Thinking Flexibly

The ability to think flexibly is important for problem solving and creativity, amd it improves with direct modeling (examples). Flexibility is not the only factor for successful problem solving...selection is equally as important, but it is particularly important in situations in which information is ambiguous or conflicting, or incomplete- and when something totally new is needed.

Based on work by Amabile and others, childrens' fluency of ideas are found to best stimulated in environments that emphasize a great deal of freedom, individuality, playfulness, and ideational risk-taking. We provided links to other papers on encouraging and teaching for flexible thinking, including some more technical papers which look at cognitive flexibility theory.

In work at Oxford (below), Geake and colleagues used the Verbal Similarities task as model for gifted flexible thinking, but we shouldn't forget that that approach only looks at language. Flexibility in visual thinking uses other pathways, and it is possible to be very good at way, but not the other.

We'e also put in a link to an interesting paper involving high functioning autistic kids and young adults. There researchers found that their test subjects were quite strong in 'design fluency' (visual fluency task), and in fact generated as many new visual designs as their controls. What autistic subjects struggled with, though, was language - and for verbal fluency tasks, autistics scored far lower than a globally learning-disabled (retardation) control group.

There's some important stuff here. It's a reminder to us to foster the gifts of autistic students in visual design and problem-solving. Too often we may get preoccupied with their language and social needs, but their visual strengths may help them develop their expertise, interest-based friendships, and careers. In this study, the autistic group had some difficulty intrusive errors on design tasks, but importantly, they could recognize when errors were made. This means that educating for visual strengths should always incorporate at least a 2-step creation process- first generating ideas, then going back to throw out errors and select optimal designs.

Ideational Fluency and Autism
Geake post Fluid Analogies fmri
Flexible Teaching
Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext
Flexible Thinking: Learning from real life
Visual Flexibility Current Opinion Neurobio
p.s. Can't remember what brain regions were important for design fluency? Check out our prior post on the Tower of London task here.

Students Voice WASL Opposition

By the news article, we don't know whether this protest was initially student-motivated or parent- or teacher-motivated. Anyway, it is true high school students who are passing their classes, but failing the WASL, have a lot to lose by being denied their diplomas. If they fail to win a diploma, the statistic prediction is poor: more likely to be unemployed and on public assistance, and much lower average salaries. Average salaries for young adults are $19,000 no diploma, $26,000 diploma, $31,000 some college, $42,000 college or higher.

Students voice WASL opposition
Education Statistics

Brain Break (Kid Pick): Last Minute Book Report

Our son found this site - hilarious animated "Last Minute Book Reports" - Little Women, Don Quixote, etc.

Last Minute Book Reports

Computer Use Begins Even Earlier!

Computer users are getting younger - the latest statistics: 67% nursery school students use the computer (23% are on the Internet), 80% Computer 32% Internet by Kindergarten. By the time kids are first graders, it's 91% Computers and 50% Internet.

Computer and Internet Use in Kids

Have a great weekend.

The Complex Framework of Reward and Motivation for Kids

There is a complex relationship of reward and motivation for school aged kids, and the answers are simpler when children have high intrinsic (internal reward) motivations and flexible educational options. But when a child's performance begins to slip, and motivation and achievement drop, it becomes more difficult knowing how to regain intrinsic motivation and use extrinsic incentives to improve achievement.

The outlook for intrinsic motivation over time looks poor:



"Preference for Challenge" similarly decreases.



And yet, what can you do? Providing incentives is a tricky business. If you take something that a child naturally loves and then provide money as an incentive, research studies suggest that your scheme will backfire. In a classic experiment (repeated many times), Deci found that college students not paid to play with a puzzle played longer with it and had more interest in it, than students who were paid. As a result, the rules of reward are different when it comes to intrinsic interests. Praise and encouragement seem to be fine, but money has an opposite effect. If you want to check out Amabile's Creativity Killers, see the Art of Creativity news article below.

On the other hand, incentives may work well for activities that don't require a great deal of creativity activity like completing math worksheets.

It's valuable to think about contextual factors in motivation as well -where a child feels he is starting from, whether he perceives or knows he has slipped, and whether he now feels he is successful at his work. Sometimes we see kids when they have been experiencing repeated failure, and it's important to give them a break, to aggressively pursue accommodations if they are appropriate - so they can experience success and have more psychic energy to work on difficult tasks. Many parents can succumb to catastrophic thinking - if they take accommodations now, maybe they'll always be dependent, etc. etc., but that's not what's going to happen.

On yesterday's post about Kids and Reward, we found it interesting that the researchers cited Tversky and Kahneman's work in their design of a 'random' number guessing reward paradigm. Children were overly discouraged when win-losses were about equal. They needed to win:lose at about a 2:1 ratio to be motivated and excited about the game. It's no different in school (or in video games for that matter).

Motivation is a powerful tool in the classroom. We just need to know how to use it the right way to push their learning onto a new level.

Academic Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Psychology Today: The art of creativity
Reward and Math Worksheets
Decision Making Under Uncertainty- Kahneman

Impulsivity Can Be Reduced By Training

This is a summary of the original research paper, but it's an accurate one. Impulsivity is probably the most easily trained of behaviors associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In this study, high impulsivity was most highly correlated with a "lax" parenting style with inconsistent consequences for misbehaviors. Families with high emotional reactivity on the part of the parents (got very upset at children) were also at greatest risk for having children with impulsive behaviors.

The most important point, though, was that children's impulsivity really decreased in response to more structured discipline (after parents received instruction). Hope this helps someone.

Attention Research

Sleep Loss Affects High Schoolers

Teens do have a real alteration in their sleep cycle that makes them prefer staying up late and sleeping in. This is a normal development at this age. But this study found that teens had real effects on cognitive performance and mood. The researchers suggested giving tests in the afternoon and changing school start times.

Sleep Loss Affects High Schoolers

Motivation, Love, and Education

Some interesting articles about motivation and love (below) got us thinking about implications for education. In a paper released this week, researchers found that brain areas associated with feelings of romantic love were located in subcortical reward centers like those indicated below in red arrows. At right an fMRI picture of children and adolescents'subcortical reward centers activated by the possibility of a monetary reward. Look at the similar locations.


