Neurolearning Blog

Increased brain sensitivity and visual attention in people with sensory processing sensitivities

2010-04-11T17:07:00.001-07:00

From Stonybrook University and a collaboration with China, comes this latest study showing that people self-reported as "Highly Sensitive People" on the Aron's HSP Questionnaire (see below) do have more sensitive brains when looking at visual stimuli. The effect isn't just higher levels of brain activation, but also high performance scores on tests of visual detail.

Our understanding of sensory processing sensitivities and disorders has taken a leap forward in the past few years though the field is still messy because people come to the topic from so many different disciplines and viewpoints. Aron's work described "SPS" or Sensory Perception Sensitivity, a personality trait only partly associated with introversion or emotionality. Sensory Processing or Sensory Integration Disorders have been defined by professional occupational therapy associations to be dysfunctions in the normal modulation, discrimination, and organization of the body's sensory systems (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, balance / proprioception). Some of the most severe instances of sensory processing dysfunction seem to be in the setting of autism spectrum disorders and genetic disorders such as fragile X or Williams Syndrome. But among gifted parenting and educational communities, sensory sensitivities are also well known, especially with the high overlap of Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities with conventional sensory processing disorder or HSP checklists. All of these conditions also overlap with attention deficit disorders because attention functions (among other things) to coordinate responses to outside stimuli.

This study doesn't do much to clarify the mess between different professional and lay descriptions of sensitivities, but it does give credence to the subjective reports of many that they can be overwhelmed by sensory inputs that others might find inconsequential. It's interesting too, that more sensitive people did notice more when studying visual stimuli, so that although the sensitivity can be seen as a burden, it also seems to come with some gifts.

High sensitive person self-test (Aron):
I am easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input.
I seem to be aware of subtleties in my environment.
Other people's moods affect me.
I tend to be very sensitive to pain.
I find myself needing to withdraw during busy days,into bed or into a darkened room or any place where I can have some privacy and relief from stimulation.
I am particularly sensitive to the effects of caffeine.
I am easily overwhelmed by things like bright lights, strong smells,coarse fabrics,or sirens close by.
I have a rich,complex inner life.
I am made uncomfortable by loud noises.
I am deeply moved by the arts or music.
My nervous system sometimes feels so frazzled that I just have to go off by myself.
I am conscientious.
I startle easily.
I get rattled when I have a lot to do in a short amount of time.
When people are uncomfortable in a physical environment I tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable (like changing the lighting or the seating).
I am annoyed when people try to get me to do too many things at once.
I try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things.
I make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows.
I become unpleasantly aroused when a lot is going on around me.
Being very hungry creates a strong reaction in me,disrupting my concentration or mood.
Changes in my life shake me up.
I notice and enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, works of art.
I find it unpleasant to have a lot going on at once.
I make it a high priority to arrange my life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations.
I am bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes.
When I must compete or be observed while performing a task, I become so nervous or shaky that I do much worse than I would otherwise.
When I was a child, my parents or teachers seemed to see me as sensitive or shy.

"If you answered more than fourteen of the questions as true of yourself, you are probably highly sensitive. But no psychological test is so accurate that an individual should base his or her life on it. We psychologists try to develop good questions, then decide on the cut off based on the average response."

Sensory processing sensitivity and response to change in visual scenes
Sensitive people use their brains differently
Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Introversion pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Diffuse attention and creativity

Sensory Processing Master Class on DVD with Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide and Lindsey Biel MA OTR GM7M3GWDSPNC

Helicopter Parents Revisited - LD Students in College and Graduate School

2010-04-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

From TR Miles' Dyslexia at College: "From our discussions with dyslexic students we have noticed that many of them have had at least one person as a 'prop' during their school career. This 'prop' is often a parent or other relative...Such a person will have guided them in a variety of ways, for instance by showing them how to fill in forms, by reminding them of appointments, by supplying them with addresses and telephone numbers, and by making suggestions to how they might plan their studies and their revision..."

Helicopter parents were a negative term for parents who hover around their teen and young adult children "overparenting", trying to clear obstacles out of their childrens' paths and make their kids' decisions for them. The College Board even published a 'Quiz' to encourage parents to "rethink" their helping habits.

Undoubtedly there are some extreme cases, more recent research says that many so-called helicopter parents are getting a bad rap. Now there seems to be a change in the winds. The College Board has now added Helicopter Parents Revisited, citing research from the Harvard Family Research Project that teens whose parents play an active role do better in school and more likely to enroll in college, and parents who are more involved while their students are in college are more engaged in their studies and more satisfied with their college experience. Because researchers found that the children of "helicopter parents" performed slightly worse than those with "non-helicopter" parents, it was theorized that the helicopter action was taking place because the students were really struggling in school.

Because of our interest gifted dyslexics, we read a lot of early life histories of individuals who later became eminent - and more often than not, a parent's unconditional support seemed to make the difference in that child's success - when John Yeats could not read, his father took it upon himself to read him Macaualay, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Rossetti, and Blake into his teen years when he began to write verses of his own. When Pierre Curie struggled with multitasking, slow processing, and dysgraphia, his father took it upon himself to homeschool him, supplementing his studies with tutors and work he could do along with his brother in their dad's lab at the Museum of Natural History. More recent examples include dyslexic head of the Intel Reader creator team, Ben Foss JD MBA. In the video at the bottom of this post, Foss admits that he used to fax his papers home so his mother could read them to him.

These biographical studies still have a ring of truth today. Whenever we meet with a twice exceptional student who has made some remarkable accomplishment in higher education, more often than not, there's also a remarkable parent behind him or her. This shouldn't be surprising, but with all the negative press about 'helicopter parenting', many well-meaning people can get the wrong idea. A much more common mistake is that parents try to give their 2E child more independence after entering school, only to suddenly find out it was all too much, there're failing grades and their student wants to throw in the towel. What these kids often can't do well are lower order cognitive tasks - like decoding read quickly, writing by hand or note-taking, retrieving math facts etc. And the gap between high school and college away is too great. College professors often receive no training in the LD needs of their students, and college freshman find themselves buried under core requirements with outrageously long reading lists and tests that require fact regurgitation and trivia more than thinking.

Parents may often know best what their child's strengths and weaknesses actually are. If they think they are college / grad school material, they are probably right. Research from Drs. Linda Silverman and Karen Rogers has found that parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness in their children. In the setting of Gifted with LDs, that must also certainly be true. Not only can the see the promise, but they knew how much work went into keeping on schedule and writing papers and how many assists were necessary.

The truth is that parental support at university and grad school levels (if necessary) may be very important to these very talented students. What many of these students can do well is think - and they just need to reach high enough levels of education that thinking reallymatters (usually upper division courses).

So hooray for helping parents - and don't get down about your help - and share these stories with your students.

We don't mean to say it's not important to have these older students advocate for themselves or make independent decisions - there are of course common sense distinctions about all this business, but our take-home point to you is that the over-the-top helicopter parent is more an exception than a rule, and the truth is that many of you good parents are really making a difference in your kids' lives. Many twice-exceptional students are also developmentally late bloomers. College might be better suited to them in their early 20's rather than right out of high school, but delaying college for years may be impractical. This also means too that the help may not necessary forever. Thankfully, a lot of life is not the same as freshman year at college.

From Thompson's Reading Disability -

"When the writer interviewed the (medical) student, he admitted that he "never could read much." Throughout his education his mother had read everything to him, and in medical school his wife was reading aloud all books and references. His father had had the same trouble, but he graduated from medical school with the aid of his wife's reading to him. However the father could not pass state board examinations, because he could not read them. Later he became a professor in one of the preclinical sciences and wrote a textbook for his field...From interviews, it was obvious that the student had a specific reading disability. Arrangements were made for him to have expert and intensive remedial reading instruction during vacation time...there was some opposition to his continuance in medical school on the part of the dean and one other faculty member, but the opposition subsided...After his graduation a report came from a distant medical school hospital stating that this man was the best intern they had had for some time. He passed his American boards in internal medicine and became the head of a group practice clinic in a large city..."

