Fast ForWord from Scientific Learning Receives Second Consecutive Readers’ Choice Award

Online intervention uses the principles of neuroplasticity to make fast and enduring progress with struggling students and English language learners

Oakland, Calif. — Dec. 8, 2015 — The Fast ForWord® program from Scientific Learning Corp (www.sparklearning.in) has been named a Readers’ Choice Top Product by District Administration magazine for the second year in a row. 

Fast ForWord uses the principles of neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to rewire and improve — to target the root causes of slow academic progress in struggling students and English language learners.

Winners of the Readers’ Choice Top Products were selected from more than 2,100 nominations received from District Administration readers over the past year. The annual awards program informs K-12 school superintendents and other senior school district leaders about products their colleagues around the country are using to help their districts excel in areas such as technology, instruction and assessment.

“The Fast ForWord program has been lauded for its validity and effectiveness, and indeed, it’s the What Works Clearinghouse’s top ranking English language development intervention. However, it is doubly rewarding to us to know that administrators and school leaders recognize how valuable Fast ForWord is in helping address the root causes of students’ difficulties,” said Robert C. Bowen, CEO of Scientific Learning Corp. “We are grateful to District Administration and its readers for this award.”

The Fast ForWord program was developed by neuroscientists to address reading skills while concurrently developing memory, attention, processing and sequencing skills. Students who use the program make fast progress, producing significant changes in academic results in as little as six weeks. They continue to make gains long after finishing the program.

“Maintaining a high level of achievement is difficult,” said Dr. Vickie Reed, superintendent of Murray County Public Schools in Chatsworth, Georgia. “We use Fast ForWord not only to address the needs of struggling readers, but to support all students to help them meet and exceed the standards in reading. In our own research, we see a strong correlation between students’ use of the Fast ForWord program and improved performance on state tests.”

For more information, visit www.sparklearning.in.

How Do ADD, Dyslexia, and Auditory Processing Disorder Overlap? - Lynn Gover

Key Points:

• Children who are perceived as not paying attention or not trying may actually be tuning out because they are having trouble understanding the words they hear.
• Children with a family history of dyslexia also have more difficulty with auditory processing.
• The parts of the brain that handle sensory input develop earlier than those responsible for focus and attention.
• Early intervention to improve auditory processing can have a significant positive impact on a child’s learning.

The following is a summary of Dr. Marty Burns' webinar “How Do ADD, Dyslexia, and Auditory Processing Disorder Overlap?”. Read below for the key takeaways.

The rise in diagnoses of ADD and ADHD in children over the last couple of decades has been a great cause of concern and controversy for parents and scientists alike. But new research suggests that for many of these children, the symptoms may actually indicate a more fundamental problem with understanding and processing speech.

While attention is closely related to sensory and language processing, they begin in different parts of the brain. Attention is mainly controlled by the frontal lobe, responsible for many of our higher cognitive functions such as planning and organization. This brain region develops slowly, only reaching maturity in the late 20s. And as we might expect, both children and adults with attention deficit disorders show lower levels of frontal lobe activity.

Our sensory processing, however, is concentrated among three lobes in the back of the brain, with an area called the angular gyrus integrating their audio, visual, and spatial information. These brain regions, which develop at a much earlier age, play a major role in language acquisition. And one of the crucial elements is learning to recognize the internal details of words, so that we can distinguish ‘bad’ from ‘pad’ or ‘moon’ from ‘noon’. By hearing speech in one’s native language, our brain eventually builds a map of all the sounds in that language – sounds that we then learn to reproduce and to associate with visual symbols.

Auditory processing disorders occur when there has been some impediment to the development of this mental sound map, making it difficult for children to distinguish units of speech. It’s important to note that this is a distinct problem from hearing impairment, as the problem is not with hearing the sounds, but with understanding them. However, hearing obstruction due to a prolonged ear infection or a cold can lead to auditory processing disorders by disrupting a critical learning period. And such disorders may have a genetic aspect as well. Children with a family history of dyslexia, previously thought to affect only higher levels of language learning, also show lower activity in sensory regions of the brain and difficulty with speech processing even before they learn to read.

Although attention is localized in the frontal lobe, it relies on the sensory networks developed in other brain regions. And this is where attention problems and auditory processing problems overlap. Attention involves learning to sort through all the sensory data around you and pick out what’s relevant. But you can’t recognize something as relevant until it’s part of your knowledge base. So it’s hard to pay attention to speech when you’re having trouble distinguishing its sounds from one another, or from other sounds in the environment.

The result is that children with auditory processing disorders may exhibit symptoms similar to those of attention deficit disorders, such as being easily distracted, not engaging in class, or not following directions. Teachers may perceive them as not trying, not paying attention, or being disruptive when in fact what’s happening is that they try to pay attention but can’t follow what’s being said and eventually give up. Such children may also receive a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD, with treatments that fail to address the underlying issues.

The good news, however, is that Fast ForWord provides targeted exercises designed by neuroscientists to remedy auditory processing disorders, which have also proven effective in addressing overlapping problems with attention and language processing.

Parent Checklist: Is My Child At-Risk for Learning Issues? - Kristina Collins

We developed the following parent checklist to learn what concerns parents see in their children and to help them decide if their child is in need of help. Choose one answer for each question and indicate how often the behavior is exhibited in your child’s daily life with the following options: Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often,or Always.

• Misunderstands what you say
• Needs instructions repeated
• Misunderstands jokes
• Has difficulty understanding long sentences
• Needs questions repeated
• Has difficulty retelling a story in the right order
• Cannot finish long sentences
• Has trouble saying the same thing in a different way (rephrasing)
• Has trouble finding the right word
• Pronounces common words incorrectly
• Gets confused in noisy places
• Has difficulty engaging in conversation with others
• Has behavior problems
• Lacks self-confidence
• Avoids group activities
• Has trouble paying attention
• Has trouble sounding out words
• Has trouble reading
• Has trouble spelling
• Cannot tell you about the events of his/her school day

If you answered Sometimes, Often or Always to several of these, your child may be at-risk for a language-based learning disability and will likely require intervention to prevent these issues from affecting him/her academically in the future.

