A controversial American doctor believes dyslexia is linked to the inner ear. STEPHEN LEWIS investigates his claims and watches a different approach being used in York.

NICOLA Carruthers was always a bright little girl, good at maths. So when at seven she began to have problems with her reading, mum Jill knew there must be something wrong. "She just couldn't read," Jill says. "I'd sit down with her, she'd try to read a word, I would tell her what it was, and on the next line she wouldn't know the same word.

"She would have forgotten it completely."

It didn't take Jill, from Easingwold, long to work out what the problem was. She is dyslexic herself, and admits that she left school without ever learning to read - though she has taught herself since. She realised that her daughter must have the same problem.

Persuading Nicola's school that she was dyslexic wasn't so easy, though.

"The school kept saying 'she's okay, she'll catch up,'" Jill says. "But it became obvious she wasn't going to."

Jill arranged for extra reading tuition for her daughter, but that didn't work either, because the teacher wasn't a dyslexia specialist.

It was then that she heard about the Dyslexia Institute, which has a centre in York. She arranged for Nicola to be tested - and it turned out her daughter did indeed have dyslexia.

For the last two years, Nicola has been attending regularly at the Institute, in Saint Mary's, York, for extra classes to supplement her schooling.

The method used by teachers there is an internationally-recognised technique known as multisensory education.

Dr John Rack is the Dyslexia Institute's York-based national head of assessment. He says one of the most common problems for dyslexic youngsters is not being able to understand how the sounds in the words they hear can be broken up into individual phonetic elements that can be represented by letters.

The multisensory approach uses all a child's senses to find alternative ways of recognising words and parts of words - such as concentrating on visual patterns and even the shape and feel of a word. Lessons are structured, with letters and groups of letters looked at individually, and special strategies for tackling long or 'tricky' words.

It's a tried and tested method that for Nicola has paid dividends. "She has come on brilliantly," Jill admits. "They took her right back to the beginning and she has caught up a lot. She has a reading age of about eight now."

Tuition at the Dyslexia Institute doesn't come cheap. It can cost up to £250 for a full assessment, then £20 an hour for tuition. Parents who really can't afford that can apply for a bursary - but funds are limited.

But Jill has no regrets. Nicola starts at Easingwold School, where there are facilities to teach dyslexic pupils, in September. She will stop having her Dyslexia Institute classes but Jill is optimistic that with her natural cleverness and the good start she's been given by the institute she will be able to catch up with her classmates.

Nicola's case, though, illustrates the heartache that many parents of dyslexic children go through. They know their children aren't stupid - but it can be difficult to get their dyslexia diagnosed. And even when it has been, it can take months or years of extra tuition to enable their children to overcome their difficulties.

That's why for many parents in America, the ideas of controversial psychiatrist Dr Harold Levinson hold such appeal. Dr Levinson claims to be able to treat the condition using travel-sickness tablets such as those used by space-sick astronauts.

It's an approach that was controversial in the United States - and which has attracted criticism in this country, now he has introduced his methods here.

Since the 1960s, Dr Levinson has believed dyslexia is caused by problems with the inner-ear and cerebellum, which control balance and co-ordination - areas which cause problems for astronauts because of weightlessness.

"I thought to myself, maybe if I treat patients with medication known to affect the inner-ear, I can get the eye co-ordination better," he says. "If I can get that better, then their reading will be better."

Cue the motion-sickness pills: which led to an improvement in around 30 per cent of cases, according to Dr Levinson.

The doctor has spent decades fine-tuning his programme. "Today, 75 per cent to 85 per cent of the patients that come to me improve," he claims.

Some of his young patients and their parents talk of astonishing results; patients like 11-year-old David Gooden, from Oxted in Surrey, who had his first consultation last August.

David says: "Before the treatment, I felt I couldn't do anything. I wanted to run away from it all. It was just awful.

"The words, when I was reading my book, were very blurred. They were almost like fireworks, exploding out of the page and getting all scrambled up so I didn't understand a thing.

"After the treatment, it's like the curtains have been drawn back. It's much better for me."

David says his writing is now much neater, spelling is easier and he doesn't lose his place as often when he's reading.

The problem is, experts point out, that despite cases like that of David there is no hard scientific evidence that Dr Levinson's methods work.

Add to that the fact his treatment isn't cheap - it costs around £600 for an initial consultation and the medications, which are taken for several years, can cost between £35 and £45 a month - and many experts are very worried.

"Dr Harold Levinson's work has been controversial in the USA for many years," says Shirley Cramer, the Dyslexia Institute's national executive director.

"If I was a parent of a dyslexic child, I would want to know that whatever I was doing for my child was the best available and that it was scientifically validated."

For approaches such as the multisensory teaching used by her own organisation, that evidence is there, she insists. "Early diagnosis, followed by appropriate, specialist teaching will enable children with dyslexia to succeed," she says.

The British Dyslexia Association shares those concerns about Dr Levinson's approach.

Education Director Lindsay Peer says no-one knows what the long-term effects of using travel-sickness pills might be.

"I, as a parent, would check out very carefully any tablet I would give my child," he says. "Anything medical you want to do, you need to get checked out and be very careful. And if you can't find research which backs it up, think twice."

The British Dyslexia Association's helpline is 0118 966 8271. The Dyslexia Institute's York centre can be reached on 01904 640188.