+ Web Sites for Closing Achievement Gaps

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This week’s “Classroom Tools & Tips” newsletter from EduHound.com offers sites devoted to closing achievement gaps among our studetns.

• C.A.R.E.  Strategies for Closing the Achievement Gaps — Provides a multi-themed approach to closing the achievement gaps, focusing on Culture, Abilities, Resilience, and Effort (C.A.R.E.)  http://www.nea.org/tools/16858.htm
• The Value of Value-Added Data: Closing the Achievement Gap – This report shows how value-added data — which tracks growth in student learning — can improve decisions about course placements, individual interventions, and professional development designed to hone teachers’ skills.  http://www.edtrust.org/dc/publication/the-value-of-value-added-data  
• ECS Education Policy Issue Site: Closing the Achievement Gap — Provides readings, research summaries and statistical information on the causes and effects of the achievement gap.  http://www/ecs.org/html/issue.asp?issueid=194
• Closing the Achievement Gap: PBS – Join Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page as he tells the story of Amistad Academy, a charter school founded in 1999.  Its goal?  To close the persistent and dramatic achievement gap between minority students and white students in America’s public school system.  http://www.pbs.org/closingtheachievementgap/index.html
• NAEP: Achievement Gaps – Provides detailed information on the size of the achievement gaps between Black and White students at both the national and state levels and how those achievement gaps have changed over time.  http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/gaps/
• Closing the Achievement Gap through the Reading First Program: Teacher Update —   Research shows that if students are behind in reading at the end of third grade, the likelihood that they will ever reach proficiency is slim.   That’s why Reading First focuses on effective early reading instruction.  http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tools/initiative/updates/040628.html
• Closing the Achievement Gap: Achieving Success for All Students – This Web site is part of the (California) statewide initiative to close the achievement gap.  Aimed at supporting the work of policymakers, educators and interested community members, it is the electronic hub for helpful information, research, and success stories about efforts to close the gap in California.  http://www.closingtheachievementgap.org/ca/ctag/print/htdocs/home.htm

 Eduhound’s “Classroom Tools & Tips” is a weekly newsletter offering valuable ed tech resources to incorporate into K-12 curriculum.  You’ll find educational topics, preformatted templates, technology tutorials and practical tips.  You can subscribe,  offer your suggestions for topics, or share your own templates.  Just email Judi Rajala at JRajala@eduhound.com

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards  614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Web Sites for RTI (Response to Intervention) Resources

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From an article in Perspectives, the IDA quarterly, here are helpful Websites that have reviewed and sythesized information about evidence-based programs for RTI:

• The Center on Instruction – http://www.centeroninstruction.org/
• The Florida Center for Reading Research – http://www.fcrr.org/Interventions/index.htm
• Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education – http://www.bestevidence.org/

 Excellent RTI resources and case studies for training purposes:

• Office of Special Education program-Funded Project Iris — http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/resources.html

source: Fall 2009 issue of Perspectives on Language and Literacy, a quarterly publication of the International Dyslexia Association.  (http://www.interdys.org)  Article by Al Otaiba, Connor, Foorman, Schatschneider, Greulich and Sidler, “Identifying and Intervening with Beginning Readers Who Are At-Risk for Dyslexia: Advances in Individualized Classroom Instruction.” 

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards  614-579-6021  or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Proposed Dyslexia Bill for Ohio

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Here are the goals and reasons for the bill.  Learn the facts, and use them to talk your Ohio legislators and friends. 

If you have, or know, a child whose needs are not being met, you know why this bill is necessary.  Our legislators are not yet convinced.  Let’s convince them.

LEGISLATIVE GOALS

1.     Purposes of the proposed Dyslexia Bill

• Assessment, prevention and remediation for students with dyslexia
• Systematic, explicit reading instruction
• Instruction taught by an adequately trained and coached teacher
• Professional development of teachers, administrators, and supervisors (stressing an understanding of dyslexia and the type of instruction dyslexics need in order to read, write and spell) 

2.     After the bill takes effect, if a district does not have teachers who are properly trained, the district must provide a qualified tutor to work with students during the school day.