We hear from countless parents like you who are looking for help for their bright child who struggles with reading, writing, attention, or other issues. You’re in the right place. We can help you help your child.

New Study Suggests Fidgeting Helps Students With ADHD Learn - Cory Armes, M.Ed.

Key Points:

• Fidgeting may help students with ADHD concentrate on complex learning tasks.
• Allowing students to fidget and move during class can help improve academic performance.
• Try creating a "Jumping Corner" in the back of the classroom for students who need to move while learning.

ADHD: The Most Common Behavioral Disorder

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common behavioral disorder diagnosed in children. Common signs include restlessness, continual talking and inability to concentrate and pay attention. About 11 percent of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, with 1 in 3 having received treatment with medication and behavioral therapy. Some of these students end up falling behind their peers academically.

New Insight Into Hyperactivity

A new study published in The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology suggests that hyperactivity may actually help students overcome their attention problems. Common hyperactive behaviors like running, jumping, rolling on the floor and continual talking are typically viewed as a disruptive problem that should be treated in addition to the attention problems. New research shows these behaviors aren't always present; instead, they are displayed when students are asked to complete tasks involving the executive functioning centers of the brain.

Researchers found that when students with ADHD were asked to perform a task that involved working memory and organization, those who were allowed to move or fidget did significantly better than those who were asked to keep still. Conversely, children without ADHD did better when sitting still, but worse when moving around.

These findings suggest that students with ADHD actually need their gross motor movements to help them complete challenging intellectual tasks. Rather than being part of the problem, it's likely that hyperactive behaviors help these students stay focused and attend to the task at hand. Researchers describe "excess motor activity as a compensatory mechanism that facilitates neurocognitive functioning in children with ADHD." This means that hyperactivity may be a feature to encourage rather than a bug to fix.

Translating Research Into Effective Teaching

Because traditional classroom management programs seek to reduce or eliminate disruptive behavior, these findings require some new thinking about how to effectively teach students with ADHD. It's a major challenge to maintain a learning environment that respects the needs of traditional learners who thrive in quiet, orderly spaces while allowing students with ADHD the freedom to move. Student safety is also important, so it's crucial for teachers to create a classroom with designated times and spaces for movement. Some strategies for teachers to employ in the classroom include:

• Allowing students to keep a fidget toy in their desks is a small start. Students can take the toy out when they feel like interrupting or jumping up. This can be a ball to squeeze or another toy with interesting tactile properties to keep them physically engaged so they can pay attention.
• Designating a corner of the classroom as an "Activity Zone" or a "Jumping Corner" creates a place where students can retreat when they feel the need to move around. This area is ideally placed in the back of the room where other students will not be distracted, but will allow clear sight lines to the teacher so the student can continue to follow the lesson.
•  A yoga ball chair or therapy bands tied to chair legs can help students with ADHD bounce and move without leaving their seats. This is especially effective during tests or writing sessions that require quiet thinking and movement at the same time.

As more research indicates that hyperactive behavior helps students with ADHD overcome concentration struggles to master complex material, it's more important than ever for teachers to find creative ways that support these students within their comfort zones. Allowing students to fidget in a controlled, respectful way can improve academic performance and create a classroom environment that is more comfortable for all learners.

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5 Essential Skills for Learning How to Read - Dr.Martha Burns, Ph.D

According to the Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read Reports of the Subgroups, the capacity to learn and grow as a reader depends on five essential skills:

Foundational Skills for Beginning Readers:

1) Phonemic Awareness: The insight that every spoken word can be conceived as a sequence of phonemes. Phonemes are the speech sounds that are represented by the letters of an alphabet.

2) Phonemic Decoding: The ability to capture the meaning of unfamiliar words by translating groups of letters back into the sounds that they represent, link them to one's verbal vocabulary, and access their meaning.

Skills Needed to Read for Meaning:

3) Vocabulary: Understanding the words in a passage, including the specific dimensions of their meanings or usage that matter in context.  For example, knowing that “tree” when reading about a “family tree” has a different meaning from “maple tree.”

4) Fluency: The ability to read with sufficient ease and accuracy that active attention can be focused on the meaning and message of the text and the text easily retained.

5) Comprehension: Thinking about the meaning of each segment of the text as it is read, building an understanding of the text as a whole, and reflecting on its meaning and message.

Teachers today are fortunate to have access to a wealth of scientifically based research into what works when teaching children to read.  The links that follow are courtesy of the National Institute for Literacy:

Birth to Early Childhood

Children begin building literacy skills long before they go to school.  Even very young children can be prepared to become successful readers later on.  Research has identified certain skills that are important for later literacy development; these skills include knowing the names and sounds of printed letters, manipulating speech sounds, and remembering what has been said for a short time.  Here are some ways to teach younger children these pre-reading skills.

Childhood

From kindergarten through third grade, young readers are actively developing all five of the core reading skills from phonemic awareness to fluency and comprehension.  Research has shown that teaching children to read successfully during this window requires a combination of strategies and instructional approaches.  Teachers must know how children learn to read and be able to tailor instructional approaches to individual children--especially those who are struggling readers.  Here are some instructional approaches for the five essential skills.

Adolescence

While many adolescent readers have mastered phonemic awareness and decoding strategies, they are often still challenged to fully understand what they read.  In middle and high school, it is common for literacy skills to be developed not only in language arts courses, but also in a variety of different content areas.  To prepare students for the literacy challenges of secondary school, language arts and content area teachers need to focus on the last three components of reading: vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.  We shall discuss some approaches to teaching vocabulary and comprehension skills in our forthcoming posts.

Executive Function - The Foundation for School Readiness - Grace Wardhana

When Children begin to go to kindergarten, Whether graduating from a full-day preschool or parent-led home school or something in between, they will transition into their first year of a formal school setting in various stages of school readiness. What will determine a successful transition? Research shows one foundational factor: executive function.

What is executive function? Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child defines executive function and self-regulation skills as “the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.”