The areas are not exactly the same, but they are similar, and in fact if you look at the "Love" study in more detail, there were different areas of these reward regions activated when different traits of the "beloved" were considered.

We probably don't think enough about what children love when it comes to educational planning, and yet reward has powerful activating influences on the brain...even opening up new areas of memory (here).

The mathematician Poincare has written:"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful." Interestingly, beauty also activates these subcortical reward centers (here).

fMRI and Love
Children More Strongly Activated with Rewards

Flashes from the Past: He failed math and was arrested...

He wasn't a star pupil. He failed math one year, and was arrested for hitching up a wagon to some skyrockets. He admitted didn't care for school very much, but had other interests: "A fellow student and I had a far more absorbing project than our school books. We were building an automobile in my father's garage."

Then one day, "I saw in an astronomy magazine an ad about a book called "The Rocket to the Interplanetary Spaces," by Hermann Oberth. I wrote for it at once. To become an engineer and to build such rockets -- that would be a challenge worth living for, I figured.

When the book arrived, I opened it breathlessly. To my consternation, I couldn't understand a word. Its pages were a baffling conglomeration of mathematical symbols and formulas.

Rushing to my math teacher, I cried, "How can I understand what this man is saying?"

To my dismay, he told me to study math and physics. But in the glamorous prospect of a life devoted to space travel, these subjects took on new meaning for me. Determined to master them, I buried myself in their mysteries, and after a few years I even succeeded in graduating a year ahead of my class."

Who was this fellow? This was Wernher von Braun, the father of modern rocketry. Love can do amazing things. It made him learn complex math.

Another interesting note on von Braun's life. He entered a field (rocket propulsion) that didn't exist when he was a boy. It seemed enough to just learn what he needed to know.

Recollections of Rocketry

Humor, Comics, and the Brain

Here's a reminder to keep comics in your curriulum. Looking at the funny cartoons actually tickles your dopaminergic mesolimbic reward system (aside: these are the brain regions we want to activate in ADHD), and the funnier the comic is, the more activation it gets activated. Sure beats medication.



We've also included some Superhero & Science articles to get you thinking. We've been reading Science of Superheroes with our kids and they are enjoying it. The book is a playful tweaker's book, and it models looking to science or nature for ideas and applying knowledge. Some chapters are better than others, but so far we enjoyed Spiderman (walking on walls, silk, radioactive insects, etc.) and Flash (friction, metabolism, sonic booms, speed of light, etc.).

And if today's post seems too discontinuous from yesterday's, here's an ancient transition:

"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspcious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit." - Aristotle

Something Funny Happened to Reward
Reward Centers, Comics, and fMRI
Teaching Physics with Superheroes
BBC: Science of Superheroes

More Visual Perception and Dyslexia

There is a new article posted in Nature Neuroscience (sorry, not available free online yet) about Dyslexia and visual perception. The article below heralds "Dyslexia Redefined", but that's hype. The research provides more evidence that dyslexia involves perceptual abnormalities in vision...so not sound only. More specifically, Seidenberg and colleagues at Georgetown found that dyslexics had problems perceiving visual stimuli in the presence of visual 'noise'. They hypothesize that these problems could be part of a general problem in noise exclusion (sound discrimination problems), or speculate that it might account for why dyslexics have trouble with visual crowding (seeing all the letters at once).

Visual and Perceptual Difficulties in Dyslexia News

The Examined Life: Cultivating Self-Reflection and the Return of Socratic Thinking

"The unexamined life is not fit to be lived by a human being." - Socrates



Self-reflective thinking is making a comeback in school curricula and the homeschooling movement, and it also seems to succeed on standardized tests of achievement and problem solving assessments. The scientific paper below shows the different pattern of brain activation seen with self-reflective thought - the difference between determining the truthfulness of a fact, and making a qualitative decision about oneself ("I'm a good friend"). The areas that appear to be important for self-awareness are in the frontal areas, the posterior cingulate, and a bit of the temporal lobes. The researchers tried to distinguish self-reflective statements from autobiographical ones by avoiding questions that would require vivid personal recollections, and by checking scans more quickly (2 sec) than most autobiographical studies require (4-20 sec). These areas that become activated are similar in location to areas implicated in 'theory of mind' (predicting the thoughts of others).



Examining one's own thinking is a foundation for Socratic thinking, a technique which emphasizes direction questioning of students so that they examine the opinions they have made and the assumptions on which they are founded.

There has been a resurgence of interest in Socratic instruction - from public, private, and homeschool sectors. Generally this approach requires a small class size and good teachers, but otherwise many different types of students seem to benefit from this approach. Our highest scoring public middle and high school in Washington is the International Community School in Bellevue (admittedly this is an affluent area). It is a 'choice' school and lottery chosen, not hand-picked or gifted only. They apparently employ an "Essential Questions" and "Habits of Mind" approach, integrated but fairly classical pattern of studies, and have an impressive statistics on the WASL, a test more geared toward problem solving than fact mastery. From 2004: 100% 10 graders passed Reading, compared to 60% for the state average. Math Scores were 88%. Another local classical Christian school (Bear Creek) which was started as a homeschool extension center in 1998 and teaches Latin, Rhetoric, etc. also posted fairly dramatic educational statistics which included middle 50% Junior year SAT's as 600-690 on verbal, 600=690 on math. Retro, it seems, may be a good way to go for some students.

Additional links below include Understanding By Design, which discusses more the "Essential Questions" approach to curricula.

fMRI self-reflection
On Reflective Thinking
Student Reflection
Principles of Socratic Questioning
Touchstones
Questioning Techniques
Essential Questions
Additional Strategies: Dilemmas, Essential Questions
Understanding by Design

Did You Ever Wonder?

Along the lines of more teaching by questioning, here's a link to the Lawrence Berkeley site where scientists talk about what questions drove their particular line of research. Examples include: Why do people age? How can you carve with light? or Why do the digits of pi look random?

Did You Ever Wonder?

Learning By Observation

"To really understand animals and their behavior you must have an esthetic appreciation of an animal's beauty. This endows you with the patience to look at them long enough to see something." - Konrad Lorenz

Observation is one of the most important tools for innovative thinking, although it is not a simple matter to teach. When observation is done well, it's often because of love, 'flow' or a bit of obsession. If delight isn't there or worse if it's coerced, then it may be just a little bit of going through the motions.

