The Math Learning Disability: Developmental Dyscalculia

Math disabilities are notoriously difficult to specifically diagnose because math processing and problem solving often require the cooperation of many cognitive abilities. Our understanding of the biological basis of developmental dyscalculias greatly lags the dyslexias, but this latest review by Dehaene and his colleagues is a step in the right direction.

The figure below shows three candidate locations for different subtypes of dyscalculia. I can add a little personal knowledge to this discussion too, because I have a deficits in both "number sense" and "multiplication facts" retrieval. My visual perception of number is absolutely fine, however.



A math disability can be absolutely mind-boggling to a person doesn't have one. How is it possible that I still count on fingers, but managed to graduate from Harvard and place out of math because of getting a 5 on the AP Calculus exam? Answer: the brain has main opportunities to compensate. In my case, I struggled in my early elementary school years (if nobody knows how to specifically diagnose math disabilities, you can bet that few teachers or parents know how to customize teaching for them), but eventually got along pretty well by brute force of memorization, reasoning, and of course finger counting.

Poor performances in math also commonly occur for other reasons such as dysgraphia, limitations in attention or working memory, problems in rote, visual, spatial, or sequential memory, and inadequate or other types of poor teaching. Students with mild visual or auditory problems may overload when too much information is presented at once; and uni-taskers struggle for the same reason when spatial and verbal aspects of math become more complex.

Often math interventions require a combination of accommodations (scribing, work with a printed example of math facts chart in view), one-on-one tutoring, and more time. An error log can be helpful getting students to recognize the patterns of their errors, and the need to check and double-check answers if a problem-solving approach has been mislearned or forgotten, or faulty execution is to blame wrong results.

Developmental Dyscalculia Review 2007 pdf
Math Disabilities at SchwabLearning
Common Math Mistakes
Dyscalculia at MislabeledChild.com
Problem solving strategies in math at About.com
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Dyscalculia & Two Brain Pathways for Math
Eide Neurolearning Blog: East meets West: Fundamental Differences in Math Teaching
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Math Software Resources for Dyslexia & Dysgraphia


Technorati tags: math, education, dyscalculia, learning disabilities, fMRI, science, brain

The Autism and Engineer Hypothesis

Links below are to an article interviewing Simon Baron-Cohen about his Autism-Engineer Hypothesis. Excerpt:

"If Baron-Cohen is right, today's male engineer is more likely to leave the house wearing a stained tie than his professional forebears, simply because he is more likely to be married to a woman who is herself of the systemizing persuasion...Such "assortative mating," as he calls it, would have served to concentrate the critical genes, increasing the chance that such a couple will give birth to the most extreme systemizers of all those with autism."

Baron-Cohen's latest article is Two new theories of autism: hyper-systemising and assortative mating.

In fact, older studies like Autism occurs more often in families of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians had claimed higher rates of autism among families with fathers or grandfathers in engineering, but as personality / MBTI studies of engineers have shown, a majority of engineers are of an introverted and thinking temperament, and current at autism diagnostic criteria being what it is, I can't help thinking that this alone would qualify many engineers (or children who will grow up to become engineers) to meet a few "spectrum" checkpoints just on the basis of some reduced eye contact, fewer peer relationships (especially compared to extroverts), and suboptimal conversational ability. But is this a disease?

Introverted children are often slower to warm up when meeting new people, and this may include being interviewed at a doctors appointment as well as in performance situations in conventional classrooms.

The figure below shows what Baron-Cohen and his group originally found when they administered psych questionnaires to students at Cambridge University. Autism higher in the maths group, whereas manic-depression higher in the English / Humanities crowd.



What the field needs is a better tool to distinguish normal differences in the criteria of behavioral diseases such as autism of Aspergers syndrome. Every field has its own differences in the personalities and temperament types it attracts. What is difference and what is disability needs to defined.

BTW, it didn't seem so long ago that Baron-Cohen wrote about The Extreme-male-brain theory of autism. Could Baron-Cohen Be linking extreme maleness with the engineering profession?

Thanks, John, for the HT.

Autism and Engineers- IEEE
Personality Types in Engineering pdf
Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child
Activities Where Introverted Children Can Win

Technorati tags: autism, Aspergers, personality, temperament, psychology, engineering, introversion

How Can Educators Learn from Expertise?...Software Designers and Others

An interesting paper from U. of Massachusetts looking at the common ingredients of software developers, with speculation on what that could mean for student education in general:

"What is it about experts that makes this problem-solving expertise possible? The primary difference between experts and novices is NOT in basic intellectual processes, such as IQ, memory, or speed of processing. Rather, the distinguishing feature of expertise is that experts have extraordinary action-based knowledge in their field."