To put this in a real-life classroom context: imagine 3 kindergarteners participating at circle time. Abby and James are focusing on the discussion and raise their hands to answer the teacher’s question. Michael is distracted, interrupts repeatedly and has a hard time remembering what to do. It is clear which of these children will be more successful at the learning activity, and the latest research links this with executive function skills.

There is a dramatic window for growth in executive function and other cognitive skills between the ages of 3 to 5. We know now that development of these skills is not guaranteed and children with problems do not necessarily outgrow them. Children who struggle to plan and organize their work in early elementary may become adolescents who fall behind in homework, have difficulty completing projects and struggle to gain academic skills. In particular, economically disadvantaged groups tend to suffer from under-development of these skills, which puts them behind even prior to entering elementary school. Severe under-development may also lead to behavioral problems and in some cases, failure in school, as many teachers are not trained to recognize or treat these problems effectively. This reinforces the ‘achievement gap’ that already exists for at-risk groups in underserved communities—since those with behavioral challenges are often kept out of classroom work, and in turn may have trouble attending when in class.

The potential impact for early intervention during the pre-school and early elementary years is huge. Identifying deficits and building executive function and cognitive skills at the age-appropriate time could alleviate problems faced by at-risk groups. If these children, for example, are increasingly able to attend to class material and participate in group lessons, they will benefit from increased learning as well as better relationships with teachers and peers. Rather than laying a foundation as children who are frequently struggling to participate, these children may begin a positive cycle of engagement with teachers and peers.

Thus, these skills are a necessary groundwork to the building of academic skills, rather than simply an add-on. On the bright side, science has shown these skills can be trained and improve even with short-term interventions. Researchers who specialize in childhood brain development are working to spread the word to help parents and caregivers through books like “Einstein Never Used Flashcards” and initiatives like Vroom. 

The importance of building executive function and other cognitive skills at an early age is clear. We want children to build a strong foundation to become engaged and self-directed lifelong learners. We need to increase awareness of these skills and the potential for them to be explicitly taught by parents, caregivers and the educator community – whether it be through outreach programs, educational apps or other interventions. The sooner we make this a priority, the better equipped our communities will be to help children get the most out of their school experience.

Sound Training Rewires Dyslexic Children's Brains For Reading by Nadine Gaab, Ph.D.

Introduction by Garrison W. Cottrell, Ph.D.

This week's article was written by Nadine Gaab, a newly-appointed Assistant Professor at Children's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gaab was a postdoctoral researcher in the NSF-funded Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center with Dr. Paula Tallal of Rutgers.

While many young cognitive neuroscientists are using the emerging technology of fMRI, which allows us to see how brain areas are activated by various stimuli, Dr. Gaab is one of the few who has made a substantial, creative and lasting contribution to the technology itself. One of the limitations of fMRI for investigating issues involving sound, such as spoken language or music processing, is the very loud noise generated by the scanner. When the subject is inside the scanner, the noise sounds like 100 garbage trucks backing up in synchrony (WAH, WAH, WAH...). As part of her Ph.D. research, Dr. Gaab developed the idea of sampling brain activation between the noise bursts. This technique, called "sparse temporal sampling" has been a major technological advance, and allows researchers for the first time to use sound stimuli in the scanner. While at Stanford, Nadine was able to work with Gary Glover, one of the major figures in the development of fMRI technology, to further quantify the advantages of this procedure not only for auditory experiments, but much more broadly. The studies reported in this issue demonstrate the value of Gaab's sparse temporal sampling procedure by demonstrating a major difference in the brain responses of dyslexic children versus typical readers when presented with rapidly changing auditory stimuli.

Developmental Medicine Center at Children's Hospital Boston/Harvard Medical School

A very recently published brain-imaging study1 suggests that children with developmental dyslexia struggle with reading because their brains do not process fast-changing sounds properly. Moreover the study found that with the help of computerized sound training, the children with developmental dyslexia were able to literally rewire their brain. This resulted in more accurate sound processing and hence better language and reading.

A major problem for the estimated 5 to 17 percent of children with developmental dyslexia is that they often confuse letters and syllables when they read, which suggests that their internal association between letters and their corresponding sounds is weak. In the 1970’s it was proposed by Paula Tallal that this deficit is caused by an underlying problem with accurately perceiving and distinguishing different fast-changing sounds. In order to differentiate between the sounds of a word, the brain needs to perceive fast sound alterations at the millisecond (one thousandth of a second) time scale. Tiny differences in the time at which the vocal chords start vibrating make the difference between “ba” and “pa” for example. The vocal chords start vibrating just before your lips open for “ba,” and just after for “pa.” You can see this yourself if you hold your throat while repeating “ba, ba, ba” versus “pa, pa, pa.” (Make sure you’re alone or people will think you’re crazy!) You can feel that your vocal chords vibrate continuously as you say “ba”. However, as you say “pa” there is no vibration until you get to the vowel “a” part of the syllable. If a child cannot capture these subtle timing details, he or she will have problems distinguishing between speech sounds and, therefore, he or she may be more prone to confuse these syllables even before learning to read. With an imprecise internal sound map, it will be difficult for the child to establish a map of which letters go with which sounds, and this can lead to difficulty learning the phonetic basis for reading.

In this study, together with my colleagues Elise Temple (Dartmouth University) and John Gabrieli (MIT), we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how the brains of 9- to 12-year-old children with developmental dyslexia, and typical readers responded to fast and slow changing sounds. The fMRI enabled us to observe brain activity in response to short sound intervals in which the acoustic properties changed either rapidly (over tenths of milliseconds – as in spoken words) or relatively slowly (hundreds of milliseconds). The sounds were not actual language, but resembled the vocal patterns found in speech. In addition to the brain imaging, standardized language and reading tests were administered both before and after using a neuroplasticity-based2training program called Fast ForWord Language, designed in part by Tallal, a co-author on the study.

Although previous studies pointed out that children with developmental dyslexia have trouble discriminating between brief acoustic stimuli, this is the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe their brains' response to fast and slow changing sounds.

