What Weak Cognitive Skills Look Like in the Classroom - Linda Gajowski, M.Ed., MS

We all use cognitive skills every day to function successfully. Just driving to the supermarket and back requires four cognitive skills which are so ingrained that we are often not consciously aware of them.

Memory, attention, processing and sequencing are the major cognitive skills necessary to become a successful learner. When one or more of these cognitive skills is deficient, children will experience a difficult time in school. Without these essential cognitive skills working at an optimal level, intervention is required for children to learn.

Memory

Let's look at memory, often referred to as working memory. This cognitive skill allows us to remember information, an essential building block of learning. Without good recall, a child will struggle in the classroom. When kindergarteners are given directions to color the apples red, the tulips yellow, and the cats black on a worksheet, those with poor short-term memory may only remember the first color. Other children may have difficulty following a first grade morning routine which may include placing homework in the inbox, clearing desktops, and getting and completing morning worksheets. Although homework is handed in and desks cleared, some students may forget the next step in the routine. It is, therefore, imperative that memory evolves to optimal levels so that children may learn to the best of their ability.

Attention

Another important cognitive skill is attention. Children must be able to attend to (listen and understand) information for learning to occur. Without this cognitive skill at a high functioning level, reading acquisition along with school success will be adversely affected. Normal classroom movements or noises may not bother most children. Those students with poor attention may find themselves watching a seat mate or looking for the noise being made on the other side of the room.  Such distractions may interfere with their ability to hear and comprehend information. When students cannot pay attention well and assimilate new information, they become frustrated and lose interest in the lesson. Even small distractions that others ignore will then become the focus. Let's build good attention skills in the early grades to optimize children's school success!

Processing

Next, the cognitive skill of processing allows our brains to understand and assign meaning to incoming information. Most information is received either visually or aurally.  Students with poor visual processing skills may find themselves interpreting visual cues inaccurately. As a result,  math computation, hand writing, and oral reading may be adversely affected. Children with poor auditory processing skills may be unable to accurately discriminate between sounds. They might appear reluctant to answer a question since their brains are busy trying to figure out what was asked of them. Reading and comprehension as well as math then become very real challenges for students with poor cognitive processing ability.

Sequencing

Lastly our brains arrange information in a particular order with the cognitive skill of sequencing. Students need this skill to alphabetize, count, and organize information. When children's brains meld new information with previously stored Information, they have a solid base for learning. Children with weak sequencing skills may not be able to compose or outline a story. Even doing a simple word search game depends on good cognitive sequencing skills. Some children who are weak in sequencing may become disinterested in the lesson, perceiving it as "boring" or too difficult. On occasion disruptive behavior may occur due to a child's academic frustration.

Fast ForWord program is a well-documented educational program geared toward improving these essential cognitive skills. To know more please visit : www.sparklearning.in or write to sbg@sparklearning.in

Here’s why ‘baby talk’ is good for your baby

When we read, it’s very easy for us to tell individual words apart: In written language, spaces are used to separate words from one another. But this is not the case with spoken language – speech is a stream of sound, from which the listener has to separate words to understand what the speaker is saying.

This task isn’t difficult for adults who are familiar with the words of their language. But what about babies, who have almost no linguistic experience? How do they even begin to separate, or “segment,” individual words from the stream of language that they hear all around them all of the time?

As a researcher interested in early language production, I am fascinated by how babies begin acquiring knowledge of their language, and how parents and other caregivers can support them in this task.

Babies first start learning language by listening not to individual words, but to the rhythm and intonation of the speech stream – that is, the changes between high and low pitch, and the rhythm and loudness of syllables in speech. Parents often exaggerate these features of the language when talking with their infants, and this is important for early language learning.

Nevertheless, some may feel that using this exaggerated speech style is condescending, or unrealistic in comparison to adult speech, and as such does not set babies off to a good start.

Is “baby talk” really good for babies?

How babies learn

Even before a baby is born, the process of learning language has already begun. In the third trimester of pregnancy, when the infant’s ears are sufficiently developed, the intonation patterns of the mother’s speech are transmitted through the fluids in the womb.