More on this theme: NYT: More parents relocating to live closer to their kids at college

College Living Experience - a program to help college students with LDs transition to college XNQ7QRKQ7WC9

How Many Harvard / MIT Students Does It Take To Light A Light Bulb? - Science Misconceptions

2010-03-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

"The interesting part about the batteries and bulbs question is that people always predict that they can do it..." - Philip Sadler

After a wonderful interview with dyslexic astrophysicist Matt Schneps last week, we watched his now-classic documentary for science education Minds of Our Own with our kids. You can watch it free online here.

When Schneps and Sadler asked graduating seniors at Harvard and MIT whether they could light a lightbulb with a battery and a wire, they all said "Yes!" or "Definitely yes!" - but in reality only very few could actually do it. The scenario highlighted of the challenges that teachers face when trying to learn. It's not sufficient just to teach; if we want 'deep learning' then we also need to attack pre-existing misconceptions.

We are watching the 3 hrs series with our kids - and heartily recommend it for stimulating family discussions.

The show also jogged a memory of something the famous dyslexic architect Richard Rogers had said, "If you’re forced to question everything, you’re actually likely to make less mistakes…The things that don’t work in my experience, are never, at least practically never, the new things. They’re the old things that you forget to question.”

With the brain's economy, it's much easier to sneak in a wrong idea that fits with a pre-existing schema (plausible) than a new idea that might be true, but is unexpected (implausible).

If all this sounds sinister, it can be - this laziness of learning means that the propaganda technique of misinformation is so effective (for more reading, check here.

So what's a teacher to do? It seems as if one way to overcome misconceptions is to use effective analogies. An isolated fact won't stick, but if you can find something to hang a new fact on, then maybe long-term learning will take place.

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Why it's hard to get rid of old ideas
Cautions of bad analogies.
More analogies to overcome misinformation
Bridging analogies

Take a Brain Break or Nap to Boost Your Memory & learning

2010-03-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

Researchers at UC Berkeley found that taking a short nap, improved learning by 10%. NYU researchers at right found that providing a 'rest' period before a memory task improved learning efficiency and blood flow in to the hippocampus.

All this makes great sense, but for most of us, naptime is over in Kindergarten.

Well, at least most places. Google seems to have recognized the importance of taking a rest for boosting general brain efficiency. At left is a nap pod that blocks light and sound at Google headquarters in Mountain View.

The importance of taking a break shouldn't be lost on classroom (or home-based) teachers. Instead of grinding it out lessons, reinforcing points, and trying to cover as much as possible, our students will remember more if we interrupt our lectures with little pauses or diversions and take more breaks!

Brain Break to Boost Associative Memory pdf

Brain Fitness: If You Don't Use It, Will You Lose It?

2010-03-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Dr. Trevor Tebbs for this week's question about whether failure to use one's mind results in the cognitive deterioration. What's the answer to this question? YES. There is good evidence that the brain needs ongoing stimulation to preserve its function and to protect against injury. During development, the principle is also true; early deprivation affects intellectual development for years.

Dr. Marian Diamond conducted pioneering work showing that increases in cortical dendritic growth was at its greatest in the first 10 years of life - a big reason for why childhood intellectual development is so important.

From the Carolina Abecedarian project of preschool educational intervention for poor children, long-lasting benefits were noted into the young adult years in terms of reading and math achievement and admission to college.

More recent research has been even more encouraging about the importance of intellectual stimulation: enriched environments were seen to have protective or beneficial recovery effects on such diverse conditions as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's Disease, Epilepsy, Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Fragile X.

The data are also encouraging for all of us adults with aging brains. If you look at the figure at right, it really is alarming. From Intellectual Development in Adulthood:

"Substantial intellectual changes within individuals occur only late in life and tend to occur for abilities that were less central to the individuals' life experiences and thus perhaps less practiced."

Fortunately, even in the area of aging, keeping one's mind active does seem to build up 'cognitive reserve' that will make it more resistant to cognitive decline with aging.

If you are over the age of 65, you can take the LEQ questionnaire for free here for free. It estimates complex mental activity over the lifespan (reading, writing, social activities, travel, occupation, etc.).

In the figure below, see how higher lifetime complex mental activities slowed the rate of hippocampal atrophy over three years (good thing you're reading this blog!)

Lifespan Mental activity predicts slower atrophy:

Gifted Big Picture / High Conceptual Thinkers

2010-03-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

We've talked about conceptual thinking before on this blog, but after seeing a number of pint-sized big picture thinkers in our clinic these past months, we thought to post on this thinking profile in kids.

Perhaps because of our interest in gifted dyslexics, we seem to see this pattern quite a lot. Gifted high conceptual thinkers are not limited to the dyslexic population though, of course.

One educational authority defined conceptual thinking is an "ability to identify patterns or connections between situations that are not obviously related, and to identify key or underlying issues in complex situations. It includes using creative, conceptual or inductive reasoning." Wikipedia adds that conceptual thinking is a problem solving style that involves a "creative search for new ideas or solutions".

We see young gifted HCTs as kids really driven by new and different ideas. Their interests are often quite broad, but what really gets them going is discovering something new, seeing something familiar from a unfamiliar viewpoint, or applying something conventional to an unconventional use. The HCT label may seem to capture them better than any conventional learning style like visual or verbal learner.

High Conceptual Thinkers are often...

- Omnivorous Learners: The world may be their oyster. Because of their quest for the "interesting", they may love the Internet, read entire encyclopedias, or incessantly question adults about the real world, and so learn a little bit about everything. They may not hit ceiling scores on the conceptual knowledge IQ subtests because their omnivorous approach to figuring out the world around them.

- New is the Thing: HCTs prefer novelty (this is how they develop new conceptual categories) and are tickled by unconventional viewpoints or discoveries.

- Big Picture, Not Little Details: HCTs don't always transition well to the "precision years" of late elementary, middle school, or beyond.

- Boredom is Death: Although using the 'b' word is notoriously a "no-no" word when talking to teachers, these kids rebel against what they see as boredom. Boredom may really seem like death to young HCTs. If young HCTs seem "driven by a motor", it's intellectual restlessness and it can be a blessing as well as a burden.

Not surprisingly, these kids often find classroom learning unsatisfying. After all, much of early education is focused on mastering basic skills or established facts, this is not what these kids are about. They'd rather be finding new worlds to conquer.

Although these kids are challenging to teach and parent, they are also a delight, and Dan Pink and others have suggested that the Conceptual Age is upon us and this pattern of thinking should be what we should be encouraging.

Teaching Big Picture / High Conceptual Thinkers

- Sky's the Limit: If an idea or a lesson would be interesting to a wonky tech-y post-college 20-something, then it's fine for the HCT. If a story or thing could be written about in Wired, Fast Company, or Mental Floss, then you're probably on the right track. Sky should be the limit. Even some generally excellent gifted programs we've seen may grossly underestimate an HCT's ability to think about advanced concepts. Also because HCTs develop their ideas through pattern recognition, they may want to see many examples and permutations, and complex presentations in order to help organize their ideas into simpler concepts.

- Play with Ideas: Conceptual thinkers like and need to play with ideas. Play expands ideas, creating a new opening for associations. Play means not micromanaging learning experiences - allowing some dabbling, and taking away some of the "high stakes every time" routine (e.g. not everything should be graded).

