchgate.net/publica..._in_children_with_developmental_dyslexia

Yale: http://dyslexia.yale.edu/math.html

No idea what to do here, but variable performance seems perfectly normal to me, since it's how I operate. Pressure often makes my performance better, though.

And you don't necessarily improve at something because you work hard at it. You have to be working in the right way and learning the right things, so something is probably off here.

We see inconsistency when the learning still in an immature stage. My kids can often grasp a concept and explain it before it's internalized. Their teachers see the explanation and occasional application at a high level, and then expect it to be consistently applied. They are often baffled when it's not achieved. And yet, each kid needs more time to process the learning before it's automatic.

I attribute this to yet another aspect of asynchronous development.

Among the possible core deficits in dyslexia are weaknesses in phonological processing, orthographic mapping, working memory, and retrieval efficiency. The latter two of these overlap with dyscalculia, and often with dysgraphia, as well.

I am going to speculate that a child with working memory and/or retrieval efficiency deficits might have challenges with consistently applying chess strategies, because, for example, although the patterns are in long-term storage, accessing them efficiently and on-demand, and then holding them in working memory long enough to use, occurs through an intermittent or convoluted mental pathway. Just as he needs to overlearn core skills in encoding and decoding written language to reach automaticity, he may need to practice new chess skills far beyond the point at which he grasps them conceptually, to attain automaticity, which is what what he will need to apply them consistently in competition. Practice under conditions as similar to the settings in which they are expected to be applied will also be most effective, as it will provide him with additional environmental cues for retrieval. (This is the reasoning behind studying in the classroom where you will be taking the big test.)

It certainly could be the LD, but my son also plays chess and I see a lot of inconsistency in his performance. It's true of many children in his age range (my son is 7--IDK how old yours is), perhaps most especially those with a lot of potential who do not practice that much. That is, they may have flashes of brilliance but also they may blunder and miss the obvious.

There is a lot of grunt work in chess...much more than I first realized. Your son might benefit from playing and replaying positions against a computer until they're really solidified in his brain. Chesskid.com has some great exercises, but you have to pay for the really helpeful stuff.

aeh is much more knowledgable than I am re the technical details, and I'm not a chess player (and neither is my ds), but fwiw, the need to repeat things in order to learn them much more than you'd anticipate based on intellectual ability is something that shows up in places other than handwriting for my dysgraphic ds, so if he happened to be a chess player I wouldn't be at all surprised if he had the same type of challenge. I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I think your ds has a dysgraphia diagnosis in addition to dyslexia?

polarbear

Yes, Polarbear, dysgraphia too. What a good memory! Thanks for all your replies. I think this is feeling right. He is a pretty advanced tournament player with a lot of experience, and he studies tactics every day. He is almost 11, so the little kid inconsistency explanation is starting to sound less convincing. I do think it is the retrieval/automaticity/procedural learning deficit. This is really encouraging to have an explanation and therefore a strategy.

He was at the state championship this past weekend. He won against a player rated 900, then dropped a game against someone rated 200. This is not happening to his teammates, so I figured there had gone something...

Thanks!

Is his mood changing between the games? Does he feel like he can't think during the games he is losing or anything like that?

I suppose you could do a quick post-game "what were you feeling" or something like that to get more data if it does not seem to be a retrieval/automaticity/procedural learning deficit.

I have been taking my children to a local chess club for a few years. Not consistently applying what they know is the norm, not the exception, for junior players (and many adults). They all know that they should not give away pieces and should capture free pieces of their opponents. The higher rated children do this more often than the lower rated ones, but with well less than 100% accuracy. I am a chess master. Watching my children play is ... interesting.

Does he take notation? That helps so much in reviewing what happened afterwards. If you know something about chess, you may be able to spot some patterns. Maybe he's moving too fast?

Sometimes issues in chess are emotional, too, not psychological. I have seen kids lose due to overconfidence and due to being "psyched out" from a previous loss.

Ratings are awfully deceptive sometimes, so losing to a 200 might not be as bad as it sounds. And the 900 kid could have blundered badly. I find you can't learn much about the game from ratings and win/loss...have to look at the notation.

He has been notating for years and goes over all games with his coach. The issue isn't inconsistency per se, it is inconsistency in excess of other boys of a similar age and rating class. His coach, who is excellent, works with lots of kids, and has known DS for years, says "he is not like the other kids. I don't know what to make of him." The coach says his rating should be about 1100 based on his chess reasoning ability, but his actual rating right now is in the 700's. He chronically underperforms in tournaments, but he loves to play in them, and does not get particularly anxious.

Does he ever play online? I wonder what his rating might be in that environment. Is he better (or conversely, much worse) with blitz? I mean, obviously his coach would be much more knowledgable than I would!--just thinking there could be a lot of ways to get at the "What's going on here?" problem. It's an interesting one.

Aeh, I cut and pasted your paragraph and sent it to his coach and said "is this what you see?" And he said, "Yes! where did you get that?!" So now I think we can develop a plan to help him. Thanks so much to everyone who replied. I am so, so grateful!

I had another "aha!" about this subject that I thought I would share here in case someone finds this thread in the future who has a similar question. DS started playing chess when he was 5, and was almost immediately good at it, winning many tournaments easily when he was 6. At that point, chess was largely about spatial relationships -- a strength for dyslexics. At his current level, chess involves more procedural memory -- memorizing complex openings, and tactics and such. This is a weakness for dyslexics.

So actually, his inconsistent chess performance makes a lot of sense when considered from this angle.

I am really hopeful that we can help him "overlearn" the chess strategies he needs so that he can continue to enjoy playing and competing -- and learn some valuable life lessons into the bargain. Thanks again.

My son was inconsistent too. Fyi he has ADHD and a language processing disorder. He's never played competitively, but he was kind of obsessed with it when he was six. He was sometime spot on (he'd beat me and his older sister) and other times he was totally on the moon and couldn't win to save his life.

A third variation is sometimes he'd take a dive to prematurely end a game if he thought he couldn't win. Then he'd want to start a new game, and sure enough, if he got too far behind, he'd place himself in checkmate to end the game. It was very obvious (I even called him on it and he owned up to it). The whole thing felt very perfectionism related.

Anyway he was six, so at that age inconsistency is par for the course with most things. Plus he was playing purely out of interest whereas Gabalyn your son has a more mature objective (ie competition, skill building, self-improvement, etc)

You mentioned this: "I do think it is the retrieval/automaticity/procedural learning deficit." ...this rings true to me. With my son's language processing issue and his ADHD, part of his challenge in many things is generalized application of a previously learned skill. He too is now ten, and behaviorally and emotionally is much more stable but still has this automated retrieval issue sometimes. So... it's relating to the LD and not the age.

They say that LD never goes away, but arrrgh... I hate that!!! There must be something we can do... like exercising a weak muscle. I think the concept of neuro plasticity conflicts with the "LD is for life" idea. So which is right? Plasticity!! I like your perspective of it being a life lesson. Sometimes they need to overcome a challenge so they learn that challenge is ok.