It's not a simple process learning how we learn through observation. In a previous post (here), we've seen how experts can abstract information more quickly through observation, but in other experiments, these researchers also saw how an expert artist was able to direct his seeing (using infrared tracking of eye movements) in a way that might yield more information as well. Compare the infrared tracking movements of the artist vs. non-artist below. Look how different the artist viewed the face, encircling the eyes and face, almost like brushstrokes.



Now here's another interesting tidbit we can learn about learning by observation - it's not always conscious. In the McGill study below, researchers found that distraction did not interfere with people's ability to learn a motor movement by observation. The resesarchers hypothesize that the learning process somehow involves the development of internal representations - so that even if you're distracted while you're watching, it can be demonstrated that you still are able to learn. It's interesting to think about the sort information that comes in that is not entirely conscious - perhaps its this sort of information that gets kicked up with insight-based or non-deductive thinking.



Learning By Observation McGill pdf>
Newsletter About McGill Study>
Artist Seeing Infrared

Disappointing Trial with Phonomena

We just had an opportunity to try out the new software Phonomena, and we're sorry to say that it is disappointing. Apparently Mindweavers is interested in making adjustments in their program in the future, but in its current form we would not recommend it. There is no on-screen help for a child, no separation of games into manageable levels, and a loud and very irritating buzzer that will be difficult for many children to tolerate. If you miss a 'b' or 'd' sound, the programs blasts this grating sound at you. Apparently there's not even a way to turn it off? Are the folks at Phonomena aware that people with auditory discrimination problems may also have auditory hypersensitivities? We hope that Phonomena is able to make adjustments in their program because a low cost option to Fast Forword is very much needed. For now, though, Earobics might be the only option, but this program has its limitations as well. (Phonomena - if you're reading, we'd be happy to re-review your software if any changes are made to it).

Brain Break: Knossos Games

Knossos Games (mazes, classic puzzles) are originally from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talent Development magazine, Imagine. Have fun and have a great weekend.
Knossos Games

Visualizing Intelligence?

In this recent Neuroimage paper, Geake and Hansen raise the possibility that creative analogical thinking and crystallized intelligence (IQ) are not as different as one might think. using the Copycat Project (Hofstadter and Mitchell), researchers found that sites important for the generation of insightful analogies were ones that are already known to be interesting - the frontal lobes (reasoning, deciding), parietal lobes (imagery, representations), and cingulate (conflict, selection)..yellow arrows added below.



But what was surprising was how areas associated with fluid analogies (frontal, parietal activation) correlated with verbal IQ.



Fluid Analogies Paper
Analogies in Gifted Education - Making Connections
Humor, Analogy, and Metaphor in Teaching
More Technical Paper on Analogical Thinking

Eye Contact in Autism

Here's an interesting study that found that autistic subjects experienced greater amygdala (emotions) activation with direct eye gaze than non-autistic subjects. The study also found that autistic subjects were not more likely to look at 'mouths' than 'eyes' as had been found in a different study looking at motion pictures. See a previous post on the Visual Side of Autism here. Direct eye contact can also overwhelm young children's visual working memories. This may happen to some people with autism as well.

Strong Amygdala Activation in Autism

Saving the Family Dinner

The research is in. Having dinner regularly together with your kids seems to be good for every good thing - lower risk of depression and suicidal thoughts, low risk of smoking, alcohol, or marijuana use, higher likelihood of healthy eating, fewer eating disorders, and better grades.

According to a Harvard study, family dinners were more important than play, storytime, or other family events for building vocabulary. And "families that engaged in extended discourse at the dinner table, like story telling and explanations, rather than one-phrase comments, like 'eat your vegetables,' had children with better language skills, said Dr. Catherine Snow, a professor of education at Harvard and the researcher of the study. Parents should be encouraged to use adult-level vocabulary and encourage back-and-forth conversation with their kids. It also helps social skills. Today, 65% of families with kids under the age of 6 have dinner together 5 or so nights per week, but that drops to 50% if a family has kids age 12 to 17.

As a kid, we always got together for family dinners at our house. My dad was a big storyteller and with 4 kids, it really got busy with everyone debating current events and defending opinions. We could also try out new ideas, tell jokes, and see what everyone else was up to. These dinners were great.

Once I had my own family and both of us were working, it was harder than I thought. Ultimately we fought for it, and we won. For some families, especially in the teen years, this gets harder and harder to achieve. Stick to your guns as much as possible though. Your kids may surprise you. They may begin inviting their friends to the dinner too.

Families that dine together
Vocabulary and Family Meals
Less Substance Abuse, Depression, School Failure

Seeing WASL Results

The Seattle Times recently reported that parents are permitted to see their children's WASL reports. This may be important for children who were surprised by failing scores. In general, it may be helpful seeing why children are having trouble on standardized or regular classroom tests. Sometimes it is because of poor test saavy, including 'careless' mistakes, bad time planning, or the need for accommodations in the setting of disabilities. Don't forget too, that OSPI is releasing a third of WASL items every year - so students can practice on actual items and become more familiar with the format and expectations of the test.

Seeing WASLs
Released WASL Items

Caffeinated Cola May Make Kids Hyperactive

Highlights:

"As little as three-fourths of a can of caffeinated soda makes kids act out," says researcher Alan R. Hirsch, MD, neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.

On teacher questionnaires, first graders were much more likely to be 'squirmy', impudent and sassy, and attention seeking if they drank caffeinated soda. The caffeine also made the children want to drink more too. So, no caffeine!

Caffeinated Cola May Make Kids Hyperactive

Different Ways to Visualize and Visualization in Education

The reference below is a recent paper by Marcel Just's group finding that the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is more strongly activated by geometric imagery determinations (shape, size), compared to other imagery involving touch like roughness or hardness. The IPS is a region of interest for various developmental happenings including dyscalculia, the math disability which can be seen in association with dyslexia and finger confusion. These different networks for imagery are helpful for understanding why paradoxes in individual people abound - how come he's such a strong 'visual learner' but he can't do origami or tie his shoes? Why is she so hypersensitive to touch and texture, but so nimble playing the violin?

