There are at least 40 million Americans with dyslexia signs. "Unfortunately a lot of kids with dyslexia, possibly as many as a third, are missed, misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all," says Yale scientist Jeffrey R. Gruen M.D. "Now you've got a kid who hits fourth or fifth grade and they're struggling; their self-esteem begins to diminish, and it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you can identify these kids early, by third grade, and get them into an intervention program, you can frequently get them reading up to grade-level, and that effect is long-lasting. That's a wonderful thing." Many people make it into adulthood without ever taking a dyslexia test or receiving a diagnosis, even though they have an adult learning disability. Soon, scientists say, they will have an early genetic screening test in place to help people understand their condition as soon as possible.

Some of the current tests for dyslexia include the Beery Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, Bender Gestalt Test of Visual Motor Perception, Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test, Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC), Kaufman Tests of Educational Achievement (KTEA), Motor-Free Visual Perception Test, Peabody Individual Achievement Tests (PIAT), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL), Test of Auditory Perception (TAPS), Test of Visual Perception (TVPS), Visual Aural Digit Span Test (VADS), Wechsler Individual Achievement Tests (WIAT, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) and the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery test. To gather the full picture, doctors and psychologists usually try as many of these tests as they can to assess adult learning disabilities. This is called a "multi-approach" to diagnosis. In addition to these psychoanalytical tests, medical doctors can now perform brain scans using MRI and PET imaging to detect brain anomalies.

Doctors may choose from many different dyslexia test screening procedures. Usually, their first line is an intelligence test. These tests can rule out things like mild mental retardation and can assess the level of the affliction. Reading tests will then be given to assess reading difficulties and analyze a person's potential. Once the initial abilities are discovered, further reading tests will attempt to pinpoint the phase where understanding falters. Other tests still may analyze how an individual receives, perceives, processes and stores information. Vision and hearing tests are often done so psychologists can see which sense dominates, which will let them know what sort of learning styles the adult with dyslexia has. 

A dyslexia test is the first step toward improving one's life. Once the diagnosis has been made, a person can learn more about his or her particular learning style. The worst fallacy perpetuated by schooling is that there are "smart kids" and "stupid kids," who later grow into "smart adults" and "stupid adults." In reality, we learn that our brains are simply different. We can't all learn by one standardized method. Yes, some people can remember something simply by listening to it once or reading it once; but other people may need more reinforcement -- they read it, they hear it, they write it, they discuss it and then they remember it. Reading difficulties can really inhibit a person's life, since there are so many times we must read -- whether it is in a restaurant, on the job or at home. Yet as people understand more about their personal learning styles, they can begin to realize their full potential.