Gender differences in learning are pretty interesting- but it's important to remember that most studies represent averaged results of groups - rather than any definite information about a person. Because learning disabilities appear to be more common in boys,though, and the gender gap in achievement only increases with age, there is hope that greater consideration to boys' preferences in learning style will eventually narrow the gap. At the K-12 level, women comprise an overwhelming majority of the teaching force.

Here's the key figure from the study of how men and women navigated their way out of a virtual maze. In this study, it's interesting to note that completely different brain regions were used by men and women to navigate their way. The sites in men correlated with geometric orientation (approximate) whereas the sites in women were associated with recall of landmarks (exact). Since then (link below) other investigators have found that both men and women are capable of using either navigation methods.

In follow up Jodi's question re: Simon Baron-Cohen "extreme male" hypothesis of autism (link below), we believe that this theory is just a working model for his group. Baron-Cohen has pursuing a line of investigation regarding prenatal exposure to testosterone. For all practical purposes, the "male hypothesis" doesn't help with any decision-making regarding autism. It is speculative.

Other studies have commented about gender-related differences emotional behaviors, but when it comes to autism, families should realize that the causes are multifactorial. Impaired emotional responsiveness may occur due to defective empathy, impaired visual processing (misreading faces), impaired auditory processing (mishearing auditory information, tone of voice), impaired language processing or various combinations of the above.

Here's a key figure from the emotional memory paper. On the left is the brain (amygdala) activation from women remembering an emotionally powerful photograph. On the right is the brain activation seen in men. Although men and women appeared to have similar levels of emotional responsiveness initially viewing photographs, later the women's group had stronger emotional recall for the pictures, and it correlated with this increased activation in the amygdala.

Sex differences in the neural basis of emotional memories
Are There Gender-specific Neural Substrates of Route Learning from Different Perspectives?
Gender differences in navigation
Men Do Hear -- But Differently Than Women
Men, Empathy, and Autism
Boys fall behind girls in grades

As some of you know, we homeschool one of our children who has both gifts and learning-challenges. We're often asked for our experiences and knowledge of resources, so here's our review of the year so far...

E-learning: Our favorite E-learning options have been those that provide some flexibility in work submission, online discussion, and regular feedback from teachers. Discussions include virtual classrooms (talking to your computer, click your hand to speak) with blackboards, slides, and taped classes that can be reviewed later. E-learning programs without a 'live person' may present more problems with motivation, though some self-paced programs like Edventures.com (for Lego building, engineering, robotics) also offer some forums, interest groups, and a 'merit' pyramid to work through.

Northwestern Center for Talent Development - an award-winning fun and whimsical course on the Hobbit. Weekly projects involved a selection of options - and choice of writing, drawing, composing music, or cooking. The best parts were interesting questions delving into the characters and themes of the book. The worst - technical glitches when the teacher was not able to be present to lead discussions.

Stanford EPGY Writing - hard work, but enjoyable course involving weekly online discussion (talk into your computer's microphone) revising writing with teacher, and critique in class. Emphasis is on the mechanics and artistry of writing.

Great Books Academy Online - weekly online discussion (talk into your computer) using the Socratic method and the Touchstones materials (Great Books)- Open ended discussion questions emphasize critical thinking and examining assumptions. The director seems flexible with grade skips- a plus for gifted students.

Edventures.com - Various courses with Lego building - Architecture, CAD, Robotics, Machines, Electricity. Each lesson is fairly short, but step-by-step instructions, introduction to design principles, and forums. Progress assessed by uploading pictures, journal entries, and multiple choice questions.

Other online resources:

www.acmeanimation.org : Because our son (age 10) wants to be an digital animator, animation is a large part of his arts program. A fabulous free resource is acmeanimation.org Professional animators from Disney and Pixar (as well as anyone else - largely art students or high school students taking a class) comment on animations that you upload. There is an Acme Trek challenge - where the animation challenges get more complicated. We use Toon Boom Studios which exports as a Quicktime file.

www.unitedstreaming.com Online streaming movies to supplement Science, French, History - $100/year with homeschooling discount - gets you access to 4000 excellent full-length streaming videos. Also unitedstreaming is aiming to have 1/2 of movies close captioned - excellent for children with auditory processing problems. Many of the videos come with full lesson plans, text of video, quizzes and problem sets. These accompanying lesson plans are much better than the ones offered by Mentura. We had subscribed to Mentura, but gave it up.

www.apexvs.com : Apex Virtual School...have mainly used boxermath.com and Beyond Books for History and English Literature. Occasional science topics in Biology course (lesson plans presented as Flash movies -especially helpful with molecular biology). Without a 'live' class or teacher, it has been more difficult to engage.