3.     Education majors at all universities/colleges in Ohio must be educated about dyslexia as part of the reading curriculum.

4.     Professors of Education at all universities/colleges in Ohio must be educated about dyslexia and effective methods of teaching these students.

WHY IS THIS NEEDED?

 Reading failure has devastating consequences. 

1.     Reading failure  impacts crime in the state of Ohio: some states determine how many prison cells to build based on reading scores of students in middles schools.  Research from the Basic Skills Agency makes it clear that there is a significant connection between repeated offending and poor literacy skills.  Another study shows that  recidivism is reduced by 20 percent when quality reading programs are in place.

• Fact: 3 out of 5 people in American prisons can’t read
• Fact: 85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading     
• Fact: 50% of Americans can’t read well enough to balance a checkbook or read prescription drug labels.
• Visit http://education-portal.com/articles/Illiteracy:_The_Downfall_of_American_Society.html

2.     Reading failure impacts daily life in Ohio.   Nearly half of Ohio’s Black male students read at less than the Basic Level.  Virtually none reach the advanced level. 

 NAEP national resuts indicate that overall only 36% of all eighth grade students in Ohio read above a Basic level.

Basic level means a reader operates on a very rudimentary level in terms of reading capabilities; he can’t draw simple conclusions from reading a column in a newspaper or editorial comparing candidates in a local election.

Below Basic level means she can’t carry out the everyday functions in American society, such as reading a bus schedule to see how to get across town; she would be unable to use most of the self-service ATMS or fill out a standard job application.

3.     Reading failure perpetuates socio-economic, racial and ethnic inequities.  Of African-American students, 70% can’t read.  (In Ohio, the number is 80%.)

If you look at Hispanics nationally, the percentage is 65-70%.  And studies show that the majority of kids who are at risk and will hit the wall when they attempt to read are children living in poverty. 

Of all people on welfare, 3 out of 4 can’t read.  The inability to read accounts for the fact of low incomes in between 46 to 51% of those below the poverty line .  

4.     Reading failure impacts school budgets in Ohio.   It costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars each year to deal with reading failure. 

In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, 50 states and the District of Columbia spent approximately $50 billion on special education services; that amounts to $8000 for each special education student. 

The total spending to provide a combination of regular and special education services to students with disabilities amounted to $77.3 billion, an average of $12,474 per student.  An additional one billion dollars was expended on students with disabilities for other special needs programs such as Title 1, English language learners, or gifted and talented students.  That brought the total per student to $12,639.

Based on these figures, the total price to educate average students with disabilities is 1.90 times that expended to educate the typical regular education student with no special needs.  If you exclude money spent on school facilities, the ratio of current spending on the typical special education student is 2.08 times that expended on the student who has no special needs.

The financial cost of “labeling” a child as needing Special Education services is staggering, not to mention the cost to the student himself as he endures the stigma of being in a group “unlike the others” in mainstream education. 

We can reduce the number of children ear-marked for a Special Education program if we provide early intervention;  we will be providing a significant financial and social return on investment.

We have evidence that of all children identified as learning disabled by public schools, 70 to 80% are primarily impaired in reading.  Difficulty in word recognition skills shows up in 90% of these students. 

Ohio can significantly reduce the number of students identified with reading disabilities by employing the same type of strategic planning used by successful businesses looking for long-term change.

At the “Children of the Code” website (http://www.childrenofthecode.org/) Dr G Reid Lyon, former Branch Chief of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, describes why so many students are eventually identified as having a learning disability. (Watch the video “Dysteachia.”)

 When we look at the kids that are having a tough time learning how to read, we went through the statistics, 38% nationally, disaggregate that, 70% kids from poverty and so forth hit the wall. 

Ninety-five percent of those kids are instructional casualties… About five to six percent of thos kids have what we call dyslexia or learning disabilities in reading. 

Ninety-five percent of the kids hitting the wall in learning to read are what we call NBT: Never Been Taught.

5.     Effective early intervention through systematic and explicit reading instruction for students with dyslexia will reduce special education referrals in Ohio. 

