+ 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

+ 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

+ Study: Bilingual Children Pick Up Words More Quickly

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The assumption that bilingual toddlers have more trouble learning language skills than children who know just one language has been contested by European researchers, according to Peter West, HealthDay Reporter.

Study author Agnes Melinda Kovacs, research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, says

While the remarkable performance of children acquiring one language is impressive, many children acquire more than one language simultaneously. 

As bilingual children presumably have to learn roughly twice as much as their monolingual peers [because they learn two languages instead of one], one would expect their language acquisition to be somewhat delayed.  However, bilinguals pass the language development milestones at the same ages as their monolingual peers.

 Appearing online in Science, the finding came from a test of the responses to verbal and visual cues from 64 babies who were 12 months old.  They came from monolingual and bilingual families, although the study did not specify which languages the families spoke.

The Method

The toddlers were exposed to two sets of words that had different structural characteristics.  After each word, the children viewed a special toy on either the left or right side of a screen, depending on the word’s stucture.  They then were presented with words they had never heard before, but which conformed to one of the two verbal structures.  No toy followed.

Researchers determined whether the infants had learned the word structures by measuring the direction of their gaze after hearing each new word.

Judging by their eye movements, the bilingual kids did better in recognizing words than their monolingual peers.

Says Kovacs

We showed that pre-verbal, 12-month-old, bilingual infants have become more flexible at learning speech structures than monolinguals.  When given the opportunity to simultaneously learn two different regularities, bilingual infants learned both, while monolinguals learned only one of them.

This means, she says, that bilinguals may acquire two languages in the time in which monolinguals acquire one — because they quickly become more flexible learners.

How It Works

According to the study, the cognitive pathways developed during the learning of two languages might make bilingual children more efficient in acquiring new information.

Researchers had already often confirmed the benefits of learning more than one language.  In a 2004 Canadian study, for example, it was found that bilingual speakers were more proficient at dealing with distractions than those who spoke only one language; and that ability was even more pronounced for older people (suggesting that multilingualism might help elderly speakers avoid age-related cognitive problems).

A significant percentage of humanity speaks more than one language.  In the United States more than 18 percent of the population aged 5 and older speaks a language other than English at home, according to the 2000 census.

A child psychologist who read the Italian study says the results are intriguing, and said she would like to see further research on how children learn different languages, especially languages with different tonal structures such as Chinese and English.

Says Marta Flaum, who practices in Chappaqua NY,

We now know, thanks to fMRI studies that allow us to observe the working brain, that learning does result in discrete changes in ‘wiring.’  It would make sense that learning a second language affects brain changes as well.

Flaum, who specializes in diagnosing and helping children with dyslexia and other language handicaps, says

We do know that the young brain is more plastic than the older brain, making it easier to learn at an earlier age.

More Information

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics has more on the emerging field of psycholinguistics.  http://www.mpi.nl/

sole source: http://www.yahoo.com, HealthDay Report by Peter West on 7/9/09.

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

+ Fit Body: Fit Mind, Better Grades

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Shari Wargo, on Edutopia online, writes that the term “dumb jock” is probably an oxymoron.

Biology and education research now shows that regular exercise benefits the brain in a number of ways.  Regular workouts in the gym or on the playground improve attention span, memory and learning.  They also reduce stress and the effects of ADHD.   They even delay cognitive decline in old age.

John J. Ratey, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says “Memory retention and learning functions are all about brain cells actually changing, growing and working better together.  Exercise creates the best environment for that process to occur.”

Researchers aren’t exactly certain how exercise leads to better cognitive function.  They are learning how it physically benefits the brain.

For starters, aerobic exercise pumps more blood throughout the body, including the brain.  More blood means more oxygen, and therefore, better-nourished brain tissue.

It also spurs the brain to produce more of the protein called “brain-derived neurotrophic factor,” BDNF.    Ratey called BDNF “Miracle-Gro for the brain.”  This very powerful protein encourages brain cells to grow, interconnect and communicate in new ways.

Studies have also shown that exercise plays a big part in the production of new brain cells, particularly in the dentate gyrus, which is a part of the brain heavily involved in learning and memory skills.

But it wasn’t until recently that researchers turned to the study of children.  In children, exercise may have more impact.

The brain’s frontal lobe, thought to play a role in cognitive control, keeps growing throughout the school years, according to Charles Hillman, associate professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Illinois. “Therefore, exercise could help ramp up the development of a child’s brain,” he says.

Hillman published a study  in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, which involved 259 Illinois third- and fifth-graders who were put through standard physical education routines (e.g. pushups, timed runs).  He measured their body mass.  Then he checked their physical results against their math and reading scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.