This is thought to be like listening to someone talking in a swimming pool: It’s difficult to make out the individual sounds, but the rhythm and intonation are clear. This has an important effect on language learning. By the time an infant is born, she already has a preference for her mother’s language. At this stage the infant is able to identify language through its intonation patterns.

For example, French and Russian speakers place emphasis on different parts of a word or sentence, so the rhythm of these two languages sounds different. Even at four days old, babies can use this information to distinguish their own language from an unfamiliar other language.

This means that the newly born infant is ready to start learning the language that surrounds her; she already has an interest in her mother’s language, and as her attention is drawn to this language she begins to learn more about the features and patterns within it.

Using a singsong voice

Intonation is also very important to infants’ language development in the first months of life. Adults tend to speak to babies using a special type of register that we know as “baby talk” or “motherese.” This typically involves a higher pitch than regular speech, with wide, exaggerated intonation changes.

Research has shown that babies prefer to listen to this exaggerated “baby talk” type of speech than typical adult-like speech: They pay more attention when a parent’s speech has a higher pitch and a wider pitch range compared to adult-like speech with less exaggerated pitch features.

For example, a mother might say the word “baby” in an exaggerated “singsong” voice, which holds an infant’s attention longer than it would in a monotonal adult-style voice. Words produced in this way also stand out more from the speech stream, making it easier for babies to pick out smaller chunks of language.

Across the vast stream of language that babies hear around them every day, these distinctive pitch features in baby talk help babies to “tune in” to a small part of the input, making language processing a more manageable task.

How infants process speech

Baby talk tends to be spoken at a slower rate, and key words often appear at the end of a phrase. For example, the sentence, “Can you see the doggie?” is preferable to “The doggie is eating a bone”: Babies will learn the word “doggie” more easily when it appears at the end of the phrase.

For the same reasons, words produced in isolation – separated from the rest of the phrase by pauses – are also easier for infants to learn. Research has shown that the first words that infants produce are often those that are heard most frequently in isolation in early development. Babies hear isolated words such as “bye bye” and “mummy” very frequently, and these are often some of the earliest words that they learn to produce.

When a word is produced separately from running speech, the infant does not have to segment it from a stream of sounds, and so it is easier to determine where the word begins and where it ends.

Furthermore, infants have been found to recognize words more easily when they are produced more slowly than in typical adult speech. This is because when speech is slower, it is easier for infants to pick out the individual words and sounds, which may be produced more clearly than in faster speech. In addition, infants process language much more slowly than adults, and so it is believed that slower speech gives infants more time to process what they hear.

How reduplication helps

Word repetition is also beneficial in infants’ early word learning. Infants’ first words tend to be those which are produced most frequently in caregiver speech, such as “mummy,” “bottle” and “baby.” 

The more often an infant hears a word, the easier it is to segment it from the speech stream. The infant develops a stronger mental representation of frequent words. Eventually she will be more likely to produce frequently heard words with fewer errors.

Furthermore, reduplicated words – that is, words which contain repetition, such as “woof woof” or “quack quack” – are typical of baby talk, and are known to have an advantage for early word learning.

Even newborn infants show stronger brain activation when they hear words that contain reduplication. This suggests that there may be a strong advantage for these words in human language processing. This is supported by evidence from slightly older infants, who have been found to learn reduplicated words more easily than non-reduplicated words.

How ‘baby talk’ helps infants

So, baby talk is not just a way of engaging with infant on a social level – it has important implications for language learning from the very first moments of a newborn’s life. Features of baby talk present infants with information about their ambient language, and allow them to break up the speech stream into smaller chunks.

While baby talk is not essential to guiding infants’ language learning, the use of pitch modulations, repetition and slower speech all allow infants to process the patterns in their language more easily.

Speaking in such an exaggerated style might not seem conducive to language learning in the longer term, but ample research shows that this speech style actually provides an optimum input for language learning from the very first days of an infant’s life.

Phonemic Awareness as a Predictor of Reading Success

What is the first sound you hear in the word “cat”? Now, change the "c" sound to "m". What’s the word now? These are examples of activities we use to target phonemic awareness. We are building the understanding that every word can be perceived as a sequence of phonemes, or individual sounds. A child’s success with phonemic awareness is the best predictor of later reading success. On the road to reading, phonemic awareness is at the start.