But as we learn more about visualization, we not only learn more about individual patterns of strengths or weaknesses in people, we also gain a greater understanding for the different components of visualization and imagery, so that it makes us more conscious of the processes and different aspects of its usefulness in problem solving or expression.

We are spotlighting a few other fascinating spatial and visualization links below. First, a fabulous 36 page newsletter from SIGGRAPH which includes an article from Pat Hanrahan talking about his computer visualization course at Stanford, an article from Susan Varnum talking about how she came into Web-based learning from computer animation, and Sue Blackman about Serious Games.

Another neat website is a Visual Thinking course website from Spalter and Van Dam from Brown. It includes 'visual literacy exercises', examples of bad web design, and other great links.

Another terrific course website from MIT (Thank you, Open Courseware) - takes visualization into another domain: Social Visualization - "Millions of people are on-line today and the number is rapidly growing - yet this virtual crowd is often invisible. In this course we will examine ways of visualizing people, their activities and their interactions. Students will study the cognitive and cultural basis for social visualization through readings drawn from sociology, psychology and interface design and they will explore new ways of depicting virtual crowds and mapping electronic spaces through a series of design exercises."

More conventional K-12 lesson plans form encouraging imagery (visual, auditory, movement) are listed below.

It goes without saying that visualization and spatial learning are terribly neglected in standard K-12 learning, but it is the wave of the present and the future, and it's ironic that many of the most talented spatial students could be struggling in verbal-dominant classrooms, unaware of their gifts.


Different Patterns for Geometric vs. Other Tactile Imagery
Learning Through Computer Visualization
Visual Thinking course
MIT Social Visualization
VisualizingLessons
Geometry K-12
Scientific Visualization Lessons

Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas

Came across this interesting post from Scott Berkun, author of The Art of Project Management. Topics include: success at defending bad ideas, death by homogeny, thinking at the wrong level, killed in the long term by short term thinking, how to prevent smart people from defending bad ideas, and find a sane person to listen to.

Why smart people defend bad ideas - scottberkun.com

Flashes from the Past: "He was bright and intelligent and bursting with energy, but he was unable to read or write..."

From a very early age, he dreamed of becoming a military hero, but his parents pulled him out of school when teasing over his poor writing became too intense. Biographer Martin Blumenson would later write, "There was a strong bond between father and son. The father spent many hours reading to him and his sister..."

Eventually he was able to enter the Virginia Military Institute, but the going seemed rough. In his first letter from home, his father wrote: "That must have been pretty embarrassing when you could not read the "no hazing pledge." How did you get out of it?...I do not see how you are going to over-come this difficulty except by practicing reading all kinds of writing. Do not give it up, but when you start to read anything, keep at it till you work it out. You misspelled hazing. The verb is "to haze" and you should remember the general rule--to drop the final "e" before "ing."

Who was this boy who struggled with reading and writing? This was "Old Blood and Guts," or George S. Patton, the colorful WWII general who spearheaded the spectacular sweep of the 3rd Army from Normandy across France. He was one of the Allies' most tactically brilliant generals.

One Favorite Patton quote: "Success is how high you bounce when you've hit bottom."

On this Memorial Day Weekend, we remember and thank all the brave men and women who serve or have served our country.

Patton Society

Girls, ADHD, and the News

Here's a little exercise in critical thinking. Dr. Biederman and his group at Harvard found that girls diagnosed with ADHD are much more likely to be diagnosed in their teens with depression and anxiety, and smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs.

In the USA Today article, Biederman apparently says "it underscores the importance of early diagnosis and treatment," but in the WebMD article we find that 9 out of 10 of the girls in his ADHD study were being treated with "usually a combination of drugs and counseling." So the behavorial, mood, and substance problems were occurring in girls appropriately diagnosed and treated by his group. Hmmm. that's not good.

What can we learn from the study? It is an important observation that girls diagnosed with ADHD are at risk for co-morbidities like anxiety and depression, and later at increased risk for substance abuse and conduct disorders. But the next step is to find what therapies are most effective and improving eventual outcome for them.The high co-morbidities again with ADHD diagnoses show how poor the existing criteria are for distinguishing similar appearing conditions.

There are unfortunately are few resources available for parents seeking more information about the presentation of ADHD in girls. Dr. Nadeeau and colleagues have some easy-to-read and practical guides available here) from Amazon.com, though.

USATODAY Teen girls with ADHD
Girls With ADHD Web MD

Reasoning and Real-Life Decision Making

Reasoning is at the heart of critical thinking and problem solving, but it rarely gets mentioned in K-12 curriculums or is required for University or graduate students. But it's never too late to learn. If we don't examine how we arrive at decisions, then we will make more mistakes and be more we susceptible to being misled by others. Reason is not infallible, nor is it the only guide to decision making, but it is a tool to use in every job we do.

A common criticism of formal logic is that it is far removed from practical decision making, but that is true only if the principles are not really understood. Real-life decision making considers evidence (with various amounts of reason, depending on who is doing the reasoning), but it also takes place within context of life experience and preexisting expectations.

Today's paper looks at this 'Real-Life Decision Making',and in fact you can see two different systems that become activated depending on whether you make a decision based on presented evidence that agrees with what you expected to see, or disagrees with your prediction.



The researchers were interested in the possibility of different systems because of its implications for decisions made in the courtroom, but the implications are much broader than that. The line between bias and the wisdom of experience can be difficult to draw.

We've included some other nice sites for logic and reasoning below.

Causal Reasoning fMRI pdf
Logic in Argumentative Writing
Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies
Intro Math Reasoning
Gr 3-5: Math Reasoning and Proof
Gr 6-8: Math Reasoning and Proof

Psychiatry's Call to Revise the DSM

In the JAMA issue that arrived today in the mail is a provocative commentary by Dr. Paul McHugh, Psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins. It's sure to raise some blood pressures.

Excerpts:

"The DSM currently admits close to 300 mental and behavioral disorders. Given that clinical appearnces forge diagnoses, a particular patient can satisfy the criteria for several disorders and many dissimilar patients can meet criteria for the same disorder. Because the manual fails to identify what underlies the symptomatic expression of condition, it cannot suggest intelligible principles relating one disorder to another or illuminate why certain of them bunch together."