“There was a relationship to academic performance,” says Hillman.  “The more physical tests they passd, the better they scored on the achievement test.”

The effects appeared regardless of gender and socioeconomic differences: it seems that no matter his or her race or family income, the fitness of a child’s body and mind are tightly linked.

The bigger the dose of exercise, the more it pays off in academic achievement.  A study published in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport found that children ages 7-11 who exercised for 40 minutes daily after school had greater academic improvement than same-aged kids who worked out for just 20 minutes.

Professor of exercise science at the University of Georgia, Phillip Tomporowski, who was a member of the team that conducted this study, says much of the research today seems to negate the old notion that recess sends kids back to class more hyper and rowdy.

“It appears to be the other way around.  They go back to class less boisterous, more attentive, and better behaved compared with kids who have been sitting in chairs for hours on end.”

Hillman also tested that notion in a study published this year in Neuroscience.  This study found that kids had more accurate responses on standardized tests when they were tested after moderate exercise, as opposed to being tested after 20 minutes of sitting still.  His results lend support to the idea that just a single aerobic workout before class helps boost kids’ learning skills and attention spans.

At Naperville Central High School in Illinois, educators put this idea into practice for nearly four years.  Officials created learning-readiness PE in 2005; it was an early morning class for 12 students who needed help with literacy skills.

The students rotated through different aerobic activities wearing heart monitors to ensure their heart rate was in the target zone (160-190 beats per minute).

These students then joined other students who had not exercised in a special literacy class.  The school’s instructional coordinator for PE and health, Paul Zientarski,  says the students who took PE prior to class showed one and a quarter year’s growth on the standardized reading test after just one semester.   The exercise-free students gained just nine-tenths of a year.

Then Zientarski used the same approach for math-troubled student.  He scheduled some in PE before an introductory algebra class. 

These results were even more dramatic: the exercising students increased their math test scores by 20.4 percent (the other students gained only 3.9 percent).  “It doesn’t matter if they work out in the morning or afternoon, just that they’re in the class right after PE.  It clams them down, it makes them more willing to learn, and they feel good about themselves.”

Whick Exercises Are Best?

Which types of exercise are best for brainpower?  Hillman and other researchers tout aerobic and cardiovascular activities such as running, swimming, and playground games.  “In my studies, only cardiovascular exercise was related to higher academic performance,” he says.

Naperville also focuses on cardiovascular, but also add juggling, gymnastics, and tumbling, which require concentration and provide positive stress to the brain, enhancing learning.

These model programs have inspired similar efforts nationwide.  But in this time of economic pressure, many PE programs are on the chopping block.  Illinois is the only state that required daily PE for all grades.

“Others are working toward it, but it’s a huge challenge with budget restraints and No Child Left Behind,” says Shanna Goodman, who is communications manager for PE4life, a nonprofit organization in Kansas City, MO.  Her organization has trained some 250 schools nationwide to create positive PE classes and recess activities.

It is worth noting that one inner-city school in Kansas City, after implementing PE4life, boosted PE from one day to five days a week.  Within a year, cardio fitness scores shot up 200 percent, and the school saw a 59 percent decrease in disciplinary incidents.

In rural areas, PE4life has helped schools such as Titusville Middle School in Pennsylvania  incorporate activities including snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and skateboarding into PE.

Teachers also reap rewards from exercise.  The US Department of Agriculture recommends 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise most days to manage body weight and prevent weight gain.

Researchers believe that the more regular your exercise routine, the more long-term benefits your brain will get.

So keep working out regularly; join your students in a 20-minute romp around the playground.  You will all be better for it.

source: article at edutopia.org by Shari Wargo on 5/28/09.  www.edutopia.org

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

+ 2009 World Science Fair: June 10-14 in NY City

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Haven’t made vacation plans?  Consider a week in New York, attending lectures, performances, hands-on children’s field trips, multi-media experiences — all focused on cutting-edge science!  

Five days, 40 events and one electrified city, says the full page ad.

It’s time to discover a whole new world.  Kids will be inspired; adults enlightened. 

For complete festival and ticketing information, visit www.WorldScienceFestival.com, or call 866-811-4111.