The language to reading connection

As a speech-language pathologist, I’m fascinated by language development. When my son was born, I marveled at every smile, coo, sound, gesture...you get the picture. Typical language development unfolds from the earliest moments in a child’s life. Babies begin to tune into the sounds of the language(s) they are exposed to. They start babbling in longer and more varied strings of sounds, then begin speaking their first words. As vocabulary grows, children start putting words together, gradually learning the grammar of their language and applying it to express more sophisticated word and sentence structures. Language and the ideas understood and expressed become more complex. Onwards and upwards! What we as parents and educators must know is that language and reading skills are connected.

The elements of language development--phonology (sounds), vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics (social skills)-come into play as reading skills grow. Among these, phonological skills influence the early learning of letters, sounds and words. Much of the time, but not always, phonological development occurs implicitly as part of language acquisition. Phonological skills are built from the recognition and production of the sounds (phonemes) of a given language and understanding of the rule-based system by which these phonemes are used to create words. A crucial phonological skill for early readers is, you guessed it, phonemic awareness!

We must teach children phonemic awareness through early literacy experience and direct teaching. In doing so, early readers learn to listen and think about the sounds of their language and recognize the individual sounds that make words. The ability to attend to the words they speak and hear, break them down into individual sounds and put them back together again lays the foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle of written language. Phonemic awareness allows children to more easily make the connection to the reading process of seeing letters and “sounding out” words. Children who experience delays or deficits in speech, language, hearing or auditory processing commonly have difficulty with phonological skills. Therefore, they will likely face greater challenges when it comes to acquiring phonemic awareness - and reading.    

Levels of ability in phonemic awareness

Adams (1990) provided an outline of five levels of phonemic awareness:

·         Rhyme and alliteration - to hear rhymes and alliteration as measured by knowledge of nursery rhymes

·         Oddity Tasks - comparing and contrasting the sounds of words for rhyme and alliteration

·         Blending and splitting syllables

·         Phonemic segmentation - being able to identify and count the individual sounds in a word

·         Phoneme manipulation - manipulating sounds by taking away or adding a sound, thereby creating a new word  

So, Mother Goose and her curious Pease Porridge are famous for a reason. Nursery rhymes and alliterations, such as tongue twisters, help children tune into the words, syllables and sounds of language. Phonemic awareness progressively builds from there.

Which road do you choose?

You are going on a road trip. Which road do you choose? The straight and narrow one, heading through no-man’s land? Or, the beautiful, scenic road with interesting places to explore along the way? Either way you may get to your destination, but certainly one will make for a more interesting experience than the other. The road to reading should be an (overall!) enjoyable journey for our children. When we encourage learners through fun, engaging activities that motivate participation and foster success, we inspire them to continue down this road, no matter how long and winding it may be.

A few minutes a day can provide an emphasis on activities that teach phonemic awareness. When planning for these activities, engage children by using materials that are either familiar or interesting to them. In the classroom, this could mean words that are taken from thematic units, stories recently read, or things in the immediate environment. Some children will benefit from multisensory methods to help them see, hear and feel the sounds in words as they identify and manipulate them. Games, rather than drill, are best!

Unlike speaking and listening, reading is a learned skill, one that humans need to be taught, systematically. For many children, phonological awareness (and phonemic awareness) do not develop easily or naturally, and reading demands may continue in school while foundational skills are missing. The Fast ForWordⓇ program provides targeted intervention across a wide range of foundational skills to ensure the brain is reading-ready. One such skill that it trains is the brain's ability to process changes in sounds (phonemes) quickly, which is shown to be weak in children with language impairment, auditory processing disorder, and dyslexia. The patented, unique cross-training in the neuroscience-based Fast ForWord exercises has resulted in significant improvements in phonemic awareness, language skills, and reading abilities.  

To ensure that the road to reading is smooth for your child or your students, make sure they are quickly and efficiently developing phonemic awareness! 

To Know more : Write to sbg@sparklearning.in or Call 84284 34567/ 97899 79090