你的孩子有letter reversal问题吗？

我在教儿子英语的时候发现了他的一个问题，而且是长期存在的问题：他总是混淆b和d，p和q，有时候连f和t的弯曲应该朝那边都会出现困惑。我也从我的一个朋友那里听到她的学生也常出现这样的情况，我想，这是不是和脑神经的发育有关系。昨天下午，让儿子写汉字，结果他把“席”写成了下图的样子，我觉得太神奇了，特别想知道是什么神秘的东西在影响着他看一个字母和汉字左右的差别。

于是我就上Yahoo搜索了，一开始我认为是左右不分，所以搜的是“left and right confusion”但是出来的文章所描述的情况与他的不符。我又换了“kids confused about b and d”，然后这回得到了正解：letter reversal(字母颠倒)，然后发现所有的孩子都存在这样的情况。我选了一篇文章摘录翻译一下，解我心中之惑。

The difficulty is inherent in the way our brains interpret visual signals. Our brains are supposed to view similar shapes as potentially representing the same underlying item. Think about the way you see some three dimensional object such as a coffee mug. You may view the same coffee mug with the handle pointing to the left or to the right, depending on where you are standing. You do not believe it to be a different coffee mug when the handle is on one side as opposed to the other.

这个困难（识别特定字母比如bd,pq等）是由我们的大脑解读视觉信号的方式所引起的。我们的大脑被认为是将同类型装看做是代表着同样的潜在信息。你可以想一下，当你看某个三维物体，比如一个咖啡杯。你也许看到是同样的一个咖啡杯，只是因为你所占位置不同而把手朝左或者朝右。你不会相信当它们的把手方向改变左右后会是不同的咖啡杯。

In a sense, our brains want to believe that the letters ‘b’ and ‘d’ are two shapes that represent the same object, much like the two views of the same coffee mug. In our minds, the letter ‘d’ is like the letter ‘b’ from a different angle and our brains find it difficult to process the idea that when we look at letter shapes rather than coffee mugs, the angle of view is important.

某种意义上讲，我们的大脑愿意相信字母b和d就是两个代表着同一事物的形状，就好像两个人从不同位置看同一个咖啡杯一样。在我们的大脑看来，字母d就是从另一个角度看到的字母b。当我们讲咖啡杯换成了字母的时候，我们的大脑就糊涂了，它无法分辨了，所以，视角很重要。

Imagine if someone showed you a bunch of images of coffee mugs and you had to immediately call out “left hand” or “right hand” according to which hand is in the correct position to pick up the coffee mug. Since you’ve never really had to care about the orientation of a coffee mug before, you would probably have to think about it. You would probably have to practice. You would probably make mistakes. That’s exactly what children do when they are confronted with letters ‘b’ and ‘d’ and asked to say the name of the letter or its sound.

想象一下，如果有人给你一堆咖啡杯的图片，然后让你立即根据他们把手位置判断出是用左手还是右手拿起它们。鉴于你从来没有关注过咖啡杯的方向问题，你不得不进行一番思考吧。你也许还需要练习。你也肯定会出错。这也就是我们的孩子在面对字母bd并且被要求说出它们的名字和发音时的情况和感受了。

Note that children have fewer difficulties distinguishing ‘b’ and ‘d’ from ‘p’ and ‘q’. That’s because the up/down orientation of an object is usually much more practically relevant than its left/right orientation. You might not care whether the handle of a coffee mug is on the appropriate side for you to hold because you can simply rotate the mug. However, if the mug has coffee in it, it’s definitely not upside down! The relative importance of the up/down orientation accounts for the fact that children struggle more with the letters ‘b’ and ‘d’ than with letter pairs ‘m’ and ‘w’ or ‘u’ and ‘n’.

So how can we help children correctly identify the letters ‘b’ and ‘d’? There are a number of simple memory tricks that may help; if one doesn’t work, try a different one.

你肯定也注意到了，孩子们不会将bd和pq混淆。那是因为物体的上下方位比左右方位实际上更加重要。你也许不关心咖啡杯的把手朝向哪边，因为你可以转动它。但是如果杯子里有咖啡，它一定地朝上啊！上下方位的重要性可以解释为什么孩子们容易混淆bd而非mw或者un.那么我们该如何帮助孩子们正确分辨bd呢？如下我将给与一些小方法，希望有用。

For example, you can imagine the shape of the word “bed” as a bed. Alternatively, you can note that small ‘b’ fits inside big ‘B’, but small ‘d’ doesn’t fit inside big ‘D’.

举个例子，你可以想象“bed”就是一张床。或者，你指出，你小b可以装进大B里面，而小D却不可以装进大D里边。

One trick provides a tool that children always have ‘at hand’ when reading and writing. If you hold up your thumbs in front of you, your left hand looks like the letter b and your right hand looks like the letter d. Since we read from left to right, and since the letter ‘b’ comes before the letter ‘d’, you can say “a, b, c, d” and you will come to the letter ‘b’ and your left hand first. (The same trick works for ‘p’ and ‘q’; you just have to hold your thumbs pointing down!)

另一个方法是提供一个孩子在读写时常在手边的一个工具。如果你竖起你的大拇指，你的左手看起来就是字母b，而你的右手则是字母d。因为我们的阅读是从左向右的，又因为字母b是出现在字母d之前的，你可以说a,b,c,d，然后说到b是出竖着大拇指的左手，而后d时是右手。（这个方法也适用于p和q，只是你需要将大拇指朝下。）

The real key to overcoming the ambiguity between the letters is, of course: practise, practise, practise. As the letter shapes become more familiar, less thinking is required to distinguish, decode and produce them correctly. Furthermore, as a child’s literacy skills improve, the child will no longer be attending to the individual letters as often. At a certain point (around the age of eight), language learners are so much better at recognising and producing letters and entire words fluidly and automatically that they don’t need to think about identifying the letters ‘b’ and ‘d’ at all.

真正有用也最关键的克服字母混淆的方法还是：练习！练习！一旦字母形状越来越熟悉，在分辨，解读和输出时所需的思考就会越少，也自然就不会出错了。同时，随着孩子的读写能力的提高，他们也无须再频繁专注于单个的字母。到了一定时间（大约八岁），语言学习者在辨认书写字母和整个单词方面会有长足进步，然后自然而然地他们不再考虑如何辨认b和d。

从这篇小文章我们可以看出，孩子出现字母左右颠倒的问题是我们人类的大脑思维方式决定的，而且我们大人依然是存在这个困惑，只是我们经过多年练习一定不需要思考就能够做出辨认了，等于是克服了大脑的思维定式，形成了新的思维习惯。那么解决孩子的这个问题也别无他法，就是练习。我还查了一些关于左右不分的文章提到孩子大约到了七八岁渐渐就会对于左右的区分有了更明确的认知，也许有人终身都有左右不分的问题，但是也不会影响他的读写。比如我，我对于左右的的分辨其实还是时有困惑，只是并没有成为问题，但是我不存在读写困难。

所以，这时候我在想，如果是这样的话，那么人的思维其实真的是可以被训练的，克服大脑的先天运行模式，形成更好的思维方向。 其实我们的思维已经是被训练过的了，学习就是这样的过程。（好像是很显而易见的事实嘛，然而突然自己悟出来还是挺有些意思的）