• Opening Night Gala Performance – Alan Alda, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Christine Baranski, Marin Alsop, Glenn Close and many others in a performance saluting E.O. Wilson, at Lincoln Center.
• Infinite Worlds – Robert Krulrich hosts physicists Brian Greene, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and philosopher Nick Bostrum in an explortation of parallel universes. 
• Rising Waters  in a Thirsty World — Adaptation experts discuss our strained relationship with H20, a critical issue of our time.
• WALL-E’s World — Scientists reveal ingenious strategies for creating a sustainable future.
• Time Since Einstein — John Hockenberry hosts the renowned Roger Penrose and a distinguished panel, as they explore the nature of Time.
• Transparent Brain– Scott Simon hosts leading researchers discussing remarkable progress toward making your private thoughts visible.
• Avian Einsteins — Bird scientists Erich Jarvis and Irene Pepperberg (remember Alex the Parrot?) discuss penetrating parallels between bird and human brains.
• Bio Blitzing in the Boroughs — Kids and families get dirty exploring ants, bugs, worms and all things crawly in two New York parks.
• WSF Spotlight — It’s a science happy hour with some of the world’s most inspired thinkers, including Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek and cosmology’s bright light, Sean Carroll.
• What It Means to be Human — Alan Alda hosts E.O. Wilson and Sara Hrdy in an examination of human cooperative behavior.
• Notes and Neurons –  John Schaefer hosts Daniel Levitin and Bobby McFerrin in an exploration of music’s note-worthy relation with the brain and emotions.
• Watching Watson and Wilson: Through the Eyes of Anna Deveare Smith — A riveting one-woman portrayal of two of our most recent influential scientists, and an exploration of their profound contributions.
• Mathemagician — “America’s Best Math Whiz” entertains the whole family with mental mathematical gymnastics.
• Time: The Familiar Stranger – Celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks and psychologist Daniel Gilbert reflect on time’s role in shaping the human experience.

 A partial list of sponsors of the five day event includes the Simons Foundation, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation; ConEdison, the Rockefeller Foundation. 

Also: ABC News, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American; New York University, Columbia University, CUNY, The Rockefeller University, and Eugene Lang College the New School for Liberal Arts.

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

+ Testing Gives Information: But Which Intervention is Best?

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When a multifactored evaluation (MFE) informs a parent that their child is lacking  strength in a particular cognitive process, we need to understand what the term means. 

But then we need to know how to intervene in order to address that particular weakness.

Here, from an article by Edward Schultz in LDA Newsbriefs May/June 2009,  is a chart to help in planning intervention. 

These are the seven broad basic psychological processes which are commonly measured.  Dr. Schultz hopes that the strategies suggested will be appropriate to use in addressing them.

“COGNITIVE PROCESS”  deficit – Refers to mental operations that a person uses when presented with a relatively novel task that cannot be performed automatically.  Includes concept formation problem solving, reorganizing and transforming.

Interventions:  Step-by-step instructions, problem-solving strategies, sequencing skills development, explicit and systematic teaching, categorization skills, and graphic organizers.

“CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE”  deficit – Refers to the breadth and depth of a person’s general fund of knowledge.  These knowledge stores are acquired through formal school experiences and general life experience.  These stores are primarily language based and include both declarative and procedural knowledge.

Interventions:  Relating new information to prior knowledge, vocabulary strategies and instruction, rich learning experiences (e.g. museums, field trips, and virtual field trips), scaffolded instruction, and incorporating student interests in learning.

“SHORT-TERM MEMORY”  deficit  – Refers to the ability to apprehend and hold information in immediate awareness and then use it within a few seconds.

Interventions:  Short, simple instructions, overlearning, repetition, review, and memory strategies (e.g. chunking, mnemonics, verbal rehearsal).

“VISUAL PROCESSING”  deficit – Refers to the ability to think with visual patterns and stimuli.  Includes the ability to rotate, reverse, and manipulate spatial configurations, and spatial orientation.

Interventions:  Manipulatives, note-taking assistance, graph paper, verbal descriptions of visual stimuli, assist with visual discrimination tasks.

“AUDITORY PROCESSING”  deficit  – Refers to the ability to notice, compare, discriminate, and distinguish distinct and separate sounds.

Interventions:  Provide phonological awareness activities (e.g. rhyming, alliteration, songs, imitations), explicit and systematic phonics instructions, and visual aids.

LONG-TERM STORAGE / RETRIEVAL”  deficit  – Refers to the ability to store and then fluently retrieve new or previously acquired information.

Interventions:  Overlearning, repetition, mnemonic instruction, graphic organizers, cues, additional practice and time.

“PROCESSING SPEED”  deficit – Refers to the ability to fluently and automatically perform cognitive tasks (mental quickness).

Interventions:  Provide additional time, focus on quality and accuracy, note taking assistance, fluency building (e.g. practicing to reduce cognitive demands, flashcards).