A study (Jenkins, 2003) showed that in Iowa, a pre-referral system for special education resulted in an 8:1 reduction in Special Education placements for black males.

In Florida, when early intervention was implemented special education referral rates dropped approximately 40% in Reading First schools. 

Reductions in the number of special education students have been found, and reductions in the disproportional representation of minority groups in special education have been documented. 

6.     Reading improficiency not only endagers academic achievement, it endangers emotional health.  The executive director of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, James Wendorf, says

I think the main thing to emphasize for anyone who has worked with a child or with an adult who has a reading problem, either who is low literate or is just struggling with reading, is that it is very apparent that it is the lost human potential, the lost self-esteem… that is the most poignant.  And, in the end it’s the most significant, because the loss in self-esteem is what leads a whole host of social pathologies that are very difficult to look in the face.

Crime, substance abuse, and the school drop out rate, any of those things — they are very difficult to face.

And there is a line to be drawn between low literacy skills and those social pathologies.

7.     OHIO Employment, Economic Status, and Civic Responsibility (based on OHIO Adult Literacy Survey, May 1994) 

•  Employed respondents were less likely than those who were unemployed or out of the labor force to perform in the lowest levels on each literacy scale. Approximately 60 percent of unemployed participants, and roughly two-thirds of those who were out of the labor force, performed in Levels 1 and 2, in contrast to between 31 and 38 percent of the employed. 
• Professional, technical or managerial position holders in Ohio had higher average literacy scores than those in other types of occupations, including sales or clerical, craft or service, or labor, assembly, fishing or farming positions.
• Adults who performed in the higher levels on each literacy scale had worked more weeks in the previous year than individuals in the lower levels.  In Ohio, those in the three highest literacy levels reported working an average of 32 to 46 weeks in the previous year, compared with only 13 to 15 weeks for those performing in Level 1.
• Across the scales, Ohio survey participants with proficiencies in Level 1 reported median weekly earning of around $200.  In contrast, those in Level 3 earned about $325, while those in Level 5 earned around $575 a week.  Similarly, the median annual household income reported in the highest proficiency levels was significantly higher than that of participants at the lowest levels.
• Approximately two-thirds of Ohio respondents designated as either poor or near poor demonstrated skills in Levels 1 and 2.  In contrast, only 34 to 41 percent of the not poor performed in this level.  As a result, the average literacy scores of poor and near poor respondents are considerably lower than the scores of adults who were not poor.
• Among the Ohio survey participants, voting sppeared to be related to literary proficiancy.  On all three scales, the average literary proficiencies of respondents who said they had voted in a recent election were higher than those of nonvoters.

source: COBIDA, the Central Ohio Branch of the International Dyslexia Association.  http://www.cobida.org

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021  or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ LDA Health Alert re Neurotoxic Chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA)

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The Learning Disabilities Association (LDA) has sent out email alerts to all its members urging them to act now.

On November 5, Consumer Reports published a study looking at BPA levels in 19 different name-brand foods and found that a diverse assortment of canned foods, including some labeld “organic” and “BPA-free,” contained measurable levels of BPA.

The neurotoxic chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) is leaching into many of our foods and beverages.

The study concluded that children eating multiple servings per day of cnned foods with BPA could get a dose of BPA near levels that have caused adverse effects in several animal studies.

And a few days later, NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an equally compelling piece that  sounds the alarm on this hormone-disrupting chemical.

A study released in October found an association between women’s exposure to Bisphenol-A during pregnancy and aggressive behavior in their daughters at two years of age.

Another study, released in November, revealed that male Chinese factory workers exposed to high levels of BPA had increased incidene of sexual dyspunction.

LDA and other concerned groups say the science is clear. 

More than 200 peer-reviewed studies show that this extremely toxic, synthetic estrogen is so powerful it can  cross the placenta at parts per billion or parts per trillion and negatively impact prenatal development, including brain development.

Adverse health effect associated with BPA exposure include

• neurological problems causing changes in behavior
• increased risk of breast & prostate cancer
• genital abnormalities in male babies
• early puberty in girls
• metabolic disorders (insulin resistance, altered fat metabolism)

BPA is considered the building block of polycarbonate plastic and can be found in baby bottles, water bottles, food storage containers, and epoxy resins that coat the lining of metal food cans, including infant formula cans.

