Research studies have shown video gamers who practice on action games like Medal of Honor have a wider visual span and greater sensitivity to visual detection. But the flipside of this visual sensitivity is increased visual distraction.

Several research groups are exploring the relative importance of central focus (See Left, below) and peripheral focus (See Right below). Whether video game training is boosting visual skills depends on what sort of skill you care about.

Side attack games like Medal of Honor probably increase visual focus to the periphery. Good if you're trying to stay alive in Mosul, but maybe not so great if you're sitting in the middle of a noisy class trying to listen to the teacher. Even the Internet diverts our focus to the periphery with blinking cursors, talking paper clips, and image-changing ads (see the Boss in the Machine editorial below).

But don't think we're just technology-haters. The phenomenon may be real (please think about this web designers - our conscience is tweaked too). It means that RPG attack games are not the best thing to have your child playing all the time after school if focus and distractibility problems have been identified. There are games that might even enhance central focus- and wouldn't it be terrific if these games had just as much excitement and personal challenge as the peripheral games?

Our game experience is not extensive, but at home we let our kids play side-scrolling games (many are free nowadays) for visual tracking practice. Side scrolling games are things like Donkey Kong or Charlie the Duck. Also old maze-type games like the Pac man variants, Pong-variants, or Air Hockey can provide challenging exercises in eye movement jumps, turns, and tracking. BTW, don't get us wrong- getting outside and playing ball is a good thing to do too. For Xbox,Tarzan or snowboarding games would seem to strengthen central visual focus over side.
Video Games Boost Visual Skills, Study Finds
The Boss in the Machine
Free online games at play.vg

The CDC has announced its new guidelines for parents and medical professionals. Check out the links below. Problems with these milestones don't mean autism, but they mean a medical professional take a look. A good physician will to assess whether auditory or visual impairments may be present. In addition, professionals should be aware of the contributions of sensory or motor behaviors to abnormal social communication. Additional testing may be necessary, but more information will tell you how to help.
Learn the Signs. Act Early. NCBDDD
Developmental Milestones
CDC Stresses Early Autism Detection, Intervention

Hyperactivity is one of the most challenging learning and behavioral problems in grade school. A recent article (below)reports the sobering statistic that hyperactive children are the most likely group of children to be removed from a home. But not all hyperactivity is alike.

Below is a link to one of our papers entitled: "Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Sensory Processing". In it, we propose that ADHD should be reserved for a more global impairment in attention processes, and the term ADHD is better reserved for children whose self-stimulatory and hyperactive behaviors result in a deterioration in performance, rather than improvement.

We also are sharing excerpts from fMRI studies in children with ADHD (see full papers below in links). It is a popular misconception that 'ADHD' is simply a deficit disorder. It's not as easy as all that. The distinction is important because many parents may mistakenly believe they must medicate their child to make up for the deficit. In fact in the ADHD subjects, there are some areas that are less active, and other areas that are more active. Medication does change the patterns of brain activation, but it doesn't make the ADHD pattern look like control subjects.

Ongoing biological studies will be very important for sorting out the complex differences in brain functioning among children who meet the criteria for ADHD. But the idea that ADHD is a simple 'deficit' disorder is wrong. There is still much we to learn about the interactions of different brain systems.



Hyperactive Kids Removed from Home
Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Sensory Processing
ADHD, Stroop, and Cingulate
ADHD and Striatum
ADHD and fMRI

This week we received the School District's WASL update and the stats are depressing. 60% of 10th graders are failing the Math WASL (statewide as well as in the Mukilteo District). Reading and Writing are only a little better (35-40% failure rate). So what is going on?

To make matters worse, an out-of-state review group assessed the WASL Math test to be much easier than other standardized math tests.

Why is it that so many of students are failing the WASL? OSPI has posted one third of last year's questions online, so you can check them out (see link below). Here's our first impressions of the Math WASL:

The Pros:
-The math test emphasizes math reasoning and practical or 'real world' applications of math.

The Cons:
-The math test isn't balanced. It's mostly word problems and doesn't involve conventional high school math subjects
-'Showing your work' is a mandatory aspect of the test. This would be difficult for some intuitive and higher conceptual mathematics people. It can also be a burden with dysgraphics.
-The heavy language emphasis of the math test will trip up many dyslexic children. 20% of children are dyslexic. Also, dyslexics are notoriously underrecognized in the public school system. 'Dyslexia' is not an official school diagnosis, although something like 'ADD' is.
-Real problem solving is rarely well assessed by timed test conditions.
-Despite the heavy emphasis on math reasoning, reasoning per se is not taught formally to teachers or students throughout K-12. Flexible problem solving is actually a very difficult task- some may never learn it at all, and some may only learn it far into adulthood.