The results indicated that the brains of children with developmental dyslexia responded similarly to fast and slow changing sounds, even though they were not required to pay attention to these changes in this experiment. The same brain regions responded to both sets of stimuli. In contrast, the brains of typical reading children showed differences in 11 brain regions when listening to fast compared to slow sounds. This suggests that, unlike typical readers, the brain of a child with dyslexia is not representing fast and slow sound changes differently.

After the initial fMRI, the dyslexic children went through eight weeks of daily one-hour sessions (about 60 hours total) of the remediation program Fast ForWord Language (Spark's Brain Gym, Unit of Spark Learning & Performance Solutions, representative of Scientific Learning Corporation, Oakland for India). This program involves no reading and uses both nonverbal sounds such as chirps and whistles as well as speech sounds in the form of syllables, words and sentences. Users must discriminate between paired sounds, syllables or words, such as choosing which sound rose or dropped in pitch or which picture represents the word they just heard, when presented with words that sound very much alike (such as big vs pig). The training exercises are individually adaptive to each mouse click the child makes. Each begins at an easy level, but then gradually increases in difficulty based on the child’s responses.

The repetitive exercising of the intervention program had an effect on the brains of children with developmental dyslexia. After training the children listened again to the fast and slowly changing sounds while in the fMRI scanner. After training, the children with dyslexia showed brain activity much more like that of the typical-reading group. Furthermore, the dyslexic children's reading scores as a group improved significantly after training (even though the training did not involve reading per se), moving them into the low end of the typical reading range. Hence the initially described differences in brains of children with developmental dyslexia and typical readers can be changed through intensive training. How long this effect lasts remains to be seen in follow-up studies.

Heartened by the promising findings of these results, we hope to be able to use fMRI to identify developmental dyslexia before the children begin to read. If developmental dyslexia could be diagnosed at a young age, it would enable educators to remediate the kids very early and would spare them from frustration and low self-esteem. To come closer to this goal, I am designing a new study for which we are currently recruiting preschoolers whose family members have developmental dyslexia. (Learn more about the study.)

Acknowledgments:

Elise Temple, PhD, of Dartmouth College's Department of Education, was the senior author of the study, which was funded by the Haan Foundation, the M.I.T. Class of 1976 Funds for Dyslexia Research, and the NSF Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center.

John Gabrieli, PhD (Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT); Gayle Deutsch (Stanford University) and Paula Tallal (Rutgers University) co-authored this study.

Fast ForWord Language was developed by Paula Tallal, Ph.D and Steve Miller, Ph.D of Rutgers University and Michael Merzenich, PhD, and William Jenkins, Ph.D of the University of California, San Francisco. To know more visit www.sparklearning.in, representative of Scientific Learning in India.

Nadine Gaab is a newly-appointed Assistant Professor at Children's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gaab was a postdoctoral researcher in the NSF-funded Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center with Dr. Paula Tallal of Rutgers. She has received superb academic training both in Europe (Germany and Switzerland) as well as in the US (Harvard, Stanford, MIT). She received a Master's of Science in Psychology from the University of Trier, Germany and a Ph.D in Psychology/Neuropsychology from University of Zurich, Switzerland, receiving the highest distinction of "Summa cum laude" for her doctoral thesis. Throughout her doctoral as well as post-doctoral training, Nadine has worked with leaders in the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience (Lutz Jancke, Gottfried Schlaug, John Gabrieli and Paula Tallal), as well as in her specialty area of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Gary Glover). She has continuously received funding for her training and research, including several prestigious fellowships for graduate training at the Harvard Medical School (German National Merit Foundation; German Academic Exchange Council) and specialty training courses at King's College London, Princeton and Harvard.

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1 October, 2007; Gaab et al; (2007) "Neural correlates of rapid auditory processing are disrupted in children with developmental dyslexia and ameliorated with training: An fMRI study,"; Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience 25, 295-310

2 “Neuroplasticity” refers to changes in brain organization that occur through learning. “Neuroplasticity-based” in this context means that the training is in accord with neuroscience studies of how brain areas reorganize in monkeys through training.

5 Myths About Dyslexia - Martha Burns, Ph.D

Dyslexia: fact versus fiction

‘Dyslexia’ is a term that has been used many different ways during the past century. As a result, many myths have emerged about the diagnosis and how the term applies to children who struggle to learn to read.  As a parent or teacher, if we are to effectively help children with the diagnosis, it is essential that we are clear on what is “known” about dyslexia versus what may be assumed but not based in fact or science. There are too many myths to cover in one blog post, but I have begun with five of the more common ones about dyslexia and included the scientific research from a variety of sources that support each fact.

MYTH #1: Dyslexia is a specific type of reading disorder that can be diagnosed using standardized tests.

FACT: Almost from the first use of the term, dyslexia has been defined in many different ways. The term comes from the Greek prefix dys – disorder and lexis – word or language. So, technically the term would mean “disorder of language." Most authors now use the term to refer to problems with reading; however, when originally used decades ago, it referred only to individuals with known brain injuries. So, a more accurate term often used today is “Developmental Dyslexia.”  That term distinguishes children who have trouble learning to read from adults who acquired a reading disorder after a stroke or other type of brain injury.  New genetic and neurobiological research suggests that developmental dyslexia is quite variable - there are likely many different subtypes of developmental dyslexia (Fragel-Madeira et al., 2015).

MYTH #2: Dyslexia is a visual disorder causing those with the disorder to see words and letters backwards.

FACT: Children have to learn that letters, unlike other types of pictures and objects, have a specific orientation in space. A d and a b are different letters whereas   and    are both either new moon or crescent shapes – orientation does not matter. Many young children reverse letters, both in reading and writing, but that is not a diagnostic sign of dyslexia. Conversely, many children with dyslexia do not reverse letters (Dehaene, 2013; Blackburne et al, 2014).

MYTH #3: Dyslexia is more common in boys than girls.

FACT: A few decades ago, dyslexia was diagnosed much more frequently in boys than in girls. More recent research conducted by Dr. Sally Shaywitz and colleagues at Yale University, first published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicated that dyslexia probably affects a comparable number of girls and boys, although boys may be diagnosed more frequently because they may be more likely to exhibit problems sitting still and learning in early grades. However, there is some newer conflicting research that suggests that dyslexia may be two to three times more prevalent in males than females. Furthermore, neurobiological characteristics of dyslexia reported in males may be very different than those found in females (Evans et al., 2014)

MYTH #4: There is no way to determine if a child is at-risk for developmental dyslexia until they enter school and begin to show problems with reading.