It’s one of the most pervasive synthetic chemicals in modern life, with more than three billion pounds a year produced in the United States alone.

EMAIL YOUR SENATORS ABOUT  S.593

Right now the Senate is considering the “Ban Poisonous Additives Act of 2009.“  It is “S. 593 – the BPA Act of 2009.”  The legislation has been introduced by Senator Diane Feinstein. 

It would ban BPA from food and beverage containers.

Send an email to your senator.  Ask them to co-sponsor the Ban Poisonous Substances (BPA) Act of 2009.

Find your senator’s contact information at http://www.senate.gov/ Or call any Senate office through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

source: LDA News-in-Brief, email.  http://www.ldanatl.org/

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ New Pfizer Unit to Take On Autism

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In an article in The Day, by Lee Howard, we learn that associate research fellow at Pfizer Diane Stephenson and her colleague Howie Mayer were able to bring to fruition their idea of forming a separate research unit focusing on autism.

Stephenson has two nephews and a niece with the neurological disorder; Mayer has two children with autism.

They were later joined by  another colleague, Larry Fitzgerald.  The group contacted key experts outside Pfizer who knew the latest breakthroughs in autism research.

According to Stephenson, science in the past years have started making significant headway in genetic research geared toward autism.  Two years ago might have been too soon.  But late last year, the colleagues felt they had enough science on their side to make their case. 

“Most everyone told us we were crazy,” says Stephenson.  The pharmaceutical industry — and Pfizer — has been in a downsizing mode lately.  But senior management embraced the idea and launched the autism unit in January with 15 scientists.

Fitzgerald became the first head of the unit, but departed a few weeks ago, and mayer has also moved on, now working for another business unit at Pfizer.  Stephenson is the remaining founder still working on-site.

The long range goal will be to prevent autism, but Pfizer plans to address short-term solutions at first. 

Researchers plan to begin by targeting symptoms that appear to cross the spectrum of autism disorders: anxiety, agitation, sleep disorders, social deficits, language disabilities and repetitive behaviors.  The focus is to be identification of medications which address symptoms.

A longer-range goal is to understand the neurobiology behind the disorder so that core symptoms can be treated.

One asset in the research process, according to scientists, is the fact that several markers of autism have recently been identified.  One of these telltale signs is eye-tracking.  While normal children focus on the eyes of a face, autistic children look away, toward the mouth.

This baseline awareness can help scientists see if a drug is having an effect.

Senior scientist Edward Guilmette, in the neuroscience unit labs, is starting to target certain genes that could have an effect on autism. In mice models, the effect of turning on or off various genes than is studied.

Fifteen researchers can seem like a big commitment, but Pfizer scientists say that number  is small compared to the vast research that remains to be done.  They have reached out to collaborators at MIT, the Yale Child Study Center, and NYU, to develop and expand their work.

The current work being done at the moment involves mostly biology and animal studies.  But as specific small-molecule drug targets are developed, more chemists will be enlisted to help.

The first Pfizer autism medicines will likely come from its established drug portfolio.  One possibility is the pain medication Lyrica, although Stephenson emphasizes that drug trials have yet to establish any clinical support for the hypothesis.

Finding uses for established drugs will be much less costly than the $1 billion price tag that would be involved in bringing new drugs to market.  Current drugs have already been proved to be safe.

Another factor reducing costs for developing autism drugs is that several of the spectrum disorders, including Fragile X, currenly have no approved treatment.  That means companies won’t have to prove to the FDA that their drugs are more effective than others on the market.

The long-term hope, according to Stevenson and her colleague Michael Tranfaglia of the FRAXA Research Foundation, is to actually reverse the course of autism — an idea that a few years ago would have seemed absurd, but is already being shown to be within the realm of possibility.

“The sooner you intervene, the better,” says Stephenson. 