- Argue with Ideas We think many educational curricula wait way to long before they allow young HCTs to consider different viewpoints, learn how to frame arguments or actually debate, but this is often what HCTs love. If they don't get it at school, make sure they get it home...maybe at the dinner table? Half of the 400 eminent men and women profiled in the Goertzels' Cradles of Eminence came from "opinionated" families: "It is these homes that produce most of the scientists, humanitarians, and reformers."

More Misc. Facts about High Conceptual Thinkers: some HCTs may get into their ideas so much that they forget the physical world (forget to eat, can be unkempt, messy spaces). Finally, it's useful to recognize that HCTs have a different motivational structure than non-HCTs. For instance, an HCT may easily pass the marshmellow experiment of delayed gratification, for instance, but miserably if rather than a marshmellow it's really cool game, puzzle, book, kit, gizmo...

Our Book Deal: The Dyslexic Advantage

2010-02-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

We wanted to share with our blog readers, our happy news of signing a book deal with Penguin (Hudson Street imprint) for The Dyslexic Advantage - to be published in 2011. It's really a dream come true for us, and we thank all of you who have helped us tell this story.

From our proposal:

"One of the most common misconceptions people have about dyslexia is that it's merely a learning disability—and nothing more. This isn't really surprising, since this is the message clearly conveyed by most definitions of dyslexia. Take, for example, the most widely used definition in the United States, from the National Institutes of Health and the International Dyslexia Association: "Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is…characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities…." The bottom line: dyslexia is a learning disability—period.

This understanding of dyslexia might seem sufficient if you examined dyslexic individuals (and especially children) only when they were trying to read, or spell, or perform some of the other tasks that they often find difficult; but something strange happens when you view these same individuals when they're doing almost anything else.

Viewed across a broader range of activities and over their entire lifespan, most dyslexic individuals not only cease to appear disabled, but they actually appear remarkably capable—even specially advantaged. This dyslexic advantage is clearly apparent in studies showing that dyslexic individuals are represented in at least twice their incidence in the population in such complex fields as engineering, astrophysics, art, computer graphics, and entrepreneurship. It's also apparent in the fact that dyslexic individuals often rank among the most eminent and creative persons in their professions. Findings like these do more than cast doubt on the simplistic equation "dyslexia equals disability"—they completely destroy it.

That's the exciting message of The Dyslexic Advantage: That dyslexia isn't just a learning disorder—that there's a remarkable, strength-producing aspect to dyslexic processing that's as central to what dyslexia is all about."

In The Dyslexic Advantage, we'll talk about the MIND advantages that come with the dyslexic processing style - in brief, Mechanical, Iconic, Narrative, and Dynamic systems thinking, and how they can translate into career success in such diverse fields as computer or other high tech, marketing, economics, art and architecture, fiction writing and film, and corporate leadership. We'll talk about visualization and visual thinking (some may know already from Tom West's fabulous book In the Mind's Eye), but also how personal memory and inductive thinking have a special role in many dyslexic thinking strengths.

There are many books written about dyslexia, and many with helpful strategies to help with reading or spelling, but all too few that look at challenges within the broader context of thinking differences of which they are a part.

If you'd like to join the discussion, please consider joining ourDyslexic Advantage Social Network. We've also opening up a new content site atwww.DyslexicAdvantage.com

Confessions of a Limited Working Memory Victim

2010-02-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

A friend recommended I watch neuroscientist Jill Taylor's TED talk Stroke of Insight. In the talk, Dr. Taylor recounts her personal experiences with a stroke in her left language area. It's a remarkable lecture and a highly recommend it.

But I confess, her story got me thinking about my own learning differences, and in particular, my limitation with working memory. And I thought as a neurologist, maybe it would be interesting to some of you to share how I became aware of my working memory limitations and what my experiences are with it.

As it often happens, I only accidentally discovered how bad my auditory working memory was when we were playing a memory game with our kids. To my surprise, I had the worst memory span in our family (we were practicing repeating back sentences of increasing length), all this despite the fact that working memory tends to increase into adulthood.

How is it that I only really discovered it now? One answer, I think, is Compensation.

How could I get by well enough to make it through medical school and Harvard, and manage my share of the household to a reasonable degree? (I confess do forget to pick up things at the market and misplace items with regularity) And I know I'm not alone. Some ADD doomsayers wouldn't think that a person like me could exist, but there are many examples of other famously feeble LWMV's who have managed to survive and thrive*, and here are a few reasons why I think that may be so.

How Do Limited Working Memory Victims Survive and Thrive?

1. Flitting Not Sitting

Many successful adults with teeny tiny working memories flit about in their activities - some keep physically busy doing different things, while others keep intellectually busy in the same flitting way. Over the course of an hour, I may return to a difficult task multiple times, like a hummingbird drinking nector from different flowers. It allows me to take in as much as I can at one time, then break, then take another little sip again when I'm ready. It works for me because my long term memory is quite strong - it's just my working memory that is weak. I can remember where I was when I return to it, and this is working more productively than if I were to force myself not to switch off, but stick to a single task. I think taking in information with little interruptions also takes advantage of the novelty learning in me. Stick with something for a long time would seem like such a chore, but this way is manageable.

2. Long Term Memory is Strong

If our long term working memory is strong, then a limited working memory doesn't have to be a huge handicap. Many gifted individuals with ADD may fit this pattern...how could they score so well on their IQ tests if they didn't have strong long term verbal or nonverbal memories? It's the kids and adults with both weak working and long term memories that face the greatest obstacles in school and life.

3. Successful LWMV's may be Strong Inductive or Bottom-Up Learners

I have a suspicion that the LWMV is especially well-suited to the inductive learner, i.e. learners that learn best from firsthand hand experiences or personal example. Inductive learners are sometimes called bottom-up learners because they take information in from many different examples then reason back to rules based on patterns that they find. The LWMV-ADD-Inductive Learner connection may be why so many kids with attention complaints have diffuse attention and why we find they prefer to learn kinesthetically or from direct personal experiences. It seems that many of these kids seem to for a reason.

4. Many LWMVs are Strong Interest-Based Learners

There does seem to be a paradox that exists for many LWMV's: if something really captivates their interest, like music or photography for Ansel Adams or a beautiful problem to an LWMV mathematician or physicist, then persistence at a task doesn't seem to be a problem. It's like getting the key that unlocks all of memory's doors, and time may seem to stop. No doubt some outsiders would call this a LWMV's hyperfocus, but it misses the point if it doesn't recognize that only certain intrinsically motivating and pleasurable activities trigger this remarkable focusing and memory-enhancing phenomenon.

Anyway, some more things to think about when wrestling with decisions about what to do about limited working memory. It is possible to survive and thrive even with itsy bitsy working memory spans.

*Some famous LWMV's: Enrico Fermi often complained of a terrible memory. He took notes all the time and called his notebook his "artificial memory". From Polya's Mathematicians I Have Known, "Are mathematicians absent-minded or eccentric? I don't know, but there are infinitely many stories purporting that they are, and I shall quote a few...There is a party at (David) Hilbert's house and Frau Hilbert suddenly notices that her husband has forgotten to put on a fresh shirt...David...meekly obeys and goes upstairs. Yet he does not come back. Five minutes pass, ten minutes pass...so Frau Hilbert goes up to the bedroom and there is Hilbert in his bed. You see it was the natural sequence of things: He took off his coat, then his tie, then his shirt, and so on, and went to sleep!"

If you'd like to read more, also check out The Man of Genius. Excerpt: "Forgetfulness is another of the characters of genius. It is said that Newton once rammed his niece's finger into his pipe; when he left his room to seek for anything he usually returned without bring it..." Now obviously not everyone with the working memory of a gnat is a genius, but the point I'm making today is that it is possible to achieve a certain level of success and still seem to have only the smallest file cabinet for working memory.