FACT: There is a great deal of new research pointing to developmental dyslexia risk factors that may be observable during preschool years. Dr. Sally Shaywitz has listed a few clues in her book “Overcoming Dyslexia”. They include:

• Trouble learning common nursery rhymes
• Difficulty learning and remembering letter names
• Problems learning to recognize letters in their own names
• Persistent speech problems or “baby talk”
• Problems recognizing rhymes

There is also mounting evidence that problems with speech perception during early development are a major risk factor for dyslexia in school age children.  For example, Doctors Steven Zecker, Nina Kraus and their colleagues at Northwestern University have found that they can predict reading problems in school-age children years before the children enter school by testing for problems perceiving speech sounds in noise.

MYTH #5: Dyslexia is a life-long problem and those with the diagnosis will never be able to read very well.

FACT: Although many individuals diagnosed with dyslexia initially struggle to learn to read, effective reading interventions are available and do enable individuals with dyslexia to learn to read and excel in school. According to research conducted by Dr. John Gabrielli and his colleagues, neuroscience-based interventions like theFast ForWord® programs have shown to result in neurophysiologic repair, which can be seen as increased activation of frontal and temporal-parietal regions in the left hemisphere of the brain. These types of interventions are especially effective for children with dyslexia and have lasting effects.    

References

Blackburne, LK., Eddy, MD., Kalra, P., Yee, D., Sinha, P., and Gabrieli, J. (2014) Neural Correlates of Letter Reversal in Children and Adults. PLOS ONE 9(6)

Dehaene, S. (2013) Inside the Letterbox: How Literacy Transforms the Human Brain. Cerebrum. May-June:7. Published online 2013 Jun 3.

Evans, T.M., Flowers, D.E., Napoliello, E., and Eden, F. (2014) Sex-specific Gray Matter Volume Differences in Females with Developmental Dyslexia. Brain Struct Funct. 2014 May; 219(3): 1041–1054

Fragel-Madeira, L., de Castro, J.S.C., Delou, C.A., Melo, W.V., Alves, G.H., Teixeira, P., Castro, H.C. (2015) Dyslexia: A Review about a Disorder That Still Needs New Approaches and a Creative Education. Creative Education. 6, 1178-1192.

Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2009). Dyslexia: A New Synergy between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience.Science, 325, 280-283.

Shaywitz, E. (1998) Dyslexia. N Engl J Med 1998; 338:307-312

Shaywitz, E. (2008) Overcoming dyslexia:  A new and complete science-based program for reading problems at any level. New York:  Random House.

White-Schwoch, T., Carr, KW., Thompson, EC., Anderson, S., Nicol, T., Bradlow, AR., Zecker, S. and Kraus, N. (2015) Auditory Processing in Noise: A Preschool Biomarker for Literacy. PLOS Biology. 13(7)

Engaging Children in the World with Words

As we all know, the rudimentary elements of language are established at the earliest ages. From a baby’s first months, they instinctively begin listening and forming the neurological groundwork for what will become their abilities to understand language, as well as speak and read. While there are numerous studies around the topic, I’d like to take you through a simple series of imaginary scenarios to demonstrate the importance of this point—for children as well as for those of us in charge of their learning.

First, imagine the world from the baby’s point of view. They observe, see the shapes and colors around them, and as they do, they hear the voices of their parents, and they begin associating certain sounds with the surrounding world. Now, imagine how the understanding of that process—as a teaching tool in the hands of a conscientious parent—can shape that child’s abilities from the earliest of ages.

Scenario 1: A parent—let’s call her Jane—is walking down the street, slowly because she is holding her young toddler’s hand. Suddenly, a loud siren screams and around the corner comes a gleaming fire engine. Jane quickly points to it, looks into her child’s concerned eyes, smiles and says, "Loud!" As the fire engine goes by, it splashes through a great puddle in the road, spraying the two with water. Jane says, smiling and laughing, "Ohhh, no! Wet! We got wet!" Jane’s child begins to smile and laugh, too.

Scenario 2: Another parent, Carol, has her child in a stroller and is walking at a brisk clip. She is conducting business with the cell phone in one hand and is pushing the stroller with the other. They are enjoying the sunshine, and the child is calmly, quietly watching the world go by. Suddenly, a loud siren screams and around the corner comes a gleaming fire engine. Carol says, "Oh, darn it. Can you hold on a sec?" into her phone. Her child, startled by the loud noise, begins to sob, but Carol doesn’t know it because she’s watching the fire engine pass and can’t hear her child because of the siren. As the fire engine goes by, it splashes through a great puddle in the road, spraying the two with water. Carol, with fury and frustration in her voice, says, "DARN IT! Can I call you back later? I just got soaked." By this time, Carol is genuinely angry and her child is wholeheartedly crying.

In these brief images, with so much playing out in terms of outward attitudes and reactions to circumstances, and we can even look ahead to possible bonding issues. But let’s think specifically about language. What has the child—as well as the parent—in scenario one gained and the child in scenario two lost?

While Carol’s child has witnessed frustration and fear in the face of incoming stimulus, Jane’s child has experienced the world through a comforting, loving, happy interpretive filter. In short, we cannot underestimate the importance of simply being engaged with the children in our lives. As teachers, encouraging the parents we encounter to be as connected and involved in their children’s lives as early as possible.

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

We educators talk a lot about student engagement. We understand that engagement is the magic key that drives the student and creates the moment when they become self-motivated. Engagement must be at the core of our goals as educators, for an engaged student finds wonder in their learning, and they not only find meaning in their studies, but they grow personally, for a lifetime, as a result of that learning.

But what do we really mean when we talk about the engaged student? What does it look like in the brain when a student is truly inspired? In the 2008 article, Engaging Students with Brain-Based Learning , the authors cite research from LeDoux, Eden and Schacter whose studies found connections between learning and
1) connections with emotions and memories,
2) relationships to real-life experiences,
3) “activation of both the auditory and visual areas of the brain to create meaning.”