For non-Elearning, we have used conventional textbooks (mostly bought used - for instance from Textbook Heaven) for French and Science, Spielvogel text for World History (also some Tapestry of Grace), Math with excerpts from Singapore Math and Continental Press workbooks, Grammar and Vocabulary with workbooks from Continental Press and Caesar's English (Royal Fireworks Press). Handwriting without Tears.

We have a local homeschool resource which has a wide selection of course offerings taught by staff teachers, yet flexibility in course selections and reasonable time expectations. Many tech options are available even for the lower grades (RPG creator, lego courses and robotics league, digital animation, web design, cinematography, even Broadcast News), foreign language (Spanish, French, Japanese, Latin), as well as science, language arts, math, music, drama, and arts.

Thinking more on yesterday's post about exact calculation vs. approximation in problem solving....Because quite different areas of the brain mediate problem solving by exact calculation and approximation, one could also consider them to be alternative learning styles or problem solving strategies.

Often traits of precision (being exact, detail-oriented) vs. big-picture (gestalt) orientaion were thought to be personality-based. But there are advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, so that the ideal way to approach problems would seem to be able to have both tools in your arsenal so that you could choose which approach might be most successful in a particular situation.

The advantages of 'exact' problem solving seem somewhat self-evident. It is precise, allows for greater reproducibility, builds on prior knowledge, and can result in rapid processing with repetition.

Approximate problem solving can also be important though. Because it is representational and approximate, it may more flexible in terms of considering information, it may be more extrapolatable to different situations, and it may provide more accurate information when not all the facts are known or some information is incorrect.

If you teach, it is important to be aware of your orientation (detail vs. gestalt), because it may color how you view your pupil. Detail-oriented teachers may see gestalt students as sloppy and flakey. Whereas as gestalt-oriented teachers may see their precision-orientated students as overly fastidious and rigid. In practical matters as well, there are many situations in which your most obvious way to solve a problem (exact vs. approximate) will obscure your vision from the opposite point-of-view.

How do you do long division? Do you know your facts and perform the stepwise calculations as you learned them? If so, you may not see how your student would prefer to use reverse multiplication and estimate to derive her answer.

How do you figure out where you are when you're lost? Do you retrace your steps, count stop signs or look for landmarks? (exact) Of so, you may have a hard time understanding why your spouse prefers to use geometry, visualize an internal 'aerial' map and head out driving 'over there somewhere'.

The truth is, within every domain their are great men and women on both sides of the this exact-general divide. There are Nobel prize winners or other eminent men and women in science, art, history, economics, engineering, literature who have use either strategy to break new ground using exact or general tools of inquiry.

It's about time- there is a growing acknowledgement of the importance of sensory-motor processing dysfunction that accompanies autism. The biology of autism involves abnormal connectivity of the brain and abnormal 'maps' of sensory and motor areas. These difficulties underlie autistics' difficulting registering and interpreting their environment. Disordered sensory systems will also affect emotional regulation, learning, and social communication.

Autism's Cause
Sensory Processing Problems and Postural Control Problems in Autism
Sensory Motor Problems in Autism and Mild "CP"

Plenty! Visual learning, auditory learning, and kinesthetic learning all activate different pathways by functional brain imaging. But brain studies also suggest that there is much greater flexibility to learning styles than the multiple intelligence checklists would have you believe.
For instance, are you familiar with Stroop tests? You're supposed to try to ignore what the word 'says' and just name the color. Sometimes these tests are used to look at attentional or executive function capabilities.