He also make the good observation that the DSM is dramatically different from the physicians ICD - The ICD is organized around disorders causes like cancers, infections, or autoimmunes diseases, not behaviors or symptoms like stomach ache or irritability.

"The DSM is not systematic in that way. Being appearance driven, it is similar to a naturalist's field guide with the advantages and disadvantages of such...They enhance accuracy of identification; therefore, they are reliable but do not explain distinctions."

What we are seeing in the epidemic of behavioral diagnoses among school age children is a direct consequence of this. Very diverse groups of children diagnosed by behavioral checklists as having ADD or ADHD, PDD-NOS or Aspergers, bipolar, or OCD are not frequently missed for the differences they have, they can be cornered into inappropriate pharmacological treatments.

McHugh wonders whether psychiatrists have not revised the DSM along more etiological grounds because "they await further advances in the basic sciences." But surely a stronger drive toward distinguishing different etiologies could only be helpful?

Great Parents Who Read to Their Kids & the Difference Between Listening and Reading

It's no accident that that the NCES study (posted here) found that having > 100 books in the home was the strongest predictor of whether a child was a good reader in the 3rd grade. But throughout history, there have been some wonderful parents who cultivated their family reading time and inspired their children.

Too often we make the mistake of stopping our evening or bed time read-togethers as our children get older and can read for themselves. But if we do, we'll miss out on wonderful opportunities for sharing, deepening family 'culture', and inspiration.

Marie Curie's father was a teacher who suffered greatly under Russian-occupied Warsaw. He lost his job and his families finances were in ruin, but every Saturday night, from seven to nine, he read and recited Polish prose and poetry with his family, a time that delighted all of his children.

Robert Frost lived a simple life on a farm in New Hampshire, but his evenings were filled with his mother's read alouds of Ossian, Poe, Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Bryant. In fact, you often can't get far in biographies of gifted or talented individuals without finding strong references reading and the powerful influences of home environment on talent development.

In Developing Talent in Young People (here), family read alouds were mentioned frequently, but particularly among the families that nurtured world famous mathematicians and scientists (other groups were Olympic swimmers, professional tennis players, concert pianists, famous sculptors).

The advantage of being read to - is that conceptually children (or young adults) can be exposed to concepts, literary patterns, and words and word patterns far in advance of actual reading ability. In addition, read-alouds help bring drama and voice to text (modeling active reading for kids) and imagery, in addition to opening up many opportunities for shared fun, laughter, and probing discussions.

The figure below is from a study that found that the pathways for understanding text by reading and by listening in adult learners are different. Researchers also found that at least in this group of competent readers, listening required more intellectual 'work' when complex sentence structure was used, than reading.



Different Pathways for Comprehending Text - Listening vs. Reading

ADLER : How to Mark a Book

If you need encouragement to become more actively engaged marking up your book, read Mortimer Adler's How to Mark a Book, and check out the example below.

ADLER ARCHIVE: How to Mark a Book
Mark Your Books

Science Site: The Why Files

We accidentally came across this nice science site: "The Why Behind the News". There are some nice interactive animations (good for demonstrating the influence of scientific factors on phenomena, but technically simple), and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker story. The ant trap is a marvel of insect engineering, but the picture kind of gives me the creeps.

The Why Files

Sentence Structure and Everything: Comprehension, Test-Taking, and Persuasion

Sentence structure seems a dry and unglamorous topic, but it powerfully impacts on almost all aspects of reading and learning, communication, performance, and even personal persuasion. Overblown? Don't think so. Winston Churchill rightly praised the consequences of his being trapped in remedial English for three terms in a row: "I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence-which is a noble thing."

Syntax is defined as the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences. Simple enough, but it can bedevil everyone at some point, but particularly older students with dyslexia, auditory processing difficulties, and those with limited auditory working memories.

A student's slide may be insidious beginning in the upper elementary school years or maybe middle school. It's not a problem in the early ages because sentences are fairly straightforward. It only develops when clauses become more complex and sentences start having multiple nouns. Like, "The Toyota that hit the Chevrolet spun out of control." - Which car spun out of control?

Look at the extra brain work (slowed reaction times) required to comprehend the following two sentences: "The janitor who frustrated the plumber lost the key on the street." "The janitor who the plumber frustrated lost the key on the street." In this study, researchers also looked at the influence that grammatical complexity had on solving easy vs. more demanding (larger numbers) problems.



Math word problems are hard because the grammatical demands are great (passive tense), information cannot be filled-in by context (like understanding what's being studied in class or looking and visual explanations), and complex calculations may have to be performed as well. Here's a sample question from one of the released items from the WASL here:

"A team has won 10 of the 15 games it has played. The team has 25 games left to play. The players figure they will make the playoffs if their winning percentage for the season is 60%. How many of the remaining games must the team win to have a winning percentage of 60% for the season."

Bright children with dyslexia or other learning challenges may overcome obstacles with reading only to find themselves failing again because of misinterpreting essay questions or word problem questions. The most exasperating part is that they might have known the work or had the right answers - but they misunderstood the question. It's not hard to see how problems with understanding sentence structure can affect everything - from knowing what's going on in class (worse with a rambling teacher or one who is fond of long sentences), misunderstanding assignments, and expressing oneself poorly.

We've put some links to helpful sites for Sentence Comprehension on the Internet. Please share any sites or books that you like in comments (we'd like more people to leave comments). Diagramming looks just dreadful to some people, but it can be illuminating to others because it puts language into visual language. Check out the first link below - particularly if you have Powerpoint and can look at the 'slideshow' on diagramming.

Finally, those of you who are in the persuasion business for a living (CEO, advertising, guru), are probably already aware of the structural tricks of verbal persuasion...it can be very helpful studying great speeches and writing. The bottom link is to a journalist's article on writing with parallel constructions.

Diagramming Sentences
Sentence Comprehension: Connection to Reading
Syntax, Math, and Working Memory
Diagramming Sentences
Persuasion Analysis & Classroom
Parallel Lines and Persuasion

Brain Break: Archimedes Game Site

Time for a brain break? Check out this Archimedes Game Site. Our kids especially liked seeing optical illusions they hadn't seen before, but there's a lot here - visual and spatial puzzles, math and word puzzles.