In short, they are talking about what has become known as “brain-based learning,” which consists of teaching strategies that encourage the brain to make associations and “create synaptic connections and anchor learning through contextual experience.”

In many ways, the research has confirmed what humanity’s greatest thinkers discovered long ago. How many years has it been since you slowed down and went back to meditate for a moment on some of the great axioms about learning and education? They hold wonderful hints and secrets that not only still apply, but have been proven by even the most modern research.

• “ Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” (Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990) To engage our students, we need to teach them not only to develop answers, but also learn to ask questions. We need to engage their judgment, creativity and reason, not just their memories.
• “ Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” (William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939) Clearly for students to be inspired to not just succeed but also to exceed, we educators must engage their passions and, as stated above, their emotions. Our challenge is to seek out those things that are of direct personal interest to our students, and then show them how to find the connections to these passions and what we’re focusing on in the classroom.
• “ There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angel ship.” (Mark Twain, 1835-1910) These words are beautiful at so many levels, but at the purely practical one, Twain reminds us of something that we need to bring to our students attention every day. We can help them develop an awareness that they are learning so much more than facts and processes; they are learning the skills that will allow them to contribute to solving the problems of humanity. In short, we need to show them how they are developing the power to change the world.

What? Who has time to instill passion, emotion and caring? Many teachers are doing this every day, but we need more! Quite often, educators are pressed more to ensure that students are able to do their multiplication tables, find the capital of North Carolina on a map of the United States and recite the chemical formula for water. 

And yet, our greatest challenge remains inextricably linked to our greatest hope for the future. We must do all we can to light those fires of inspiration and help our students find those deep personal connections to their learning. If we can do that, not only will they learn more successfully, but it will be our students who grab the reins, take charge of their learning, and maybe—just maybe—find their way toward Twain’s angel ship.

The Mirror Neuron System

What is a parent to do to get a child’s brain started out on the right path – to be able to concentrate on one task for extended periods, be able to handle rapidly changing information, and be flexible enough to switch tasks easily?

Well, it turns out the human brain seems to have a strategy: by developing two core capacities during the first few years of life, interactive play and language, the brain seems to become uniquely equipped to build a range of cognitive capacities.  Recent research suggests that a specific area in the frontal lobe – ‘the doing part of the brain’ - begins to wire itself very early in development through imitation of the movements and sounds made by others. This area, the so-called mirror neuron region, allows an infant to watch or listen to other people and respond with imitative or complementary movements or sounds.  

Because this area is the same region, in the left hemisphere, that is responsible for fluent, easy articulated, speech, researchers have speculated that it might have been an evolutionary starting point for development of human language. But, because it is also active in the right hemisphere, it seems to play an important role in social, and perhaps athletic, interaction. In fact, Miella Dapretto and her colleagues at UCLA recently reported research showing that children with autism spectrum disorders, which include a range of disturbances that impact, among other things, social skill development, have observable deficiencies in the mirror neuron system.

There is reason to speculate, based on the research now available, that exercising the mirror system in general, can build a brain that is better equipped for socialization, school, music and athletics. At this time existing research has demonstrated that exercising Broca’s area of the brain (and other areas that are connected to this area through complex cognitive networks), either through natural parental stimulation in infants or through intense specific practice in school-aged children or adults, one can systematically build a brain that is better equipped for many cognitive tasks including language, reading, writing, and math as well as remediate a brain that seems to have deficits or learning disabilities in one or more of these areas.

Every time a parent plays a game like “Patty-cake, Patty-cake” where the child and parent duplicate a routine with actions and a poem or song, the parent is helping the child to exercise the mirror neuron system. Parents have been doing these action/nursery sequences for years, and there are many similar routines in many cultures. Examples of “mirror neuron” routines that have been around and passed on for generations in Western cultures include – “So Big!” where a parent ask the child something like, “How big are you?” and the child and parent respond together holding up their arms in like fashion, “SO BIG!” or, with older children, “Eensie Weensie Spider” where parent and child imitate each other by alternately touching the thumb of one hand to the forefinger of the other hand to emulate the spider climbing up a water spout.

The wonderful thing about these types of routines is that they illustrate how intuitive parents have been for centuries, at identifying and exploiting the natural directions and priorities of brain development. What worries many of us in neuroscience is when parents abandon these time-tested and intuitive interactions with our young children, swayed by technological advances that enhance productivity and drive positive cognitive changes in a mature brain but by abandoning natural parental interactive routines may actually jeopardize the delicate balance of stimulation in the developing brain.

We must exercise caution when adults develop products that appeal to parents with names that inspire confidence like, “Baby Einstein”, if the products have not been subjected to reasonable controlled studies that will help us understand the impact of these activities on young brains. Most companies that develop products for young children do not conduct this type of research because the assumption is that toys and play activities that engage infants and keep them entertained are not harmful. But, unfortunately, that assumption is not warranted. Many of us who put our children in “walkers” or “swings” in the latter part of the twentieth century learned that these “toys” had unintended consequences (i.e., negative effects, on early motor development).

As developmental neuro scientists and other specialists have begun to understand the implications, both positive and negative, of early stimulation on later brain development, those of us in the sciences need to better inform parents and “toy” makers may need to attempt more accountable to parents. In all fairness, however, it may be unreasonable to expect toy makers to conduct independent controlled research studies that we have not even demanded of drug companies. So, the view held by many scientists is that an educated parent can look beyond the hype of advertising and provide for the young child in their care, a fostering environment that is calmly yet convincingly brain-enhancing.

Still the Write Stuff: Why We Must Continue Teaching Handwriting

When it comes to lost arts, we could argue that none is getting lost faster than handwriting. Since the personal computer and now the telephone have become the primary methods for recording our ideas, we simply do not write – I mean with an actual writing implement like a pen or pencil – as much as we used to.