BTW, if you think there's a high incidence of physicists and mathematicians in this group, you may be right. I have physicists and engineers in my family tree. Working memory limitations often run in families (but don't have to), and are seen more often in spatially-talented families, dyslexic families, etc. They may be attracted to simplicity because that's all they have room for.

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Motivation and Memory
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Passion and Flow as a Learning Strategy
Eide Neurolearning Blog: ADHD - A Different Motivation Pathway?

Understanding Dyscalculia - the Math Learning Disability

2010-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

According to the LDA:

Signs and Symptoms of Dyscalculia

- Shows difficulty understanding concepts of place value, and quantity, number lines, positive and negative value, carrying and borrowing
- Has difficulty understanding and doing word problems
- Has difficulty sequencing information or events
- Exhibits difficulty using steps involved in math operations
- Shows difficulty understanding fractions
- Is challenged making change and handling money
- Displays difficulty recognizing patterns when adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing
- Has difficulty putting language to math processes
- Has difficulty understanding concepts related to time such as days, weeks, months, seasons, quarters, etc.
- Exhibits difficulty organizing problems on the page, keeping numbers lined up, following through on long division problems

Recent fMRI studies found that dyscalculic school children were significantly disadvantaged in terms of their 'number sense' - estimating the number of objects on a computer screen, for instance. Without a strong sense of quantity, no wonder calculations and estimations are so hard. Although dyscalculia has been suggested to be as common as dyslexia, it is rarely recognized and failing or

From The New Scientist:

"Jill, 19, from Michigan, wants to go to university to read political science. There is just one problem: she keeps failing the mathematics requirement. "I am an exceptional student in all other subjects, so my consistent failure at math made me feel very stupid," she says. In fact, she stopped going to her college mathematics class after a while because, she says, "I couldn't take the daily reminder of what an idiot I was."

Last November, Jill got herself screened for learning disabilities. She found that while her IQ is above average, her numerical ability is equivalent to that of an 11-year-old because she has something called dyscalculia. The diagnosis came partly as a relief, because it explained a lot of difficulties she had in her day-to-day life. She can't easily read a traditional, analogue clock, for example, and always arrives 20 minutes early for fear of being late. When it comes to paying in shops or restaurants, she hands her wallet to a friend and asks them to do the calculation, knowing that she is likely to get it wrong."

Low math scores can prevent admission to highly selective schools, block high school graduations, and close out careers, but isn't this a mistake?

Famous Scientists and Mathematicians with Dyscalculia

"- Thomas Alva Edison belong to bad pupils, he never mastered skills like writing, spelling,
and even arithmetic.
- The physicist George Gamov is described in My World Line by his student, a famous
astronomer, Vera Rubin in the following way: “He could not write or count. It would take him
a while to tell you how much is 7 times 8. However, his mind was able to comprehend the
universe.”
- Mathematician N. N. Luzin belongs to people with a slow reaction. He also developed
slowly, he did not succeed in school, especially in mathematics."

Other dyscalculic mathematicians come to mind, like David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians of the last century who was notoriously bad at arithmetic and an anecdote in which he had to ask whether 7 + 5 was 12 or 13.

From The Mathematical Brain about the overlap between Dyscalculia and Dyslexia:

Dyscalculia seems to be particularly rife among dyslexics, with
around 40% of children with reading difficulties also having
difficulties in learning maths. This is a double whammy for
them. It is also a serious puzzle for science. After all, the other
60% have no more problems than normal. Indeed, dyslexics can
be outstanding mathematicians. What is the difference between
those dyslexics who do suffer from dyscalculia and those who
do not? What is it about dyslexics that puts them at risk of
dyscalculia at all?

Recently, researchers at Stanford published this article on the gray and white matter differences between dyscalculic and typically developing children. The children were matched for IQ and working memory, and significant overlaps with dyslexia were seen (cerebellum and fusiform gyrus / visual word form recognition). The science is helpful for understanding that dyscalculia is a real biological entity, but an enormous gulf still exists in terms of how best to identify students with the LD and better, how to help them.

From The Dyslexic Student and Mathematics in Higher Education (abstract)"

-diagrams and mind maps to represent ideas
- color areas under curves
- label the y-axis on both sides to reduce the chance of losing place
- mnemonics (sine rhymes with line) for definitions and formulae
- Comic Sans font, cream background to reduce glare
- note-keeper, record lectures
- knowing why a method worked (proofs)
- learn each step individually and give each step a label
- custom graph paper
- sticks to cover rows not being used for matrix work
- simple 3D model when doing 2D to 3D transformations
- extra time to read problems, highlight key words

For elementary math:

- work with a solved problem in view
- work 'open-book' with math facts charts, number line, or other reminders
- use personal memory mnemonics for math facts like Memorize in Minutes or Addition the Fun Way
- dictate answers
- color code columns
- label steps

References and Resources:
Dyscalculia, Mathematicians
Dyscalculia Forum
Dyslexic Advantage Network
Thesis on Dyscalculia pdf

Impaired Perception of Fear Gestures in Autism

2010-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

When people with autism looked at the gestures of others associated with fear, certain areas like the superior temporal sulcus (observation of goal-related gestures) had the same activation patterns as non-autistic controls, but much lover levels of activity were seen in areas such as the amygdala (emotional recognition) and putative sites of mirror neurons like the inferior frontal gyrus and dorsal premotor cortex.Problems recognizing signs of threat or fear in others means that individuals on the spectrum are at increased risk for a wide variety of difficulties, like becoming too friendly with strangers, wandering beyond familiar areas, or not recognizing dangerous situations.

The finding in this study that superior temporal sulcus activation is similar between groups is interesting because it might suggest why cognitive teaching to read gestures helps for many individuals (pathways that support recognizing the intentions of gestures are intact). If a child or adult with autism lacks the more rapid protective quick emotional responses to threat, at least cognitively connecting the dots may take him out of harm's way.

From Liane Willey's wonderful book Pretending to be normal: living with Asperger's syndrome, a description of how her impaired perception of gestures put her at risk from an intruder in her classroom:

"Still, I was not particularly alarmed...I was curious, more intrigued by the effect he had on my quiet room, than I was by the possible effect he could have on my safety. He told me he had been in jail that he had just been released. A tiny bell sounded in my thoughts to alarm my suspicions, but I barely heard it." Fortunately for Professor Willey, she adds, "Ironically, though it was my AS that kept me from understanding this man was oddly misplaced at the best, and harmful at the worst, it was also my AS that helped me to realize I was in trouble." Once he invaded her personal space, her sensory sensitivities triggered an alarm and she immediately backed up. Fortunately too, the man fled after a male student entered the room.

Failure to grasp affective meanings of actions in autism spectrum disorders pdf
Keeping children on the autism spectrum safe
Safety resource for autism spectrum

Eides Lecture on Dyslexia and Giftedness at WA International Dyslexia Assn - This Thursday Jan 14th 7 PM

2010-01-12T19:28:00.001-08:00

Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide will be lecturing on Dyslexia and Giftedness at The Shoreline Center, Sheridan Room 18560 First Ave NE Shoreline WA 98155 7 PM

The lecture is free, but donations appreciated on behalf of the Washington Branch of the International Dyslexia Association.

Clock hours are available through 24/7 Educational Services.