Tranfaglia contends, “You can actually normalize development.  It’s entirely reasonable to think you could completely alter the course of the disease.”

my source was: www.courant.com; article on 10/25/09.   See the entire article by Lee Howard at The Day:   http://www.theday.com/article/20091012/BIZ02/310129965  

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021 or email aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Light at Night May Link to Depression

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Researchers at Ohio State University have produced a study that may link depression to light at night, according to an article in Science Daily.

Researchers found that when mice were housed in a lighted room 24 hours a day, they exhibited more depressive symptoms than did similar mice who had normal light-dark cycles.

However, some mice were housed in constant light but had an escape option: a dark opaque tube they could go into.  They showed less evidence of depressive symptoms than the constant-light mice.

Says Laura Folken, lead author of the study and a graduate student in psychology at OSU, “The ability to escape light seemed to quell the depressive effects.  But constant light, with no chance of escape, increased depressive symptoms.”

Results suggest that more attention needs to be focused on how artificial lighting affects emotional health in humans. 

Co-author Randy Nelson, professor of neuroscience and psychology at Ohio State says

The increasing rate of depressive disorders in humans corresponds with the increasing use of light at night in modern society.  Many people are now exposed to unnatural light cycles, and that may have real consequences for our health.

The researchers presented the work October 21 in Chicago at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience; it will appear in the December 28, 2009 issue of the journal Behavioral Brain Research.

“This is important for people who work night shifts, and for children and others who watch TV late into the night, disrupting their usual light-dark cycle,” says Fonken.

And there are many other practical implications, says Nelson.  Intensive care units are brightly lit all night long, which might add to the patients’ problems.

source: www.sciencedaily.com article on 10/21/09; journal reference is Laura K Fonken, M Sima Finy, James C Walton, Zachary M Weil, Joanna L Workman, Jessica Ross, Randy J Nelson, “Influence of light at night on murine anxiety- and depressive-like  responses.”  Behavioral Brain Research, 2009; 205 (2): 349 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2009.07.001

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Pen: Mightier Than The Keyboard?

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 According to a study at the University of Washington, second, fourth and sixth grade children with and without handwriting disabilities were able to write more and faster when using a pen than a keyboard to compose essays.         

The study, headed by Virginia Berninger, a University of Washington professor of educational psychology, looked at children’s ability to write the alphabet, sentences, and essays, using both a pen and a keyboard.

Says Berninger, who studies normal writing development and writing disabilities, “Children consistently did better writing with a pen when they wrote essays.  They wrote more and they wrote faster.”

Only for writing the alphabet was the keyboard better than the pen.  For sentences results were mixed.

But when using a pen, children in all three grade levels produced longer essays and composed them at a faster pace. 

In addition, fourth and sixth graders wrote more complete sentences when they used a pen.   The ability to write complete sentences was not affected by the children’s spelling skills.

Perhaps one key fact shown is that many children don’t have a reliable idea of what a sentence is until the third or fouth grade.

According to Berninger

Children first have to understand what a sentence or a complete thought is before they can write one. 

Talking is very different from writing.  We don’t talk in complete sentences.  In conversation we produce units smaller and larger than sentences.

This study was designed to compare methods of transcription, a basic cognitive process involved in writing.  It enables a writer to translate thoughts or ideas into written language.  Both handwriting and spelling are transcription processes.

Berninger’s group had done previous research showing that transcription predicts composition length and quality in developing writers. 

 Transcription by both pen and keyboard involves the hands, and researchers are trying to understand why units of language are affected differently when hands write by pen and when they write with a keyboard.

People think language is a single thing.  But it’s not.  It has multiple levels like a tall building with a different ploor plan for each story.  In written language there are letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, which are different levels of language.

It turns out they are related, but not in a simple way.  Spelling is at the word level, but sentences are at the syntax level.  Words and syntax (patterns for organizing the order of words) are semi-independent.  Organizing sentences to create text is yet another level. 

That’s why some children need spelling help while others need help in constructing sentences and others in composing text with many sentences.

Involved in the study were more than 200 normally developing children.  Children in the three grades were given three tasks. 

For one task, they were told to print all lower case letters in alphabetic order with a pen.  They were then asked to select each letter of the alphabet in order on a keyboard.  In both cases, they were told to work as quickly and accurately as possible.