So, we must ask ourselves, is this really a problem? Sure, one could argue that receiving a handwritten letter is more meaningful than getting one that is typed, but that’s an emotional opinion; it’s not a scientific argument. And aren’t professionals in all fields using more computers, tablets and handhelds to communicate, record and share ideas? So, what is the real value of learning handwriting skills versus being able to type 100 words per minute on a QWERTY keyboard?

At Indiana University, Dr. Karin Harman James, assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences, focuses her research on how motor stimuli can influence our visual recognition, and how the brain changes as we have different experiences. This research provides a basis for a scientific argument for the continued instruction of handwriting.

In a 2008 study published in the Journal of Cognitive Science, adults were shown new characters as well as a mirror image of these characters after reproducing them through writing and keyboarding. When quizzed afterward, subjects were shown to have a “stronger, longer lasting recognition” of the characters’ correct orientation when they had written them by hand versus produced them by matching them to a keyboard button. This suggests that engaging the motor nerves to create the shapes by hand helped solidify the ability to identify such shapes.

In another study, James’ team took this idea to the next level to see what was actually going on inside the brain during these activities. They used a functional MRI to map brain activity in children as they looked at letters before and after letter-learning instruction. Their results showed that those who practiced writing the letters showed more brain activity than those who only looked at the letters. In addition, according to a 2010 report on the research in the Wall Street Journal Online, James said that after four weeks of training, the children who practiced writing skills showed brain activation similar to an adult’s.

Between these two studies, we see excellent examples of brain plasticity at work. James’ work demonstrates a clear connection between how engaging more of the brain in the activity of writing improves how letters are committed to memory. Given that letter recognition is an essential step for early readers, it’s easy to see why practicing writing letters is an essential component of the groundwork for later success.

Certainly, with limited time, schools try to maximize student achievement, and give them a baseline of skills that will allow them to continue to develop to optimize their success throughout life in an increasingly technology-based society. That said, based on James’ research, it’s quite clear that penmanship has an important place in the classroom, and not just as an important traditional skill.  In actually applying pen to paper, we allow our students to engage their brains in ways that typing on a keyboard cannot. And whether such an activity is done with pen and paper, a stylus and a tablet PC or chalk on a blackboard, it is in every student’s best interest to practice the “write” stuff.

Using the Power of Optimal Timing to Improve the Brain’s Ability to Learn

Learning is both a behavioral and biological process that is supported by the neurons in the brain over time.

When we learn, our brain cells physically change in response to stimulation, forming pathways to facilitate the connections we use repeatedly. For example, if you meet a person only once, you might not remember their name or recognize their face if you were to run into them on the street ten years on. On the other hand, if you see that person every day for a year, you will likely be able to recognize their face and remember their name much more readily should you not see that person for a long period of time.

Learning processes like these in the brain take predictable, measured amounts of time. While these rates will vary from person to person and nervous system to nervous system, we can depend upon certain relatively constant time frames for learning and processing an understanding of some of these time frames can allow educators to take maximum advantage of them. That’s why the Fast ForWord® products function on each of these scales by design, using the power of optimal timing to improve the brain’s ability to learn.

Learning depends upon a specific feedback loop characterized by timing between stimulus, response and reward [i] . Here are some of those timescales, along with how Fast ForWord works within each:

• Milliseconds: Auditory processing happens on the millisecond timescale. Fast ForWord helps improves auditory processing rate to ensure that students are able to “keep up” with auditory input such as spoken directions from their teacher.
• Seconds:Reinforcement learning happens on a scale of seconds and is achieved by interacting with one’s surroundings.  The Fast ForWord program’s reward system is based on this time scale, delivering rewards to students at just the right moment to maximize reinforcement learning, helping students get the most benefit from the program.
• Minutes:Our actions change based on how we perceive our surroundings. This kind of adaptation can take minutes. As students move through Fast ForWord exercises, they can see their performance results changing minute by minute. Being able to see such improvement helps motivate students toward greater learning. In other words, as they perceive the positive results of their actions, students adapt and learn to generate more of those positive results.
• Days or Weeks:Consolidation and maturation of memories can take days or weeks. When a student overcomes an obstacle in Fast ForWord, their confidence is strengthened and they not only learn the material, but they learn about their own capabilities and what success feels like. The memories of such experiences and the associated feelings – gathered and built upon over the days, weeks and months – lay the foundation to spur them on to future success. Such success in the classroom can lead to a greater drive to perform well in other areas, such as doing well on a test, winning on the athletic field, or successfully completing that college application.   We cannot underestimate the power of experiencing success and the sensation that it creates.

In the classroom, having an awareness of how long it takes for a student to assimilate and process certain kinds of information can add an entirely different rhythm to our instruction. In having such an understanding of how the brains of our students work, we can time our teaching to optimize learning and help our students achieve maximum success.

Stress and the Human Brain

Why are there more patients coming to my office with complaints of memory problems? Great question, and the typical answer is stress! In the course of human development, our brain developed the acute stress response that promoted survival when we were being chased and threatened by large animals—and it uses the same stress response to react to stressful events in everyday modern life.

A stressor triggers the amygdala in our brain that sets off the alarm bells for the body to prepare to fight or flee. Norepinephrine floods the brain generating a state of hyper focus, the pituitary sets off the adrenal glands and adrenaline cascades through the body. This causes the lungs to expand for more oxygen, the blood flow to increase to large muscles, digestion and reproduction to halt, and processing speed to increase. We are prepared to fight for our survival.

If this beneficial response to life-threatening stressors does not shut off appropriately, it becomes a chronic response that can damage the structure and function of the brain’s hippocampus. The hippocampus is the neighbor of the amygdala and the critical structure for memory and new learning.

The body generates steroid hormones known as glucocorticoids when under stress, and over time these hormones can do structural and functional damage to the hippocampus. This is the reason why chronic stress can cause memory problems. It is common, for example, to see memory deficit in those with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

The good news is we do have some control over our perceptions and our body’s ability to regain a balanced and relaxed state.

In my practice, I spend time working with patients to first explain with pictures the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of stress and the brain. This provides a visual to the person. We then identify what the stressors are in the person’s life that are setting off the alarm bells in the brain. Using visualization, relaxation, meditation, and self-talk the person can connect with their amygdala and cool the alarm bells by triggering the “rest and digest” system, also known as the parasympathetic nervous system.