For more information, email: info@wabida.org

Finding Success in the Real World - Mentors, Resilience, Up Series

2010-01-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

Professor Julie Logan was kind enough to send us her paper on Dyslexic entrepreneurs and we were struck by the figure at right that showed that few entrepreneurs were influenced by education in their pursuit of their current career. Dys4 refers to endorsing at least 4 items on the Adult Dyslexia Checklist.*

By far the strongest influencing factors were a family business or mentor. That's good to know - but are parents or extended family members how important they may be in this regard? ...especially in today's bleak job market.

Finding a mentor is not always an easy task, but a few ideas come to mind:

- Gifts - Think widely about a child's natural gifts, interests, or temperament. If a child doesn't seem to have a particular interest or temperament, could it be that they are just very social and enjoy blending in? Perhaps this is their gift or talent?
- People- Look for teachers, tutors, extended family members who have shared interests or a personality that dovetails well with your child. Get to know them better, how did they choose their career, what do they do outside of work?
- Experience- Look for mini-expertise building activities, or try-outs of different disciplines. Don't overschedule so little free choice is available. Encourage volunteering, but give your child advice or a peptalk before beginning. Students are often unaware of the impressions they make in their first work experiences. The better the experience, the less tolerance for careless work habits, apathy, lack of initiative, etc.
- Make a cold call- Don't be afraid of 'cold-calls', letters, or emails to experts or famous people that your child might admire. When our son was in kindergarten, he became very interested in African art. We were living in Chicago at the time, so we emailed the African art department of the Art Institute of Chicago and asked if we might be able to visit and see off-exhibit items. We were delighted to have a museum intern take us behind the exhibit so that we could see items first hand and hear stories about them (the intern was surprised that he recognized many of the styles). Even if the interests or hobbies change, these experiences broaden their view about what's out there and how they might choose a career based on what they really love.

Over Christmas, we got a Roku and we've been enjoying watching the Up series with our kids. The series interviewed a group of English children through the years from age 7, 14, 21,28, 35, 42, and 49 - looked at their interests, hopes for the future, work, schooling, and families. It's a fascinating program, but interesting on a whole other level when watching with your teen kids. This second time watching it, I was more struck by the sharp contrast between 7 & 14 - 7 year olds seem to have such strong passions and exuberance, but by 14 years old, the children seemed so much more self-conscious and unsure. We talked a lot about Tony, the cabdriver that Michael Apted thought he would see in prison some day - but Tony had gifts of resilience and drive, and the director succumbed to a common bias about physically active and highly independent kids.

For more from Wikipedia on the Up Series.

* The Adult Dyslexia Checklist is an interesting topic, we should tackle another day. Very interesting that it is so different from the checklists that dominate the identification of dyslexia in the early grades.

Cognition Without Control - ADHD, Gifted IQ, and the Learning-Performance Trade-Off

2010-01-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

Interesting article from UPenn / Stanford speculating on the benefits of Cognition without Control:

"Late prefrontal development clearly has some negative consequences for childhood
behavior. Yet despite this, there are many examples of learning tasks (e.g., language acquisition)at which children do better than adults...we propose that these differences may reflect the costs and benefits of an immature frontal cortex (hypofrontality) that arise from the inherent tradeoffs between learning and performance. That is, a system optimized for performance may not be optimal for learning, and vice versa."

Reflecting on this research, from the LA Times reporter Melissa Healy:

"In those crucial four years, a toddler's accumulation of knowledge about her world may be unhampered by the discipline imposed by the prefrontal cortex...her prefrontal cortex doesn't stand in the way and try to keep her "on task." And her underdeveloped powers of attention will keep her from getting bogged down by pesky exceptions to rules of grammar or syntax. So, she'll always apply the most general rules she knows -- say, that adding an "s" makes things plural.

The authors call this period of disorderly learning "cognition without control."

This is a theory, not a finding, note the authors, led by the University of Pennsylvania's Sharon L. Thompson-Schill: that evolution may have favored a delay in the maturation of the brain's "braking system" as a means of allowing rough-but-rapid learning of complex matters such as language and social conventions. But it's a theory that might help clinicians and educators begin to identify the best windows for teaching very young children and for helping kids with developmental differences to learn as well."

The researchers go on to speculate that delay in the maturation of the prefrontal cortex is no accident; it may have an important purpose - to foster flexible and broad thinking in our earliest life experiences. Perhaps as brains mature, explosive early childhood learning recedes, giving way to more established pathways and performance more than new learning. If this is so, though - then maybe we should rethink prefrontal coercion strategies in the early years - whether they be educational or pharmacological.

As it turns out, kids with ADHD or kids with superior IQ (see above) have greater delays in the maturation of their prefrontal cortices than non-ADHD or regular IQ age-matched peers. The trend is the opposite in children with autism, though - young autistic children show an early maturation of prefrontal cortices.

So what would an optimal education look like if this is a purposeful pattern of brain development? Is it a mistake to force prefrontal development too early (with stimulants or other means)? What are the ideal times for stimulants for children with ADHD symptoms? Is it jumping the gun to prescribe to preschoolers, kindergarteners, or first graders?

Perhaps Alfred North Whitehead's ideas about the Aims of Education aren't so far off about all this. Whitehead proposed 3 developmental stages of education - the stages of romance (childhood), precision (adolescence), and generalization (young adulthood).

Superior IQ children have delayed prefrontal cortical thickness pdf

Writing for Visual Thinkers

2009-12-21T00:04:00.000-08:00

Just found Austin Kleon's blog posts on Visual thinking for writers and we're hooked. We can't tell you how many times a child's referred to us for writing problems, but really he or she is a gifted artist with a strong visualization style of thinking and expression. A glance at the school notebook shows a treasure trove of doodles and images. Most schools aren't really made for visual thinkers.

What is visual thinking? The first thing that comes to mind is that it's usually not just visual - most people we ask describe it as multisensory -feeling, images (vivid or vague), sound, touch, even smell or taste. No wonder it's so difficult to put into words - and even harder to put into words quickly. The importance of feelings - you can really see it in Kleon's mindmap at left - is why visual thinkers make such good novelists, impassioned CEOs, and filmmakers - and why they may struggle in schoolrooms and business relationships if they can't connect with a teacher or colleague on some emotional level.

Since Gerald Grow's The writing problems of visual thinkers, there's been disappointingly few practical resources to to specifically help visual thinkers put their ideas into words. Because visual thinkers also tend to be immersive in their thinking style, they have particular trouble sequencing and narrowing ideas.

We hope to get a chance to read Deleon's book - but it's not yet available on Amazon. In the meantime, check out Deleon's posts ideas such as:

- Lay it all out where you can look at it
- Get yourself a calendar
- Mind maps
- Comics without pictures
- Writing the Fibonacci sonnet
- Tools
- How to books
- Graph a story with Mr. Vonnegut
- Maps of fictional worlds
- Writing on Walls

And speaking of writing on walls, if you haven't seen it, check out this link to a 360 degree video of what one man and $10 of sharpie pens was able to do to redecorate his bedroom.

We'll take a short break from the blog for the Christmas holidays. Blessings and have a great time with family and friends

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Visual and Dyslexic Thinking

Mind Over Matter: Imagery at Work and in the Classroom

2009-12-14T00:04:00.000-08:00

Kosslyn posted a book chapter on Mental Imagery and Implicit Memory. Some interesting take-home points:

- mental imagery can be used to access implicit (or not conscious) memory
(hands-on learning and experiences can fall under this category for instance)

- during visualization, "not only does one 'see oneself' perform an action (a visual image), but also one is aware of the spatial relations of objects and their parts (spatial images), the sounds associated with an action (auditory images), and the bodily sensations that accompany movements (kinesthetic images)

- mental practice works, but best if combined with physical practice, and more likely to benefit if there is a lot of 'cognitive' component associated with the task...for instance if a task is demanding in terms of multiple steps, organization, and decision-making, mental practice is especially valuable

The article also has interesting tidbits about the importance of positive imagery (e.g. test subjects who visualized successful golf puttts improved their putting accuracy by 30% vs. those who visualized missing their puts decreased their accuracy by 20%) and excerpts from spatial experts engaged in high stakes one-shot events like surgery to remove conjoined twins - and imagery was critical in their preparation.