Archimedes Games

Resource for Idioms

Here's a nice site for learning idioms. Idioms are difficult to comprehend for children with language learning disabilities, dyslexia, autism spectrum disorders, and other conditions. Idioms are important for pragmatic or every day speech and jokes. Drawing pictures with the idioms or acting them out can help some children remember them better.

English Idioms

Controlling Feelings: Implications for OCD, Anxiety, and ADHD

'Talk therapy' has been around for years, but being able to 'see' the benefits on brain imaging is now very motivating to professionals and patients alike. When Jeffrey Schwartz had his breakthrough with OCD and CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy (The Mind and the Brain), it was apparent that many OCD sufferers were relieved to see that their problem resulted from excessive activity in the brain. It helped some visualize their problems so they could more readily ignore the false worries when they arose.

The power of CBT is now proven in a whole range of emotional and mood disorders including ADHD, Anxiety, and OCD, with many labs now trying to 'push the envelope' figuring out why some subjects respond to CBT, while others don't, and deducing most effective strategies.

The figure below shows the change that can be seen when subjects try to reduce their negative feelings upon seeing 'negative' photographs. The green areas 'switch on' in order to keep emotions in check, while the red spots are emotional areas that become regulated.



If a child is going to begin cognitive behavioral therapy, make sure she knows the rationale behind it, and how it can really work. Most kids like understanding how their brains work, and they are interested in seeing how training, therapy, or learning can change the working of their brains.

Brain-computer interfaces of this sort are not available clinically yet - they are research tools - but they are on the horizon.

Here's a diagram of the brain-computer interface at Columbia:



Mindfulness and OCD
Cognitive Control of Feelings
CBT and Meds for Panic-Abstract only
Combined ADHD Treatment Lowers Need for Drugs
Adaptive Brain Computer-Interface

Resources for Critical Thinking: "Debatabase" and More

The Debatabase is a nifty resource for middle and high school students examining controversial issues. This may be helpful for introducing older students to critical thinking as well. Most students (hey, even adults) are poorly trained at examining their own assumptions, bias, and arguments. So it helps to have pro and con positions written on for both sides, so they can really be understood. Many students may have to read many before they begin to recognize the pattern of providing support for statements and format for communicating their ideas.

For younger children, check out the critical thinking article below about Fairy Tale ethics. Elaine Lindy looks at the 'trickery' of Puss n Boots and 'stealing' in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Finally, check out the classical critical thinking approach that employs 'progymnasmata': "A set of rudimentary exercises intended to prepare students of rhetoric for the creation and performance of complete practice orations (gymnasmata or declamations)." The progymnasmata begins by rewriting Aesop's fables as a preparation for the systematic thinking, writing, and presentation of rhetoric. The last link below has some sample original and rewritten Aesop's fables.

Debatabase
Fairy Tales & Ethics
Progymnasmata
Progymnasmata Exercises

Do the Math - The Numbers Guy

Doing the numbers - Carl Bialik, former math-physics major now has a numbers column on the Wall Street Journal - He confesses an interest in how "numbers are used, and abused, in the news, business and politics."

Topics include school rankings, estimate of those who listen to rap, the fuzzy math of salary calculators...

WSJ.com - The Numbers Guy

Why Behavioral Checklists for ADHD and Autism Stink

More reasons to believe that behavioral checklists are a lousy way to diagnose ADHD and Autism- two recent studies have now found that perinatal stress (or mild birth injury by implication) greatly increases the likelihood a child will be diagnosed with ADHD or Autism. Hmmm - is this a coincidence? Probably not. Both ADHD and Autism use cafeteria-style checklists to diagnose children, and the overwhelming number of children are never examined by a neurologist who might detect specific patterns of neurologic disability that suggest an injury from birth.

Does it matter? Absolutely. As it turns out there are many different ways in the brain that a little patchey injury can cause unwanted behaviors like hyperactivity, inattentiveness, poor eye contact, or poor social interactions, but many differences as well. And its these differences that require different interventions and recommendations as well as resulting in very different outcomes. The problem today is there is so much that is getting lumped under the ADHD and Autism diagnoses (or Aspergers or PDD-NOS) that inappropriate placement and educational decisions, and even parenting decisions are made.

Both research reports are available as full text below.

The ADHD study looked at risk factors within families - so comparing children to unaffected family siblings - and this was a good idea. ADHD was highly associated with neonatal complications (p < 0.006) and in addition it also correlated with significantly higher mean scores on the total CBCL (72.0 vs. 66.4). Neonatal problems were also associated with higher externalizing scores - including impulsivity, and poor performance on the CPT. Specific neonatal risks were seen with NICU hospitalization, oxygen therapy, general anesthesia, and surgery.

The Autism Report saw lots of perinatal risk factors again - being premature resulted in a 2.5x increased risk of autism, low Apgars (birth stress, poor breathing) was almost 2x an increased risk of autism, breech birth 1.6x increased risk, and parental psychosis 3.4x increased risk for autism.

Do these look like a single thing to you?

Risk Factors for ADHD
Risk Factors for Autism Res Paper
WebMD article autism
PsycPORT.com autism article

Creativity as an Elusive Factor in Giftedness

We found this nice article by Joyce VanTassel-Baska. And it looks like we will be giving a presentation on Problem Solving and Creativity in Gifted Students for the NAGC meeting in Kentucky in November. Should be fun!

Joyce makes a number of good points, including a remark about how "too much conventional learning in an area where the ideas of others become so crystallized as to block innovative thinking in the domain." She adds "There is also evidence that much of the learning of high creatives is obtained independently of traditional schooling. Autodidacticism may be the norm among this group where the impetus, nature, and extent of learning is self-governed."

Creativity as an Elusive Factor in Giftedness

Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

If you like considering back-and-forth debate, check out the Edge as it takes on Science and Gender.

GENDER AND SCIENCE

The Power of Analogical Thinking

"Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have." - Samuel Butler

Analogical thinking is well recognized for its importance in higher level creative thinking and successful problem solving, but it receives little formal consideration in conventional school curricula. We would even like to see it employed more in e-learning situations or the video gaming industry especially they may be the most common shared experience of young people (but that's for another post...).

