Information Theory and Dyslexia

The most recent research interest of Prof. Gross includes the information theoretic modeling of dyslexia (graphics.ethz.ch/dybuster). He developed a statistical model and a multimodal recoding system to facilitate language acquisition for people with dyslexia (Gro07). The core idea of this method is to quantify textual information using the concept of entropy and to reroute such information through multiple, undistorted perceptual channels. This can be accomplished by algorithms that recode text strings into color, shape, topological, and musical codes. These codes can be trained and displayed interactively using multimodal learning technology. For this purpose Prof. Gross designed and implemented the multimedia learning software "Dybuster". The high effectiveness of this approach to language training has been proven scientifically in a large field study together with neuropsychologists from the University of Zurich. More information on this research project can be found at graphics.ethz.ch/dybuster.