Remember how poorly U.S. high school students fared on that international test of problem solving? (bottom third, see link below) Don't despair yet. These kids didn't test well, but somehow the United States leads the world in science, technology, and innovation. And it's not because they ever had to pass a WASL.

There is a need for teaching critical thinking, reasoning, and problem solving throughout educational system. But it's not fair to use a very narrow definition of success to deny students the rights to their diplomas.

Taking the WASL
WASL Practice Tests
U.S. 15-year-olds in bottom third in problem-solving test
The Seattle Times: Education: Math WASL not too difficult, study says

This is an interesting study because it shows that although the eyes and ears are closely linked, anticipation can prepare you for what you see, but it cannot prepare you for how you sense movement. It means that you can prepare for visual movement (maybe why watching the road reduces car sickness) by top-down control from the brain that may reduce your sensitivity to visual movement. But you can't cognitive control what your inner ear balance feels.

This is good news for people with visual vertigo or visual perceptive disorders. It's bad news if abnormal movement signals are coming from the vestibular system like degenerative disorders of the ear, migraine, 'mild or other cerebral palsy', or many other conditions that can present as sensory processing or sensory integration dysfunction. In the latter two conditions, the sensory mismatches may occur because some of the central (brain) connections of the vestibular nerves have been damaged.

Here's one of our favorite movement illusions on the web. We took only a small piece of it though, please enjoy the full impact by checking out the link.

If you're dealing with vestibular problems, though, don't despair. The commercial BrainPort is supposed to become available some time this year. BrainPort uses sensory substitution to correct vertigo, and amazingly other sensory disorders like congenital blindness. Because the senses are all linked together, some bright and practical thinking neuroscientists realized that - the eyes don't see, the ears don't hear, and the inner ear doesn't sense balance - the brain does. So if the appropriate signals can be direct to a working sensory system, it can serve as a reasonable substitute. Amazing stuff.



There are other interesting implications of the sight-sound disconnect - if you're interested also check out the article on Video Game Sickness - this is believed to result from the visual-vestibular systems being 'out-of-sync'.
Expectation and the Vestibular Control of Balance
Rotating Snake Page
Video Game or Simulation Sickness
BrainPort Sensory Substitution - Driving What Works

At the age of 23, he had a business failure. He ran for state legislator the same year and lost. One year later he tried business again, but again it failed. Then his girlfriend died when he was 26 years old. He had a nervous breakdown at the age of 41. He tried again to be elected to political offices at the ages of 34, 39, 46, 47, and 49, and each time he lost. Who was this loser? This was Abraham Lincoln, who finally won a Presidential election at the age of 51. It's a good reminder not to give up too easily.

Happy Presidents Day.

Three articles in Time, Newsweek, and Edutopia talk to us about the stresses of teachers, the stresses of parents, and the stresses of teachers-vs-parents. Some of the complaints of teachers and parents seem remarkably parallel- exhaustion, a realization that it is impossible to 'do it all' and there is "too little time."

The Time magazine article is a bit incendiary. At the core of the disagreement is an important issue - how should we help children who are falling behind or failing? Some teachers seem to feel that a 'tough love' approach is appropriate; whereas, some parents think the answer is change the teacher or change the school. It is a real dilemma knowing how much to challenge and how much to help.

Teachers seem to have some legitimate gripes about manners - and parents have some legitimate gripes about non-personalized or negative education. The gap between the ideal and reality may be too great. Some teachers may have up to half of their class on IEPs - how can you possibly individualize the education for 20 people at one time? Is she supposed to be a carnival clown juggling visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning - even if she manages to hit all the learning styles in one classroom session, she'd lose the other half to distraction or working memory overload.

The Edutopia article offers more food for thought. The statistic that caught our eye was the fact that the attrition rate for teachers was twice as high if they hadn't received training in child development or learning styles. Why should any teacher not have training in child development or learning styles these days?

The more we observe the variation in learning styles among children - is that many of these learning differences are not intuitive. Sometimes the way a person memorizes best, or solves a problem seems exotic or roundabout compared to how we have approached it. We have to be very conscious of our own biases in our learning preferences before we figure out the best way for someone else. But before we condemn a teacher for not knowing how to optimize learning for a particular style, how much training have we given her? Is there a good model available, or only checklists?