They conclude that education should:

1. Develop procedural skills.
2. Develop metacognition.
3. Develop declarative knowledge.

These ideas are not new, but their discussion of the need for strategic and metacognition provides some useful pearls. Years of experience was not predictive of debugging skill. Students can't just keep plugging away at a subject and expect mastery at the end.

In software design, as well as in chess or music, it wasn't time spent in practice that determined success, it was how skillful individuals were at figuring out how to get better. Time-on-task does improve performance, but if you add reflection and self-critiquing and -improving behavior, you'll do even better.

When looking at software design experts, they tended to approach problems first from a big picture or top-down strategy for analysis. When they discovered an unusual feature, they shifted into a more domain-specific mode that allowed them to analyze details and "go deep".

Expertise in Software Development pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Training Tweakers
Fast Company: Expert on Experts

Technorati tags: creativity, innovation, education, technology, expertise, gifted, metacognition, science

Early Child Care May Lead to More Long-Term School Behavior Problems

In the largest study of child care and development in the U.S. (1,364 children), researchers found the more the child care, the more behavioral problems at school. In 2001, the first phase of the study found that children in child care were more likely to be aggressive and defiant. Follow-up now when the children are in 5th and 6th grades show that behavioral problems continue.

The latest study isn't available free online yet (why not, as it's a federally-funded study, one might ask...), but the NIH released a 62 page booklet summarizing the first phase of the study last year (available here.

The correlation of child care and problems at school behavioral problems can be noted below, but also note that poor parenting quality (observing parent-child interactions, interviews) also seemed to have a role.



Importantly, parenting quality was a stronger predictor than early childcare experience of school success.

MSNBC: Daycare and School Behavioral Problems
Are There Long-Term Effects of Early Childcare? Abstract March 07

Technorati tags: children, development, childcare, behavior, school

Remembering the Past May Influence How We Imagine the Future

Our autobiographical (or episodic) memory is sometimes to referred to as "constructive" rather than "reproductive," because it's prone to errors and illusions so that we aren't remembering really what we experienced, but rather what we synthesized, based on what happened to us.

Here researchers found that a very similar brain network reconstructing the past is activated when test subjects were asked to visualize the future. This may explain why some hippocampal amnesiacs have trouble imagining the future. It may also explain why severely depressed individuals problems accurately recalling the past and being able to specifically imagine events that could happen to them in a future (a particularly dangerous situation in the case of individuals with suicidal thoughts).



A study such as this reminds us of the importance of how we (or our children) make meaning of our pasts. If children look back on their experiences and see only failure, they may be robbed of their dreams for the future.

Episodic Memory - Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future - fMRI pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Teaching Optimism

Technorati tags: fMRI, brain, science, memory, imagination, motivation, psychology, depression

The Misdiagnosis of Dyslexia

Although dyslexia may be the most common learning "difference" or disability, in our practice it is one of the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions that leads to school struggles. What's alarming is the number of different conditions that students are misdiagnosed with:

1. Not Trying, Careless (Underachievement)\
Children with unrecognized dyslexia are often told they're just not trying hard enough or they're careless. Students may be unfairly accused of being overly perfectionistic, unrealistic about how hard they may need to work, or sloppy.

When tested orally, these students are often able to demonstrate their intelligence; their submitted work may be far below their orally-tested knowledge because of dysgraphia, the need for extra time, and misreading and miswriting errors.

2. Attention Deficit Disorder
Children with unrecognized dyslexia are often misdiagnosed with ADD or ADHD, because if they're underperforming, but have normal or above-average intelligence, it's ADD or ADHD may be the only other practical alternative on a teacher's, parent's, or physician's list of possibilities.

Children with dyslexia may become overloaded with too much auditory information - but the pattern tends to be different from children who have impaired auditory working memory or sustained attention for visual or auditory information. Auditory attention problems in dyslexics is usually related to problems they have or have had in sound processing. When certain sounds within words are difficult or impossible to hear, their general listening efficiency goes down, especially if there is some background noise, the vocabulary is new or challenging, or the speaker is disorganized. Because the higher order filling-in ability of many dyslexics is just fine, they will do better if they are listening to familiar, technical (can just recognize facts), or contextual information. The most challenging is non-contextual information - like a list of unrelated words or test instructions that cannot be inferred from other words.

This is a very different pattern from children who have a more global problem with attention; these students will be limited in sustained attention no matter what is present (i.e. a long story won't be retained ).

3. PDD-NOS, Aspergers
Children with dyslexia may also be misdiagnosed with PDD-NOS or Aspergers, usually in the setting of sensory sensitivities, shyness or gaucheness, and late talking. Even some of the gifted traits may work against them, as clinicians or other professionals may mistake talent development for a "restricted pattern of interest." Some of the confusion in diagnosis may occur too, because visual and auditory processing difficulties are often present among dyslexics, and this may result missed social cues or avoidance of loud and or visually busy environments.