"When I do a real operation, I play the videotape ahead of time in my mind, Dr. Shapiro said..."I do the case in my head," said Dr. Maria Ortega, an anesthesiologist. "I must have done it 100 times. Everytime, a problem would come up and I would find a solution and do it again. Every time i ran it in my head, it went faster."

The need for imagery to be integrated probably accounts for why kids with sensory processing disorders have so much trouble with procedural and automatic learning (and activities like handwriting). It also explains why they are so disadvantaged on heavy cognitive load tasks like multi-stepped mathematics or writing to an open-ended prompt. The positive imagery tidbit reinforces the importance of optimism on performance outcome.

For more on imagery in the classroom, check out this article on Mental imagery in classroom reading. Some key points:

- 60% of 5th graders reported imagery at 'think-aloud' pauses during read aloud sessions

- imagery, emotional points in stories were remembered better and over a longer period of time than 'important' information

- after more than 48 hrs after a story reading, students tended to remember visual, affective, and reader-originated imagery

- language concreteness (for example sensory details), because of its ability to trigger imagery, was one of the most important factors for determining comprehension and learning

Reading in the Brain and Mirror Writing

2009-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Stanislaus Dehaene has a new book entitled Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention and he has been kind enough to publish chapter summaries and all color figures here.

From Chapter 7, a discussion of how mirror reading is thought to be a loss of generalization ability (recognizing that b is related to d, for instance) that occurs as children grow older. At left, Orton's original thought that mirrored letter mistakes resulted from a failure to inhibit the perception in the opposite hemisphere; at right, the current theory that mirror 'mistakes' occur from the retention of a generalization ability rather than a real mistake. The generalization ability is a good thing for young children because it helps them recognize their parents and their world from different angles.

In our own family, I remember being surprised when our then young son brooded over how to write the letter "f"... he said, "f, f, f,... oh that's right, it's a flipped over 'j' with a line through it." Huh? I hadn't even thought about the relationship between the letter 'f' and 'j' before that. To this day both he and Brock are able to read words backwards more quickly than me. There are advantages to this mirror ability (as well as disadvantages of course) - usually in the ability to rotate objects and perceive from different angles (like Tesla turning an apparatus around in his mind), and not surprisingly, we often see this talent among the spatially-talented dyslexics that we see. Our loss of mirroring ability is therefore more of a 'mistake', likely reflecting the same process that we discussed in The dark side of expertise.

In the figure at right, the bar graph shows how mirroring is common condition in children below the age of 8 years. Above the graph, the writing observations of Cornell that 5 year old children are more like to write their name backwards when not given enough room for left-to-right writing. Lissie and Meggie were sisters. Lissie was 5 and Meggie, 6.

Below, an example of Leonardo Da Vinci's mirror writing.

For more from Dehaene on mirror writing: Why do children make mirror errors while reading? pdf

Orchid Kids: The Positives of Intense and Demanding Children

2009-11-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

"Themistocles was an unruly boy, and carried on his mad pranks without much restraint. When taken to task for them he said, "The wildest colts make the best horses when they come to be properly trained." - Plutarch (46-120 AD)

Interesting article The Science of Success in Atlantic Monthly:

The first part starts out pretty predictable..."In 2004, Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, a professor of child and family studies at Leiden University, started carrying a video camera into homes of families whose 1-to-3-year-olds indulged heavily in the oppositional, aggressive, uncooperative, and aggravating behavior that psychologists call “externalizing”: whining, screaming, whacking, throwing tantrums and objects, and willfully refusing reasonable requests. Staple behaviors in toddlers, perhaps. But research has shown that toddlers with especially high rates of these behaviors are likely to become stressed, confused children who fail academically and socially in school, and become antisocial and unusually aggressive adults."

The researchers found that behavioral interventions and video feedback to mothers really helped behavior, for instance helping mothers to recognize that their fidgety kids really did enjoy reading books together although they were restless and seemed distractible. But the study also had another level of analysis that highlighted the unexpected greater good in the genetically at-risk kids. When the outcomes of 'at-risk' allele kids were compared to outcomes of 'protective' allele kids, the 'at-risk' ones actually fared better.

"As it turned out, the toddlers with the risk allele blew right by their counterparts. They cut their externalizing scores by almost 27 percent, while the protective-allele kids cut theirs by just 12 percent (improving only slightly on the 11 percent managed by the protective-allele population in the control group). The upside effect in the intervention group, in other words, was far larger than the downside effect in the control group. Risk alleles, the Leiden team concluded, really can create not just risk but possibility.

Can liability really be so easily turned to gain? The pediatrician W. Thomas Boyce, who has worked with many a troubled child in more than three decades of child-development research, says the orchid hypothesis “profoundly recasts the way we think about human frailty.” He adds, “We see that when kids with this kind of vulnerability are put in the right setting, they don’t merely do better than before, they do the best—even better, that is, than their protective-allele peers..."

Very encouraging finding for families dealing with intense difficult temperament kids (difficult temperaments have been described as intense, negative, and slow to adapt), and bears out with our clinical practice too. Parents of these kids often need a great deal of support - and it is true that some kids are A LOT harder to parent than others. But there is an encouraging light at the end of the tunnel.

The authors argue for a more complex view of understanding 'genetic risk' - certainly when it comes to behavior: "...This new model sugggests that it's a mistake to understand these 'risk' genes only as liabilities. Yes, this new thinking goes, these bad genes can create dysfunction in unfavorable contexts- butthey can also enhance function to favorable contexts."

The story concludes: "The orchid variant of the DRD4 gene, for instance, increases risk of ADHD (a syndrome best characterized COchran and Harpending write, 'by actions that annoy elementary school teachers'). Yet attention restlessness can serve people well in environments that reward sensitivity to new stimuli. The current growth of multitasking, for instance may help select for just such attentional agility."

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Elementary Angst May Still Mean Success

Ipod Music Stimulates Alzheimers and Stroke Patients

2009-11-16T22:49:00.000-08:00

Pretty cool finding. Music stimulates the memories and activities of stroke and Alzheimer's patients. From the WSJ:

"Listening to rap and reggae on a borrowed iPod every day has helped Everett Dixon, a 28-year-old stroke victim at Beth Abraham Health Services in Bronx, N.Y., learn to walk and use his hands again...Ann Povodator, an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient in Boynton Beach, Fla., listens to her beloved opera and Yiddish songs every day on an iPod with her home health aide or her daughter when she comes to visit. "We listen for at least a half-hour, and we talk afterwards," says her daughter, Marilyn Povodator. "It seems to touch something deep within her."

Dr. Concetta Tomaino, director of the non-profit organization Institute for Music and Neurologic Function found that "45 patients with mid- to late-stage dementia had one hour of personalized music therapy, three times a week, for 10 months, and improved their scores on a cognitive-function test by 50% on average. One patient in the study recognized his wife for the first time in months."

At right, researchers found that autobiographical music (red) triggered the medial prefrontal cortex, an area relatively spared in Alzheimer's disease. This also jives pretty well with the observation that Alzheimer patients tend to show a 'temporal gradient' for memories (better memory for remote rather than recent events), and the fact that severely aphasic stroke patients may be able to sing though spoken output is virtually nil.

How many people might this help?

Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories
Unlocking memories

Sensory Processing, Postural Sway, Anxiety - Better with Occupational Therapy

2009-11-12T00:05:00.000-08:00

Interesting study that shows that the lines between sensory processing, emotional processing, and behavior are continuing to blur. As many parents of a child with significant sensory processing difficulties will tell you, anxiety and emotional dysregulation can be a huge part of what makes sensory processing disorders most difficult. A major reason for this, it is thought, is that sensory systems function to alert the body to danger, so that disordered sensory signals will trigger extreme danger reactions, like fear, anxiety, aggression, and escape.

But now more evidence from the psychological side point out the dangers of anxiety on sensory processing, spatial perception, and balance, informing us about the other side of the loop - sensory processing dysfunction not only makes anxiety worse, but anxiety makes sensory processing worse, so no wonder kids can quickly escalate into a meltdown or complete overload situation.

In the figure above, researchers found with surprise that an otherwise unselected group of children diagnosed with anxiety actually had unrecognized balanced problems that could be measured quantitatively on tests of postural sway. More balance problems were seen if the children had to concentrate on a memory tasks (divided attention), but the greatest imbalance was seen when kids stood on a compliant surface (foam) that required more active balancing, and this imbalance was even more severe when children were asked to stand with eyes closed.

The findings are quite startling, and the raise the question whether we're really treating a lot of cerebellar kids with balance problems with anti-anxiety drugs.

Now various groups have confirmed that spatial difficulties and balance problems are common among anxious people, but an Israeli group have take the observations a step further. In this presentation, researchers found that treating anxious children with balance training (OT) resulted not only improved balance, but also reduced anxiety and higher self-esteem. They also made the observation that commonly used physician screens for balance (standing heel-to-toe or neurological exams of the vestibular system) were not sensitive for detecting problems. The anxious children did complain of more dizziness and motion sickness than their matched controls though.

From an article in Science Daily:

“This is a breakthrough in the field of occupational therapy,” says Dr. Bart...“You can’t treat children with anxiety in a cognitive way because of their immaturity and lack of operational thinking. Working with the body may be the answer."

FYI, sensory processing guru Dr. Lucy Miller also has an article calling for more Translational research in sensory processing disorders in a recent issue of Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience.

Postural Sway and Anxious Children
Impaired spatial learning in pediatric anxiety (abstract only)
Spatial perception problems in individuals with trait anxiety

Lazy Thinkers and Dysrationalia

2009-11-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

Pop Quiz:

Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

a. Yes
b. No
c. Cannot be determined

(No, the polar bears have nothing to do with Jack, Anne, or George).

What's your answer? If you answered c. Cannot be determined, you're probably one of the 80% who is a lazy thinker, or a 'cognitive miser' as Keith Stanovich proposes in his book What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. Excerpt from the Toronto article (Why smart people do stupid things) below:

"... most people have the intelligence if you tell them something like “think logically” or “consider all the possibilities.” But unprompted, they won’t bring their full mental faculties to bear on the problem.

And that’s a major source of dysrationalia, Stanovich says. We are all “cognitive misers” who try to avoid thinking too much. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Thinking is time-consuming, resource intensive and sometimes counterproductive. If the problem at hand is avoiding the charging sabre-toothed tiger, you don’t want to spend more than a split second deciding whether to jump into the river or climb a tree.

So we’ve developed a whole set of heuristics and biases to limit the amount of brainpower we bear on a problem. These techniques provide rough and ready answers that are right a lot of the time – but not always."

The solution is easy (a. Yes) if you take the time to work out the two possibilities re: whether Anne is married or single.

At least at the time this post is being written, the entire Scientific American article can be read: here.

In this older paper by Stanovich, "thinking dispositions" (habits of mind?) (e.g. length of time spent on difficult problems, disposition to weigh new evidence / other opinions vs. a favored belief, etc.) are presented as being very different from the cognitive capacities measured by conventional IQ tests, and this would seem quite true.

Stanovich would like our educational system to spend for effort on teaching (and requiring) more rational thinking, and this seems to be a lofty goal (examples given...more general thinking strategies, scientific thinking, basic statistics). Hey given the magnitude of educational need, it would even be helpful if students were given more hard problems to solve with opportunities to be put into difficult spots so that can examine their assumptions and consider others' opinions and perspectives.

The truth is, some of this concept of being a 'cognitive miser' is part of the dark side of expertise. Expertise strives to categorize seemingly random choices, simplifying and speeding downstream decisions. But of course it can result in mistakes like the Jack-Anne-George dilemma.

I liked coming across this article because like jolt of coffee, it woke me up a bit about mistakes I can make by thinking too quickly.

What I am not so sure about is the Dysrationalist discussants might be placing too much importance on rationality as the ultimate guide to decision-making. What about moral philosophy in decision-making for instance? Last night as an exercise in philosophy we watched 'Fountainhead' as a family, and couldn't help but wondering whether uber-rationalism can also lead smart people to dumb conclusions.

Why smart people do stupid things
Rationality, Intelligence, and Levels of Analysis pdf
Lazy polar bear

Video Games Improve Night Vision

2009-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

As we grow older, there are many factors that contribute to our difficulty seeing in the dark. A few of the reasons include a reduction in pupil size, loss of accommodative function, and a dramatic slowing in dark adaption due to delayed rhodopsin regeneration. Well, there now may be a reason for hope... and the encouraging answer comes from action-based video games..

The Bavelier lab found first that players of action-based video games were better than non-video game players at contrast sensitivity (58% better). Next, they found that a fairly short course of action-based video game training could improve contrast sensitivity 43%s. In the picture above, see how much a 58% improvement contrast sensitivity can help...

From the University of Rochester:

" 'Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery—somehow changing the optics of the eye," says Bavelier. "But we've found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.' "

Playing action games Call of Duty 2 or Unreal Tournament 2004 improved contrast sensitivity, whereas playing Sims 2 (non-action game) for the same amount of time did not. Test subjects played 50 hours over 9 weeks.

"At the end of the training, the students who played the action games showed an average 43% improvement in their ability to discern close shades of gray—close to the difference she had previously observed between game players and non-game players—whereas the Sims players showed none."

The researchers are hoping that the ability to train contrast sensitivity will help kids and adults with amblyopia (lazy eye) regain their vision.

http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/Daphne/Li_NN.pdf
http://www.agingeye.net/visionbasics/theagingeye.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_2
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3342

Sensory Processing and School Underachievement

2009-10-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I was reading an article about students with disabilities in college, and I was struck by the conclusions that students with hidden disabilities had much poorer outcomes than students with obvious physical impairments (blindness, physical disability). The conclusions had a ring of truth. Disabilities that occur often without obvious physical signs, like sensory processing disorders or dyslexia, are often harder to 'prove', harder to qualify for accommodations, and often faulted as being due to laziness, poor effort or motivation, or retardation.

Sensory processing disorders are probably among the most common reasons children underachieve in school, although they are often not formally recognized because of the lack of a definitive diagnostic standard like a blood test or physical sign, and fluctuations and in behaviors that might be seen. In truth, sensory processing behaviors result from a wide range of causes, from visual or auditory problems, delayed (like premature birth) or abnormal development (genetic diseases), from inherited family conditions, or autism spectrum disorders. In the last few years, more progress has been made on understanding understanding how sensory processing behaviors may arise, but clinical professionals and teachers may still be most familiar with severe aversive fight-or-flight reactions or environmental sensitivities. But sensory processing difficulties contribute to much more. In fact, understanding more about the effects of SPD on school performance will help more parents and teachers know how to help these kids learn better.