In the study below, researchers visualized the difference between semantically and analogically related words, and it is a remarkabledifference. The green below indicates areas of brain activated when subjects see semantically related words like 'note' and 'scale' and 'rain' and 'drought', but look at how much brain and how many more areas get activated with analogous words like 'bouquet' and 'flower' and 'chain' and 'link'(analogy in red, common areas in yellow).



Analogy is properly the domain of higher order thought because it requires fluency - lots of ideas - and integration across multiple representations. Analogy is also more simply thought of as flexible pattern recognition, the process involved in all those good things that should be emphasized in education - critical thinking and deduction, inference, and solutions by insight.

Analogical Reasoning

Speed Reading in Adult Dyslexics

It was great to see more research on this clinical phenomena we have seen for quite a while - the "Faster is Better" paradox for well-compensated or gifted dyslexics. Since 1997, research studies have documented the "acceleration phenomenon" in which dyslexics made to read 10-20% faster than their 'routine' reading rate could markedly increase their decoding accuracy and comprehension.

Most of the dyslexic lawyers and professionals we know have discovered this (as well as many younger gifted dyslexics) - but at last there are more studies dissecting out why this happens. The link below takes you to the research paper which is a bit technical, but it relates many nice points. Among them:

- "There is growing support for th notion that word reading fluency may reflect sub-processes other than phonology and can thus be conceptualized as a separate factor for the reading deficit."
- "...reading intervention studies have also indicated that while intensive training in phonemic awareness could improve decoding and word identification in poor readers, there were only minimal gains in reading fluency..."
- "However, the most surprising result...was that the acceleration of reading (i.e. the same task performed at the fast rate) resulted in a relative normalization of the brain area engagement patterns in the dyslexic readers..."

Other comments to add - the study reinforces the foolishness of phonics-only approaches to dyslexia, and it underscores the importance of reading fluency as a dyslexia-associated condition.

The speed reading-dyslexic creates a lot of confusion in the school system (for example, how can letter reversals and spelling errors be dyslexia if the reading comprehension is so good?) and problems with kids failing to receive appropriate accommodations. In order to efficiently speed read, students need to have learned a sufficient body of words recognized by sight. Also, some dyslexic lawyers have shared with us that if they have to read every word of some printed material, they will speed read the document several times to make sure they have not missed anything.

Faster is Better - University Student Dyslexics

The Math Circle

Check out this offering for young gifted math enthusiasts: for 9-11 year olds there's knots, game theory, concurrency and collinearity, Pythagorean triples, mathematical origami, Steiner points... The history reads: "Disturbed by the poor quality and low level of math education in the country, the three of us...

The Math Circle

Tape Loop or Visual Sketch Pad? It'll Affect Your Multi-Tasking

Some of you will remember this from The Pleasure of Finding Things out - Richard Feynman found he couldn't count and talk at the same time, while a colleague couldn't count and read at the same time. Why was this? The answer is a surprisingly helpful tidbit for understanding your as well as others' different ways of taking information 'in'.

"Tukey and I discovered that what goes on in different people's heads when they think they're doing the same thing--something as simple as counting--is different for different people...(when) Tukey was counting...he was visualizing a tape with numbers on it going by...(whereas)I'm "talking" to myself when I'm counting, so I can't speak!"

What Feynman discovered was the Tape Loop and Visual Spatial Sketchpad - the most different routes for storing information. Most people prefer one route much more over the other and some may only effectively have one, but know what you have available can be a powerful tool.

One the most important reasons is that working memory can often get jammed when too much information is coming in at once. If you can flexibly switch modes (depending on the multi-tasking needs at the time), then you take information in more efficiently and multi-task. Always the tweaker, Feynman also began to play with sensory-motor or kinesthetic memory and spatial imagery:"After that discovery, I tried to figure out oa way of reading out loud while counting-something niether of us could do. I figured I'd have to use a part of my brain that wouldn't interfere with the seeing or speaking departments, so I decided to use my fingers, since that involved the sense of touch. I soon succeeded in counting with my fingers and reading out loud. But Iwanted the whole process to be mental, and not rely on any physical activity. So I tried to imagine the feeling of my fingers moving while I was reading out loud. I never succeeded. I figured that was because I hand't practiced enough, but it might be impossible..."

Check out this nice article (with excerpts) about the newly released letters of Feynman from his daughter (here). We were especially moved by his letters of encouragement to others and the letter that concludes the article.

Learning to Think Like a Child

Here's some research showing where kids better than adults: children are better recognizers of the visual differences (the study used pictures of different animals). It may be that everything is more novel to them and they more interested, but reflects Ohio State University researcher Vladmir Sloutsky, "As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences." Interestingly, adults regained that child-like memory for differences if they were shown novel and completely imaginary figures.

This like those "child-like" creative geniuses you read about biographical accounts. These men and women have a "child-like" way of seeing familiar things as if for the first time.

Science Daily article
Sloutsky paper 2005

MIT World: Videos on Innovation

Another amazing resource for University-based lectures. This one is MIT World and the link below takes you to a lecture on Educational Innovation. Included in this talk is Henry Jenkins arguing for more and better video games in education. 1/3 of MIT entering freshman admitted to playing video games during class. The answer, says Jenkins, is getting the teacher to play more games during class.

MIT World: Focus on Educational Innovation

National Report on Early School Experiences (NCES)

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has now released its report on Early School Experiences.

Take-home points:

- 'Interest' in reading correlates with achievement (So if you can't read well, you probably won't like it)
- Full vs. half day kindergarten doesn't affect achievement
- By the end of the 3rd grade, kids can identify words, but struggle with inferences
- Only 29% of 3rd graders can make inferences beyond the literal text (27% public, 37% private)
- By the end of the 3rd grade, boys are better at word problems, but girls are at reading
- Private school students outscored public in reading, math, and science
- African American students showed the slowest rise in achievement from kindergarten to the 3rd grade
- "Full-day kindergarten is not randomly distributed; rather, children at risk of school failure are more likely to attend such programs (Walston and West 2004)"
- Highest scoring kids in reading have parents with highest level of education and the most books at home (> 100)

Executive Summary, From Kindergarten Through Third Grade
The Condition of Education 2004

SAT Writing Scores - Not Ready for Prime Time

Check out the New York Times article below:

Fewer than half of the country's colleges and universities are requiring applicants to submit SAT writing scores, and says the College Board spokeswoman Chiara Coletti, "We have never recommended that schools use it in admissions decisions right away. Since this is a new test, it makes sense to be careful in how it's used the first year." Said Steven Syverson, Dean of Admissions at Lawrence University, "When we heard the test-prep industry say it would add $200 million a year to coaching revenues, we just said, 'That's it. It's out of line, it's out of whack, and we don't want to be part of it.' "

SAT Essay NY Times

The Research Channel - Extensive Video Library

Check out the free streaming video resources at the Research Channel (University Consortium). Here's a link to Johns Hopkins Spaghetti Bridge Building (engineering), but there the library is extensive: other titles include autonomous robots, digital media design, and oh - plenty of brain stuff.