(This list of Cognitive Processes has been adapted from Flanagan, ortiz, Alfonzo & Mascolo, 2006; the Intervention Strategies are adapted from mather and Jaffe, 2002.)

source: “SLD Evaluation: Linking Cognitive Assessment Data to Learning Strategies,” by Edward Schultz, in LDA Newsbriefs, May/June 2009.  www.ldaamerica.org.    Dr. Schultz is a professor at Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX.  He was a presenter at the 46th annual LDA Conference in Salt Lake City in February.

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

+ Your Family Can Participate in Reading Research

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The Reading Research Registry, a project at Florida State University, seeks to invite families to engage in reading research.  Families who join will help benefit the larger community of individuals who struggle with reading.

Contributing to research will assist in improving the understanding and instruction of reading, creating more reliable resources for families who are affected by reading difficulties.

Joining the Registry does not obligate any family to engage in reading studies.  It simply allows families who join to be invited to participate in the future. 

Any information that is reviewed is kept private.  Families who qualify to join the Registry receive a $15 gift card to a major retail store [Borders, Target, Publix].

If you would like to learn more about the Reading Research Registry, visit their Web site at www.fsuld.org/reading_registry.

One new study is called the Genetics and Reading Study.  This project is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to understand the role of genes in reading ability.  Members of the registry can apply to be part of this study, too.

At the Web page, you can download an application and consent form. http://www.fsuld.org/reading_registry/

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

+ The Science of Concentration

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John Tierney reviews a book, “Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life,”  by Winifred Gallagher.  The book is a guide to the science of paying attention.

After she learned she had a nasty form of cancer, Gallagher chose the theme of the book.  It is borrowed from William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”  

You can lead a misrable life by obsessiong on problems, or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information and accentuate the positive.

Tierney spoke to Gallaher and one of the experts cited in her book, Robert Desimone, a neuroscientist at MIT, who has been doing experiements tracking the brain waves of macaque monkeys and humans as they stare at video screens lokking for certain flashing patterns.

When something bright or novel flashes, it automatically tends to win the competition for the brain’s attention. 

But that involuntary bottom-up impulse can be voluntarily overridden through a top-down process called “biased competition.”  

Desimone is director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.  He and his colleagues found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s “planning center” — start oscillating in unison and send signals directing the visual cortex to heed something else.

These oscillations are gamma waves that are created by neurons’  firing on and off at the same time — a feat of neural coordination Tierney likens to getting strangers in a stadium to start clapping in unison, thereby sending a signal that induces people on the other side of the stadium to start clapping along.

However, in a “noisy” environment, these signals can have difficulty getting through.  Says Desimone

It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong input like a television commercial.  If you’re trying to read a book at the same time, you may not have the resources left to focus on the words.

Now that this synchronizing mechanism in the brain has been identified, researchers have started work on therapies to strengthen attention.

In the current issue of Nature, researchers from Penn, MIT and Stanford report that they directly induced gamma waves in mice by shining pulses of laser light through tiny optical fibers on to genetically engineered neurons. 

And in the latest issue of Neuron, Desimone and colleagues report progress in using this “optogenic” technique in monkeys.

Ultimately says Desimone, it may be possible to improve your attention by using pulses of light to directly sychronize your neurons as a form of direct therapy. 

This might help people with schizophrenia and attention-deficit problems (and might have fewer side effects than drugs).  If it could be done with low-wavelength light that penetrates the skull, you could simply put on — or take off — a tiny wirelessly controlled device that would be a bit like a hearing aid.

And in the nearer future, neuroscientists might also help us focus by observing our brain activity, and providing biofeedback as we practice improving our concentration.

Researchers have already observed higher levels of synchrony in the brains of people who regularly meditate.

Winifred Gallagher advocates meditation to increase focus, but she says there are also simpler ways to put the researchers’ information to use. 

For example, once she learned how hard it was for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s voices, she began carrying ear plugs.  If you’re trapped in a noisy subway or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, Gallagher says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”

She also recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. 

At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest; this is when you can answer email, return calls and caffeinate (this does help attention).  But don’t get distracted until that first break — it takes 20 minutes to reboot after an interruption.

(For more advice, got to www.nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

Says Gallagher

Multitasking is a myth.  You cannot do two things at once.  The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.

She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.

People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money.  Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing?   You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.

sole source:  John Tierney’s article on 5/5/09 in the nytimes.  www.nytimes.com   “Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life,” by Winifred Gallagher, Penguin Press, $25.95.  ISBN 9781594202100.

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