In the second task, they were asked to write one sentence that began with the word “writing” while using a pen.  They were then asked to write one sentence that began with “reading” on the keyboard.

Finally, the children were asked to write essays on provided topics for 10 minutes, both with a pen and by keyboard.

Most children in the study developed transcription skills in an age-appropriate way, although a small number showed signs of a specific learning disability — transcription disability. 

 Both the normally developing and those with the disability wrote extended text better by pen than by keyboard.

Says Berninger

Federal accommodations for disabilities now mean that schools often allow children to use laptops to bypass handwriting or spelling problems. 

Just giving them a laptop may not be enough.  Children with this disability also need appropriate education in the form of explicit transcription and composition instruction.

We need to learn more about the process of writing with a computer, and even though schools have computers they haven’t integrated them in teaching at the early grades. 

We need to help children become “bilingual” writers so they can write by both the pen and the computer.  So don’t throw away your pen or your keyboard.  We need them both.

But we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that it is important for developing writers and children with transcription disability to be able to form letters by hand. 

A keyboard doesn’t allow a child to have the same opportunity to engage the hand while forming letters — on a keyboard a letter is selected by pressing a key and is not formed.

Brain imaging studies with adults have shown an advantage for forming letters over selecting or viewing letters.  A brain imaging study at the University of Washington with children showed that sequencing fingers may engage thinking. 

We need more research to figure out how forming letters by a pen and selecting them by pressing a key may engage our thinking brains differently. 

The study was published in the journal Learning Disability Quarterly, and co-authors were Robert Abbott, UW professor and chair of educational psychology, and research assistants Amy Augsburger and Noelia Garcia. 

 Funding was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.  Berninger can be contacted by email at vwb@u.washington.edu.  

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards  614-579-6021  or email aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Symptom List to Help Gauge Head Injuries

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Jane Brody in the N Y Times provides us with The National Athletic Trainers Association Graded Symptom Checklist to help guide doctors, coaches, trainers and every parent whose child plays a contact or collision sport.

The checklist can help determine immediately whether a concussion has occurred, its severity and whether a player is fit to return to the game.

But the checklist is also important to use later, on the recommended schedule below: symptoms of a concussion are sometimes delayed.

A player who sustained a direct or indirect blow to the brain may feel all right initially, then develop symptoms hours or days later.

Athletic trainers, doctors or other medical personnel who suspect that an athlete has suffered a concussion can use the checklist to evaluate a player both at rest and during physical exertion. 

Coaches and parents can be trained to use it as well.

Professional evaluators, parents and players must understand that a return of symptoms, when a brain-injured athlete is physically or cognitively stressed is a clear sign that the brain has not healed.

THE   GRADED   SYMPTOM   CHECKLIST

Score each symptom on a scale of 0 to 6: 0 is not present, 3 is moderate, and 6 is most severe.  Grade each of these symptoms at

• 0 hours after injury
• 2-3 hours after injury
• 24 hours after injury
• 48 hours after injury
• 72 hours after injury

Blurred vison ___  Dizziness___ Drowsiness___ Excess sleep___ Easily distracted___ Fatigue___ Feeling “in a fog”___ Feeling “slowed down”___ Headache___ Inappropriate emotions___ Irritability___ Loss of consciousness___ Loss of orientation___ Memory problems___ Nausea___  Nervousness___ Personality change___ Poor distance or coordination___ Poor concentration___ Ringing in ears___ Sadness___ Seeing stars___ Sensitivity to light___ Sensitivity to noise___ Sleep disturbance___ Vacant stare or glassy eyes___ Vomiting___

Repeat the evaluation until all symptoms have cleared both at rest and when physically stressed.

Says Dr Robert Cantu, co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University,

Any one of these symptoms occurring in the aftermath of a head trauma would disqualify an athlete from participating in the sport.  No athlete should be engaged in physical exertion if any symptom is present.

sole source: Jane Brody’s article in the NY Times on 8/25/09.  www.nytimes.com  Dr Robert C Cantu answers reader’s questions on concussions at www.nytimes.com/consults  

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021  or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Guilt and Atonement in Children’s Development

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John Tierney writes in the NY Times about recent research into the mechanisms that help children become considerate, conscientious adults.