What we are trying to do in our upcoming book is provide a usable model for how different modes of thinking and learning fit into what we know about the working of the brain. Different modes of thinking are much more dynamic and combinable than learning style surveys and checklists would have you think. And before you begin teaching others how to use their learning styles best, it's good to know what you have yourself. What's the ideal? A flexible approach to the use of different modes of learning, and an awareness of strengths to bypass weaknesses and disability areas. The good news is we haven't even begun to tap all the power that's under the hood.

Teachers Leaving School
MSNBC - Mommy Madness
TIME: Teacher's Pests (A)

In this latest study, autistic subjects were found to have defective activation of mirror neurons. Because mirror neurons help a person to imitate, this dysfunction can have powerful consequences on socialization and social learning. Mirror neurons may be important for motor imagery.

Abnormal Brain Activity During The Observation Of Others' Actions

NOVA | scienceNOW | Mirror Neurons | PBS

Neural Foundations of Imagery

Here's a studying that found that tachistoscope training (used in speed reading programs) improve the visual spatial span and reading word accuracy for children with dyslexia. The tachistoscope flashes words briefly on a screen.

We have noticed that children who have developed a sufficient fund of knowledge with recognition can improve their reading fluency or speed with rapid reading techniques. This is a small study, but certainly makes sense with what is known about the biology of plasticity in the nervous system. Do you have any experiences with dyslexia and speed reading? If so, please share them. There are some fairly inexpensive computer based programs ($50) using the tachistoscope technique, but we aren't personally familiar with the programs.

Entrez PubMed

He was totally deaf in the left ear and had only 10% hearing on the right. He was schooled for only 3 months, when his teacher scolded him for being "addled" and unteachable. His mother took him home and schooled him.

Later Thomas Edison would say that his deafness helped him in his work. He could concentrate more and was less likely to get caught up in the "babble of conversation". His advice to deaf people: "Take up reading." Edison liked hands-on learning and teaching through play. He cautioned: "The present system casts the brain into a mold. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning."

Edison was awarded 1,368 different patents during his lifetime, including the firs elecric motor, first commercially practical electric lamp, first successful typewriter, and phonograph among others.
Edison National Historic Site
Thomas Alva Edison

View Articles Archives on Audiology Online
Auditory Training
Classroom Amplification

Our son's assignment for his Stanford EPGY (Educational Program for Gifted Youth) Writing Course this week is to write an essay defining giftedness. What is gifted thinking? How we define giftedness will affect how we organize, design, and deliver our educational programs.

The assessment of who's in or who's out is such a touchy subject, that some prefer to avoid discussion of it all together. If you do though, you will bring that view to your program. It was Stanford Professor Lewis Terman who first coined the term "gifted", but his massive study on the "Genetic Study of Genius" also missed the only two Nobel prize winner of the group (Luis Alvarez and William Shockley) because their IQ tests were too low.

Some of our son's brainstorming notes made us think. His answers:

1. How should giftedness be determined? "When a student complains!"
2. What should a gifted student be able to do? "Breeze through some things, know the information already, and want to know more about the why and how"
3. What are different ways a student could be gifted? "They could be very kind, do interesting things, do things that are new or different, be a good theorizer, be a good entertainer, be perfectionisic, artistic, good in business, or really think about their audience." How many of these qualities are used to define giftedness today? Who might we be missing?

Terman
Wired: The Key to Genius
Nobel Prize Winners Hate School

Here are two interesting brain pics from John Geake's work on fMRI and Analogies. If you look at functional brain imaging, a common theme in gifted thinking studies appears to be 'whole brain' giftedness. People who excel at fluid analogies, mathematics, or art are not just right or left brain thinkers, but right and left brain thinkers. It's like the Gifted Creative Corporation mentioned in our NAGC talk (here)- there's a Creativity Director (combining ideas, shifting patterns) and a CEO (manages the entire process)coordinating the creative work and bringing the project to fruition.


fMRI of Fluid Analogies

Students graduating high school in 2008 will be required to meet state standards on the WASL, or Washington Assessment of Student Learning. Students with learning disabilities should be aware of the accommodations that they may be eligible to have for the test, as well as the 'portfolio option' or WAAS. Here are links to the OSPI report. It's best to plan ahead, and accommodations may need to be on file in the 504 or IEP.


Special Education Manual for Accommodations
Introduction to Alternate Assessments for WA Requirement
Bergeson Report

Is caffeine good for you?

Caffeine can lead to improvements in reaction times, self-monitoring, and selective attention. But do you remember the old NASA study of spiders on caffeine? Hmm...maybe I'll skip the extra shot.


Normal Web

Caffeine Web

Actions of Caffeine
Spider experiments with Drugs