Consider the following tips as a means of cooling the amygdala, thereby promoting hippocampal function and enhancing memory:

1. Practice daily breathing exercises with deep inhalation (this will set off the stress response) and equally deep exhalation (this will set off the relaxation system). This should be done for three to five minutes twice daily.
2. Engage in quiet self-talk to help guide your brain to remain calm with emotional equilibrium. You have the power through self-talk to minimize the brain’s tendency to react with panic. By making the process conscious, you will be able to identify your own stress triggers and to work on avoiding the stress response.
3. Learn how to meditate and to gain mindfulness, as this will free you from conscious and subconscious distraction.
4. Engage in daily exercise with moderate exertion. Blood flow to the brain can help emotional stability and information processing.
5. Increase your fish intake to 8 ounces weekly, as the Omega-3s are wonderful for cognition and emotional functions of the brain.
6. Work on being in the moment and enjoying those you love. Life will always be stressful, unless we do not perceive it that way.

Building Better Writers (Without Picking Up a Pen)

When teachers think of teaching writing, they typically begin with the type of writing they want their students to compose—persuasive pieces, personal narratives, academic essays and the like. They think of following the steps of the writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing—and conduct mini-lessons during writers’ workshop. Others teachers begin diagraming sentences, discussing subject-verb agreement or distinguishing between nominative and objective case pronouns.

All too often, however, little attention is given to the cognitive skills of writing. And that’s a shame, because cognitive skills are the building blocks upon which writing depends.

The Cognitive Building Blocks of Writing

Cognitive skills such as memory, attention, sequencing, and processing speed underlie all composition. It is generally presumed that by middle and high school, students have mastered these basic cognitive skills, and, as such, mainstream writing curricula for secondary students rarely explicitly address the cognitive skills of writing. Nonetheless, research evidence is mounting that many middle and high school students who continue to struggle with writing have not mastered the underlying cognitive and linguistic skills on which written language depends (Berninger, Fuller, & Whitaker, 1996)

Memory

To write cohesive, readable, and understandable text, the writer must not only have a firm linguistic foundation in order to select the appropriate vocabulary and grammatical structure to convey the meaning intended, but must also hold the concepts, vocabulary, and grammatical form of sentences and paragraphs in working memory while formulating each new sentence.

The writing process itself places considerable demands on real-time verbal working memory, as writers construct and hold in mind the ideas they wish to express, inhibiting the irrelevant and attending to the relevant details of what they are presently writing. Simultaneously writers must keep in mind what they have already written, and plan for what they are about to write to complete their thoughts (Torrance & Galbraith, 2008).

Attention

Another cognitive skill that has been shown to affect writing is focused and sustainedattention (Ransdell, Levy, & Kellogg, 2002). A writer’s full attention is consumed in thinking about what to say and applying correct spelling, punctuation, and syntactical rules to what is written. Sentence generation involves consciously reflecting on and manipulating knowledge that needs to be retrieved rapidly from long-term memory or actively maintained in short-term working memory.  Writers must toggle their attention between formulating their thoughts to be written and the transcriptional demands of actually recording these thoughts in written form, all the while inhibiting distractions from the environment.

Sequencing and Processing Speed

Writing also places heavy demands on both perceptual and motor sequencing. Writers must process their thoughts sequentially as they compose letters into words, words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs that conform to the rules of any language. Applying language rules during writing—from recalling the correct sequence of letters within words, to recalling the proper order of words within sentences (such as, in English, nouns precede verbs and adjectives precede nouns), to building multiple paragraphs within a composition—also places particularly heavy demands on the writer’s sequencing abilities.

As the writer translates this mental process into a motor process of composing each word in a sentence, all preceding words in that sentence must be kept in working memory while words and sentences are strung into paragraphs. The writer needs to coordinate these cognitive tasks almost simultaneously, placing heavy demands on processing speed . The significance of processing speed is felt most heavily in the classroom, where students who cannot process rapidly enough are often times left behind.

What the Research Says

Because of the heavy cognitive demands that writing places on attention, sequencing, working memory, and processing speed, Robert T. Kellogg, a professor of psychology at Saint Louis University suggested (Kellogg, 2008) that explicit cognitive skills training programs—especially ones that emphasize deliberate practice—might prove particularly beneficial in improving student’s writing skills.

In two separate studies conducted by the author (Rogowsky, 2010; Rogowsky, Papamichalis, Villa, Heim, & Tallal, 2013) a significant improvement in students’ writing skills occurred after their participation in a computer-based cognitive and literacy skills training. In the first study, a pretest-posttest randomized field trial was conducted in a public middle school (Rogowsky, 2010). The study compared the writing skills of sixth-grade students who either did or did not receive individually adaptive, computer-based cognitive skills instruction ( Fast ForWord) in conjunction with their standards-aligned comprehensive literacy curriculum for one school marking period (45 days). The writing skills of students who received the cognitive training, in addition to the standards-aligned comprehensive literacy curriculum, improved significantly more than those who received the standards-aligned comprehensive literacy curriculum alone, with a large between-group difference.

In a second study, Fast ForWord training was shown to improve college students’ writing (Rogowsky et al., 2013). College students with poor writing skills participated in 11 weeks of computer-based cognitive and literacy skills training, and were compared to a group of college students from the general population of the same university. Results from this study showed the group who received training began with statistically lower writing skills before training, but exceeded the writing skills of the comparison group after training. Although writing was not explicitly trained, the individually adaptive, computer-based training designed to improve foundational cognitive and linguistic skills generalized to improve writing skills in both middle school and college students.

What it Means for Writing Instruction

Based upon these two studies, there is clearly a link between writing and the foundational cognitive skills upon which writing exists. Learning to write is one of the most cognitively demanding academic activities a student must perform. It is not surprising that so many students struggle to perfect and improve their writing abilities throughout their academic years. In addition to the traditional writing methodologies, the future of writing instruction calls for the inclusion of cognitive skills training.