A long-term study at the University of Iowa aimed at isolating the effects of two distinct mechanisms.  One is called “effortful self-control:” how well you can think ahead and deliberately suppress impulsive behavior that hurts yourself and others.

The other mechanism is less rational; it is especially valuable for children and adults with poor self-control.  It’s the feeling measured in a “broken toy” experiment with toddlers: guilt, or what children frequently diagnose as a “sinking feeling in my tummy.”

Guilt comes in many varieties and is joked about: Puritan, Catholic, Jewish etc.  But psychologists keep finding evidence of its usefulness. 

There is clearly a downside to too little guilt; there are sociopaths who feel no remorse, but also kindergartners who smack and snatch.

Says Grazyna Kochanska, who has been tracking children’s development for two decades at the University of Iowa, children typically start to feel guilt in their second year of life.

Some children have temperaments that make them prone to guilt, and some become more guilt-prone thanks to parents and other early influences.  Says Dr Kochanska:

Some children respond with acute and intense tension and negative emotions when they are tempted to misbehave, or even anticipate violating norms and rules.  They remember, often subconsciously, how awful they have felt in the past.

 Dr Kochanska’s latest studies are published in the August issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  She and colleagues found that 2-year-olds who showed more chagrin during the “broken-toy” experiment went on to have fewer behavioral problems over the next five years.

That was true even for the ones who scored low on tests measuring their ability to focus on tasks and supress strong desires to act impulsively.

According to Dr Kochanska

If you have high guilt, it’s such a rapid response system, and the sensation is so incredibly unpleasant, that effortful control doesn’t much matter.

 But self-control was critical to children in the studies who were low in guilt.  They still behaved well if they had high self-control.

Even if you don’t have that sinking feeling in the tummy, you can still suppress impulses.  You can stop and remember what your parents told you.  You can stop and reflect on the consequences for others and yourself.

What Can a Parent Do?

If your child lacks both self-control and guilt, what can you do?  Should you feel guilty?  Should you feel you’ve done a bad job of parenting?

Researchers have not been able to link any particular pattern of parenting to children’s levels of guilt, says June Tangney, a psychologist at George Mason University who has studied guilt intensively in both children and adults, including prison inmates.

She does have some advice for parents. 

The key element is the difference between shame and guilt.  Shame is the feeling that you’re a bad person because of bad behavior; it has repeatedly been found to to be unhealthy.

Guilty feelings focused on the behavior itself, however, can be productive. 

It’s not enough, says Dr Tangney, for parents just to follow the old admonition to criticize the sin but not the sinner.

Most young children really don’t hear the distinction between “Johnny, you did a bad thing,” versus “Johnny, you’re a bad boy.”  They hear “bad kid.”  I think a more active directive approach is needed.

She recommends focusing not just on the bad deed, but more important, on how to make amends.

Both children and adults can be surprisingly clueless about whether and how to make things right.  Little kids are overwhelmed by the spilled mess of milk on the floor.  Parents can teach and support them to say “I’m sorry,” and to clean it up, maybe leaving the kitchen a little cleaner than it was before.

That was the atonement strategy followed by the experimenters in Iowa who tricked the children with the broken toy.

After 60 seconds of angst, during which the child’s reactions could be observed by researchers, the children were asked what had happened.  They were then told that the toy could be easily repaired. 

The researcher would then leave the room with the broken toy and return in half a minute with an intact replica of it.  The experimenter took the blame for having caused the damage, reassuring the children that it wasn’t their fault.  The toy was now as good as new.

And the researchers had modeled how to say “I’m sorry.”

sole source: John Tierney’s article in the NY Times Science section on 8/25/09.   www.nytimes.com    Join the discussion at Tierney Lab          http://tinyurl.com/mmb9ro  – how can parents best instill these good mechanisms in their kids?

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021  or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Chronic Stress-Loops in Brain Change Behavior

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In an article in the NY Times, Natalie Angier writes that chronic stress changes the brain, but relaxation can change it back.