ResearchChannel: Spaghetti Bridge Building

What Today's Students Can Learn from IDEO

What is IDEO? IDEO is a world reknown and innovative design firm that helped develop Apple Computer's first mouse, the Palm V, the insulin pen, the first stand-up toothpaste tube, and overhauled the consumer experiences of Kaiser Permanente Hospitals and high fashion dressing rooms.

So why would this mean anything to students? With the Information Revolution, facts and information base are not the essential commodity any more. It's no longer vital to "know that", but rather to "know why" and "how to make better." And these skills are right up IDEO's alley. What IDEO may help specifically with is a more systematic approach to teaching and encouraging problem solving.

While reading Kelly's The Art of Innovation, we found the following ideas for the classroom:

- Innovation Begins with the Eye: Ala Training Tweakers, IDEO is also a big fan of the Critical Eye. IDEO encourages creative critique by direct experience, interviewing, reflection on opinions and gut feelings, and finding problems that others hadn't seen before.

- Model Fluency with Ideas: IDEO has a number of tips about how to conduct good brainstorming sessions, including ideas for modeling fluency. First, IDEO likes to number their ideas to encourage generating lots of ideas, even off-the-wall or half-baked ones. Second, provide concrete examples of solutions that other people have devised ("One of the best brainstormers I ever attended at IDEO was an exploration of alternative wine beverage containers. Before the brain-stormer, we covered a conference table with bottles, closures, materials, and mechanisms ranging from the retro porcelain Grolsch beer bottle stopper to an elegant black Japanese sake flask..."). This sounds a little like Einstein working in the Patent Office. Brainstorming sessions don't just 'happen', they also have been well researched. Having examples readily in hand can be stimulating for more ideas.

- Cultivate Hot Groups: Carefully select groups and recognize diversity and contributions of different personalities. Students would benefit from learning about different creative personalities and different successful roles in innovative groups. Why should instruction in group interactions wait until they have entered the workforce?

- Make Prototypes: Draw and physically make something from your ideas, then test it out in the field. Get physical, "sketching, mind mapping, diagrams, and stick figures..." and make a model with available parts (the first mouse was prototyped using the cover of a butter dish).

- Cross-Pollinate and Jump Barriers: Teach students that the best ideas may be found from beyond the group or from a different field. Suggest analogies from different disciplines. Change experience and points-of-view. Cursory exposures to problem solving in the classroom may defeat the purpose of the lesson. Don't allow cheats or predictable answers. Encourage far out ideas and interdisciplinary thinking.

ThePower Of Design
ideo.com

Dutch Science Free & Activating Your Brain

Bravo to the Dutch scientific community. Against the objections of Dutch publishing giant Elsevier, academics in the Netherlands have banded together to publish all scientific work to the worldwide community on the Internet. All Dutch research is now available at: DAREnet. A similar movement was afoot in the U.S. (all taxpayers fund the research, why shouldn't the results be accessible to them?), but the NIH blinked and as a result, not most NIH-funded reports are not freely available to the public.

One of the Dutch reports (here) now freely available shows an fMRI of a 28 year-old controlling his cingulate cortex activation through brain-computer interface or bci. The cingulate, as you may remember, is an interesting area for its implication in ADHD, reward, motivation, and decision-making.

Very cool. What did this fellow use to 'activate' his brain? Apparently he found that thinking of winter landscapes, snowboarding, and social interactions turned his anterior cingulate 'on'.



For more on the ADHD and Reward pictures, check out Money, Motivation, ADHD, and the Brain.

Importance of Visual Spatial Imagery in Algebraic Word Problem Solving

In this study, entitled "An fMRI study of the interplay of symbolic and visuo-spatial systems in mathematical reasoning", researchers found that successful solution of algebraic word problems required activation of parietal areas classically associated with visual spatial imagery. These areas were also activated when subjects were told to mentally construct a number line.



The important finding is that the imagery areas were important regardless of whether students solved problems using a picture strategy or a representation (make another equation) strategy. "This means that constructing an equation, which apparently is a symbolic task, recruits the visuo-spatial system."

Language areas were activated under both conditions, but not more active under symbolic vs. picture conditions. Other interesting points raised in the paper were observations that instruction in pictorial representations helped solve word problems more easily, and that poor performances correlated with 'direct translation' strategies rather than visual imagery.

There are other studies to support the importance of parietal imagery areas in verbal, tactile, and visual problems solving ( for instance, here and here), but visual or spatial strategies for teaching are often less common in the K-12 classroom perhaps because of the verbal learning style of many teachers. Hmmm. Think, think, think.

Visual Spatial Imagery and Algebraic Word Problems

Cultivating Kid Critics: Different Versions and Star Wars Revelations

An easy way to cultivate kid critiques - is to have them watch or read / watch different versions of the same story. For the toddler set this could be cartoon versions of familiar tales (cartoons are ripe for this - Christmas Carol, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc.), or for the older set, various remakes. Talk about what worked and what didn't. Compare and contrast.

And now for the Star Wars set, there's an ambitious Star Wars Fan movie (written, acted, produced by fans) that's available for download at the link below (HT: collision detection). Because it's a big file, you'll have to either use Bit torrent file sharing, or be patient with the conventional download as a quicktime movie. It's amazing. They even made some "Behind the Scenes" clips. Bravo! Maybe even movies can become an "interactive medium" like the blogosphere.

Star Wars Revelations