In fact, there are wide variations among individual subjects as they perform the Stroop task. We've excerpted two 'brains' for an example. The subject on the left appeared to use a frontal-parietal lobe approach (executive function) in selection, whereas the person on the right was able to focus him- or herself visually.

Individual Differences fMRI Stroop

But some of the most exciting findings provide insights about how different pathways can be activated depending on the strategy chosen. In this study from Dehaene and his group, blue areas were activated when exact calculations were performed to solve a math problem, whereas yellow areas were activated when approximations were performed. It might be that next generation of neuroteachers will be able to direct or cultivate flexible approaches to problem solving depending on student strengths or disabilities. Advanced thinkers are often aware of the different routes they can use to solve problems. Neurolearning for them may mean expanding their arsenal of tools for creative or analytical work.

fmriMathStrategies

In a recent survey of 10,000 children, researchers found that a startlingly high percentage were unable to comprehend information presented to them by auditory routes alone. 30 percent of children aged 4-6 could not comprehend sentences longer than 9 words through listening alone. Similar numbers of 9-10 year olds could not understand spoken sentences longer than 13 words. But there is an important flip side to this startling statistic. Most 9 to 10 year olds could readily comprehend longer sentences if they were provided in print. These findings raise an important question: is a strong functional preference for read versus spoken language a developmental issue, a learning disability, or highly preferred learning style? This question has great significance for the classroom, because children who have difficulty learning through auditory information may learn far more quickly and efficiently when provided with text.

There are several ways to present text, but E-Learning (electronic or computer-based learning, also written eLearning) will be an ideal resource for many children. Visual information, both text and pictures, can be tightly linked to auditory information on computer. Learning is self-paced. When acoustic information is presented, it comes from a fixed location straight-ahead with no competing sounds (children with asymmetric hearing have difficulty distinguishing words when speakers are moving or they turn away from them). Most films can be presented with close captioning (for instance unitedstreaming.com), and many online classroom chats have the flexibility of text-based entry or online 'talking.' Online classrooms are often preferable for children with subtle auditory processing difficulties because there is less background noise from fellow classmates, a more orderly style of contributing (click on a hand icon to raise your hand), and more time to answer questions (individuals with auditory processing often benefit by delays or a slightly slower pace to interactive conversations). Many children who are quite silent regular classrooms "find their voice" online.

The benefits of E-Learning for children with auditory processing disorders can be immense. These children often gravitate quite naturally to the computer. It's important for more people to realize the many reasons why they do.

Excess teacher talk swamps children

Imagery is a powerful way of organizing sensory information - whether it be visual, auditory, or sensory-motor (movement). The 'primer' below is an excellent imagery review posted online.

Imagery activates perceptual areas and MT (movement); Abstract
A Primer on the Neurobiology of Imagery

This study from University College suggests that motor experts like professional dancers are able to activate more brain areas while watching familiar movements in others. The brain areas activated included areas for motor planning, sensory-motor imagery, and personal memory. This is a similar to a research report that found that professional pianists watching other pianists activated sensory motor areas (kinesthesia!) just by watching.

Imagery is a powerful guide to learning - it unites diverse brain areas and provides patterns for coordinated actions that may be used for other purposes in the future. One of the reasons that sensory processing disorders can have such a profound effect on behavior (children may develop anxiety, avoidance, isolation), is that these children have fewer opportunities to build coordinated sensory-motor patterns as they interact with their environment, so they may always appear to encountering things for the first time.

Better Imagery with Expert Dancers

Who was this? His formal education ended at elementary school and he was illiterate in math. A life long friend described him as "awkward and helpless; his uncouth movements were often destitute of grace. He seldom took anything into his hands without dropping and breaking it. No piece of furniure was safe with him. he frequently knocked his ink-pot into his pianoforte."

This was Ludwig van Beethoven, a master of auditory imagery who composed the Ninth Symphony when completely deaf. About his composing he wrote: "I carry my thoughts about with me for a long time...before writing them down...once I have grasped a theme. I shall not forget it even years later...in my head...it grows, I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle...and only the labor of writing it down remains...I turn my ideas into tones that resound, roar, and rage until at last they stand before me in the form of notes."