The following are some of the most commonly related school problems we see in the setting of sensory processing disorders:

- slow or poor handwriting (poor sensory-motor coordination for writing, problems organizing and selecting what to say)
- poor work output in general (effects on decision-making, sequencing, and planning)
- slowed processing of information (hard to filter out noise, longer to find and organize information)
- problems multi-tasking (spd kids and adults are uni-taskers)
- easy distractibility
- time blindness
- 'inattentiveness' in class, missing instructions

If you look at the list, it's easy to see that output takes a big hit with SPD. These kids are often quite bright, but they struggle expressing the full depth of their comprehension or understanding. Everything may take a lot longer because visual recognition may not be immediate, sounds within words may not be as clear, and it may be harder to select and prioritize information going in and going out.

In one classroom study, teachers were found to wait only about 3 seconds for an student to answer a question, before moving on to another. If the teacher was told a student might be slow to respond and wait longer, they still only waited about 6 seconds. What about the student who takes 10 or 20 seconds? Not much chance to participate in class discussions...at least not if the teacher doesn't find a way to give them more time, like assigning several questions to students to answer, then going back through the list - so the child with SPD has a longer period (while the other students are in the process of answering) to retrieve the information and organize what they want to say.

Research into the consequences of sensory processing mismatches is still a number of steps away from the classroom, but what information can be obtained can be helpful. At right from a study looking at experimentally-induced sensory (proprioceptive) mismatches, researchers found that motor imagery maps were distorted in response to the change in position sense, and motor reaction times were delayed.

If only the complexity of brain processing could be 'seen' - then it would be easier for us to understand their struggles and we would be more conscious of giving these kids more time. In the big scheme of things, more time for development will help them, not hurt them. Most will do well if strive to educate them at an appropriate pace - and keep them from becoming defeated in their early years. These kids are often bright and quite analytical. The problems are often at the perceptual level, not at the level of higher order thinking or metacognition. Also although they may not be able to multi-task well, they can often unitask quite well. Though answers may not come quickly, when they do answer they are often right because their long term memories are often outstanding.

** On November 12th and 13th please join us for a 2-day Sensory Processing conference on the Internet with Lindsey Biel of Raising a Sensory Smart Child. For more information: http://sensorypro.blogspot.com You'll be able to attend, ask questions, and chat with other participants online through your home computer. Proceeds will benefit our daughter's health fund. The conference will also be recorded and available online for 3 weeks afterward **

Proprioceptive mismatch changes motor imagery and delays reaction time pdf
Complex sensory involvement in perceptual decision making

Watch How You Train Your Brain - Balancing Effects Between Right and Left

2009-09-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

Interesting article about how researchers attempting to train teenage girls in a visualspatial task (Tetris) did see increases in cortical thickness in visualspatial areas, but how they were also surprised to see reduce cortical thickness in the opposite hemisphere (not in visualspatial areas), but in the right prefrontal cortex. So the stronger certain areas of the left brain became, weaker connectivity on the right.

Be careful of what you wish for. The neurological literature is filled with anecdotal reports about how injury in one hemisphere of the brain could compensated for by higher activity in the other, but the mechanisms of how different sides of the brain create a balancing act are virtually unknown. The right and left hemispheres have some overlapping functions, some complementary functions, and some functions that seem designed for cooperation.

Some of this up in one hemisphere, down in the other is not completely unanticipated by us, perhaps because of the frequency of twice-exceptional kids and adults that we see and know throughout history. Individuals who may be phenomenally talented in or gifted in one area, may be phenomenally inept or backward in the other. A common profile we see among the spatially-talented is delayed language development and poor expression through words. Conversely, it is not difficult to find phenomenally verbal individuals who are quite backward in basic spatial orientation and problem solving.

A finding such as this raises questions about whether 'intense brain training' will do what devotees hope it will...increase capacities in all areas. The likehood is that it won't.

It'll be interesting to see what future studies find.

Maybe the best thing to keep in mind is to train if there's a specific weakness that's causing significant problems, like problems hearing certain sounds that make reading and listening difficult. If you don't have a problem like that, then best to do all the other more complex things in life like reading this blog, playing with the kids, and talking with friends...

Tetris brain training and fMRI pdf

Self-Appraisal - Teen Brains Reflect Opinions of Peers

2009-09-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

Preteens and teens (11-14 yo) are more likely to activate 'social cognition' areas of the brain when reflecting about themselves ("I am smart", "I am popular"), meaning that they reflect the opinions that they feel their peers or parents have. In the figure at the right, for instance, kids more closely mirrored what they thought their best friend thought of them, vs. adults who seemed to have a different appraisal of themselves compared to what they thought their friends thought of them. In trials involving domain-specific knowledge (e.g. whether mom thought I was smart or whether my best friend thought I was popular), brain fMRI activity seemed to mirror the relevant domain-specific perspective.

It's striking to see how differently kids self-belief is their perceived mothers' beliefs about them...Also with the much lower activation of the temporal lobes for adolescents, it makes you think that adolescents are likely to make more quick self-appraisal opinions about themselves vs. adults who draw on more previous experiences (episodic memory) to inform how they think about themselves.

Self-Appraisals in Adolescents and Adults fMRI pdf

Multi-Tasking Dumbs Us Down for Some Jobs, But Could It Provide Breakthroughs for Others?

2009-09-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

"They're suckers for irrelevancy," said communication Professor Clifford Nass... "Everything distracts them."

Because many in your acquaintance (or even household) may proudly tout their media multi-tasking ability, researchers thought for sure they could identify the cognitive gifts that come with this ability. Researchers at Stanford searched high and low for this gift, but their final conclusion - it's not a gift at all, but a liability.

"We kept looking for what they're better at, and we didn't find it," said Ophir, the study's lead author and a researcher in Stanford's Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab.

Now by true multi-tasking, we don't really mean semi-automatic activities like listening to familiar pleasant music, walking, or driving a car. These tasks don't require a lot conscious higher cortical brain work, like say reading and responding to an email or answering questions when a colleague or classmate calls you to find out what was missed in an important meeting.

At left look how poorly high media multi-taskers did compared to low media multi-taskers on a distraction task. Not only were the high media multi-taskers more distractible, but they also performed lower on memory tests and ability to task-switch.

A few years ago, a Hewlett-Packard sponsored study suggested that the IQs of knowledge workers distracted by emails and phone calls dropped their IQs about 10 points, and a Microsoft study found that on average, workers who stopped their activities to read emails needed on average about 24 minutes to return to their tasks.

All this seems very reasonable, but some of crazy media multi-tasking that many of us in think-heavy careers might do is not the same as the tasks given in these paradigms. The Poincare examples comes to mind. Henri Poincare (mathematician extraordinaire) has written that whenever he wanted to think deeply about a problem that remained unsolved, he would put it away and then work simple derivations in an absent-minded way. Often when he was at work with such 'mindless' activities, a new possible solution would come to him and he would return to the problem and find he had had a breakthrough.

The increase susceptibilty of media multi-taskers to peripheral distractions is not a surprise if you consider the research about diffuse attention and creativity,but I can't help thinking that the learning and task-switching results might arrive at different conclusions had the nature of the focus and distractor task been very different, especially if the focus task required more insight-based problem solving than a demanding problem solving task that require several very consciously-solved steps.

The ideal distractor, it would seem, should be familiar and not overwhelmingly pleasurable...an activity that perhaps could shift the brain into a pleasant 'default rest' or daydreaming state. Kind of like Einstein playing his violin for a while to come up with new ideas for solving difficult problems.

Anyway, something to think about before management gets the bright idea about doing away with email checking or games at work for high-level knowledge workers, It's not by accident that many of the most successful creative companies embrace a good deal of play and distraction at work.

Cognitive control in media multitaskers
Media multi-taskers pay a price
Death by information overload
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Biology of Creativity

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