In the journal Science this summer, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute in Portugal says he and his colleagues found that rats, if chronically stressed, lost their elastic rat cunning – they instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses.  They would, for example, compulsively press a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.

Brain Changes

In addition, the rats’ behavioral oddnesses were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry.

On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled.  Conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.

In other words, rats were now cognitively disposed to keep doing the same things over and over, to “run laps in the same dead-end rat race rather than seek a pipeline to greener sewers,” writes Angier.  And Dr Sousa says,

“Behaviors become habitual faster in stressed animals than in the controls, and worse, the stressed animals can’t shift back to goal-directed behaviors when that would be the better approach.”

A neurobiologist who studies stress at Stanford, Robert Sapolsky, says

“This is a great model for understanding why we end up in a rut, and then dig ourselves deeper and deeper into that rut.”

In fact, continues Sapolsky, humans are lousy at recognizing when their normal coping mechanisms aren’t working.  We usually try it five more times, when it would have been better to try something new.

While perseverance is an admirable trait — is indeed essential for success in life — if it’s taken too far it becomes “perseveration.”  Perseveration is  uncontrollable repetition.  Taken to extremes, it simply seems perverse.

Dr Sapolsky is the author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.” 

“If  I were to try to break into the world of modern dance, after the first few rejections the logical response might be, practice even more.  But after the 12,000th rejection, maybe I should realize this isn’t a viable career option.”

But It Can Be Reversed

Luckily, it appears that stress-induced changes in behavior and brain can be reversed.  

After four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies, Tasers and dunking in water, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls.  They were able to innovate, discriminate and refrain from obsessive behavior.

Atrophied synaptic connections in the decisive regions of the prefrontal cortex resprouted, while the overgrown dendritic vines of the habit-prone sensorimotor striatum retreated.

Says Bruce McEwen, head of the neuroendocrinology lab at Rockefeller University, the new findings offer a particularly elegant demonstration of a principle that researchers have just begun to grasp.

“The brain is a very resilient and plastic organ.  Dendrites and synapses retract and reform, and reversible remondeling can occur throughout life.”

We associate stress with the split-second pace of our wired society.  But the body’s stress response is one of our oldest attributes.  Its basic architecture, with its linked network of neural and endocrine organs that spit out stimulatory and inhibitory hormones and other factors as needed, looks pretty much the same in a human as it does in a goldfish or a red-spotted newt.

Our stress response is itself dynamic.  It was essential for maneuvering through a dynamic world.  We had to dodge predators and chase down prey; we swung through trees; we fought off disease. 

As we go about our days, says McEwen, the biochemical mediators of the stress response rise and fall, flutter and flare.  “Cortisol and adrenaline go up and down.  Our inflammatory cytokines go up and down.”

The target organs of stress hormones likewise “dance to the beat ,” writes Angier.  The heart races and slows, the intestines constrict and relax.  This system of so-called allostasis, of maintaining control through constant change, stands in contrast to the mechanisms of homeostasis that keep the pH level and oxygen concentration in the blood within a narrow and invariant range.

But the dynamism of a person’s stress response makes it vulnerable to disruption, especially when the system is treated too roughly and not according to instructions.

In most animals, a serious threat provokes activation of the stimulatory, sympathetic, “fight or flight” side of the stress response.  But when the danger has passed, the calming parasympathetic circuitry tamps everything back down to baseline flickering.

Humans, however, have a brain that can think too much, that can extract phantom threats on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.  Over time such constant hyperactivation of the stress response can unbalance the entire feedback loop.

Reactions which would be desirable in limited, targeted quantities become hazardous in “promiscuous excess,”  writes Angier.  You need a spike in blood pressure if you’re going to run, to speedily deliver oxygen to your muscles.  But chronically elevated blood pressure is a source of mutiple medical miseries.

We might ask, why should the stressed brain be prone to habit formation? 

Perhaps — to help shunt as many behaviors as possible over to automatic pilot, so we can focus on the crisis at hand.

sole source: NY Times article by Natalie Angier on 8/18/09.  www.nytimes.com   

tutoring in columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwards tutor@columbus.rr.com