A collaboration with Northwestern University and BioMap has resulted in another addition to the Central Auditory Processing Disorder arsenal. Existing CAPD studies rely too much on synthesized sounds or 'fill-in' approaches that can be compensated for by inference. There has been a significant need for better tests that mimic the sound problems that people have in normal life. This test is still only a diagnostic test and not therapeutic program, but certainly it heralds better programs on their way to development. Families should be aware that existing CAPD testing is still far behind basic research, but progress is being made.

The other online paper below shows how Earobics (a simple software - even Step 2) was able to improve the timing of brain cortical responses in children with learning problems. Interestingly, the effect was most notable in the LD group that also had difficulty hearing in the presence of background noise. The timing problems in background noise also improved with auditory training, although the Earobics software does not really direct its training for this task. The results are exciting because they show that even with fairly crude auditory training therapy (Earobics is really a simple program), focused perceptual training works for brain-based hearing problems
Computer-Based Training for Auditory Processing
myDNA.com - News: New tool for auditory processing disorder

This is an exciting study, and we hope it will be replicated on a broader scale. Unfortunately, we can only provide a link to the abstract because we access the paper through the University of Washington. This Swedish study found that children diagnosed with ADHD, but never treated with medication (stimulants, atomoxetine, etc.) were able to improve their verbal working memory, timing and accuracy on Stroop tests, and complex reasoning, and reduce symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity / impulsivity with computer-based training (Robo-Memo) that included remembering the position of objects, remembering phonemes, letters, or digits. Training was adjusted to continually challenge children, and duration of training usually amounted to about 40 minutes per day for over 20 days.

There are some commercially-based computer programs based in the States, but the ones we have been able to sample were too simple for most of the children we see. Working memory is highly trainable, but the exciting aspect of this study is that the behavioral and inattentive symptoms also subsided as working memory increased.

Increasing Working Memory for ADHD

Spelling-based dysgraphia may be one of the most commonly missed disabilities. Students with poor spelling are written off as ignorant or slow, though they may be quite bright. Prejudice about spelling as a disability has caused some gifted students to be excluded from gifted classes, others to be held back a grades, or worse, denied opportunities to graduate. Standardized tests rarely specifically accommodate for spelling and the additional writing components to state required tests or college entrance exams will only make matters worse.

Because the situation regarding spelling disabilities is the way it is, occasional reports like the one below are valuable. It's reports the case of a woman who developed spelling problems after a heart attack. The importance for us is that is shows that focal brain injury can result in a focal spelling disability. This former secretary had excellent sentence copy, comprehension, working memory, spontaneous speech, and reading, but she couldn't write well to dictation. She probably would have problems with spontaneous writing as well.

Surprisingly, even school professionals have been confused about whether dysgraphia exists if a student can copies sentences well. For some reason, dysgraphia hasn't gotten as much attention as other learning disabilities.

Spelling difficulties may be due to problems with phonology (the sounds that make up words), weakness of visual word form (visual memory for words), or general weaknesses in working memory. Most often spelling disabilities are seen in association with dyslexia, but they can also be seen in the setting of focal brain injury, premature birth, or head trauma.

Isolated Spelling Disability from Brain Injury

Links to Help with Organization and Time Management

It's the new year and Chinese New Year, so time to think about becoming more organized. Here are an array of links for ideas on organization - including tips about homework, assistive devices, and time management. Don't forget to think about technology. Kids love technology, and may take to their PDA or computer-based reminder instead of a datebook planner. We included our software calendar / reminder below - it's Calendarscope. Easy to use, visual (color coded), fairly cheap, can get to your student if he's always on the computer.

The homework helps are also a great idea. Children who are not naturally organized, will need to be conditioned into a routine, and time reminders may be helpful. Many studies have shown that children with learning difficulties may have difficulty gauging the processing of time.

Assistive Technology for Students with Mild Disabilities
Calendar software
Hi-Tech and Low Tech Solutions: Time Management Basics for the Person with ADHD
Teaching Study Skills - TeachersAndFamilies
Organizational Skills
Learning Disabilities OnLine: LD In-Depth: 10 Tips for Developing Good Organizational Skills