We have even seen some socially intuitive dyslexic children earn the spectrum label because they shut down in a clinician's formal testing situation, and refused to perform for "strangers." Any professional can have this happen to them, of course, but the real mistakes come if they don't recognize it and acknowledge they didn't obtain an accurate assessment of the child.

4. Depression, ODD
These behaviors are often found secondary to an unrecognized learning disability, but because sadness and sometimes oppositional behavior are sometimes seen because children react to their learning struggles in different ways.

5. "Slow", Mildly Retarded
Finally, many dyslexic children are misdiagnosed as being "slow" or mentally retarded, although they have average or even above average general cognitive abilities. They may not receive appropriate intervention because teachers, parents, and other professionals may feel it's the best that they can do.

We had one school professional tell us that it didn't matter that her school didn't identify students with dyslexia because it wouldn't affect how they would teach them anyway. And why not? A student who is struggling to read because of phonological problems is very different from one who has visual word memory problems, as is one with a general language impairment, or one with retrieval issues. This is no way to run a school.

Why Dyslexia is So Poorly Diagnosed
Dyslexia is poorly recognized for a variety of reasons.
1. Most teachers don't receive adequate training to recognized dyslexia.
2. Parents don't receive information about normal reading milestones or possible signs of dyslexia.
3. Many University programs are usually more concerned with researching narrow questions in dyslexia, than providing resources and guidance for the wide array of difficulties that individuals with dyslexia may have.

More sites to learn more about dyslexia:

Dyslexia and Reading at MislabeledChild.com
What It Takes to Read
Stealth Dyslexia
Dyslexia at SchwabLearning.org
Dyslexia Teacher
Reading and Dyslexia at LDOnline.org
International Dyslexia Association
ReadingRockets.org

Online Conference with Thomas West - Gifts of Dyslexia March 23-25

There will be a free online gifted conference with Thomas West, author of In the Mind's Eye (Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Learning Difficulties, Computer Images, and the Ironies of Creativity) this weekend from March 23rd-25th.

Read instructions to sign up for the conference here: Online Gifted Conferences

You will need to send an email to:

OGTOC-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

We're going to take a long weekend from the blog, see you back Monday March 26th. We'll also be listening in to Tom's conference over the weekend. Highly recommended!

The Power and the Perils of Praise

Thank you everyone who sent us this link to NY Magazine article, How Not to Talk to Your Kids. Bronson makes some good points and cites research by Carol Dweck (Praise the effort, not the child, but there are more issues to consider when children don't seem to be flourishing in school.

1. The Context: In the article's example, Thomas, a young man with a super high IQ test, "wasn't very good at spelling" and had trouble with cursive handwriting. Was this parental praise run amuck? Or perfectionism, unrealistic expectations, gender-related "delays" in writing, or an unrecognized challenge like dysgraphia or "stealth dyslexia"? It's easy in a magazine article, research study, or blog post, to give a quick answer to a problem (e.g. "Giving kids the label of "smart" does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it," but reader beware! All children have nuances - and looking for them may really help them the most.

2. Childish Expectations and the Disadvantages of Inexperience: Most children have little idea of how much work goes into mastery or expertise. It's not surprising, they just haven't lived that long. All children will be helped by encouragement and positive adults in their life who can provide context to their failures and encouragement when they have to work much harder at something that doesn't come easy for them.

3. Feelings of Self-Worth are Important: Praise can certainly be overdone (and trend-watchers like Jean Twenge have data that the self-esteem movement is in overkill), but parents should also be vigilant when they notice their children making self-deprecating comments ("I'm stupid, stupid, stupid) or showing signs of "Imposter syndrome" - feeling like they don't belong in their place in school because they are underachieving according to their IQ scores.

In fact, many New York (and other) elite schools struggle with identifying why underachieving students in their middle to high school years. The reasons are many, but it's not hard to ignore the fact that many children earn their place when IQ tests are administered in Kindergarten... before other issues like reading, writing, and mathematics can be assessed. There are burdens too, for children who are precocious when young, but can't keep up with the performance demands (often writing) or competition in these schools.

Finally, anxiety and feelings of inadequacy do contribute to underachievement every day. Stereotype threat research is especially enlightening in this regard. Look at the effect on girls' math performance when they were given the suggestion that it was "often noted that girls scored lower than boys" (High Threat, HT). It is not only girls who are vulnerable to stereotype threat, this effect has been noted in boys, men and women, and Caucasians and African-Americans, although the intimidating remarks often have to be changed to fall more in line with conventional stereotypes.



What prevents a person from succumbing to stereotype threat? Self-affirming activities, like reflecting on personal strengths and other self-affirming behaviors.

How Not to Talk to Your Kids - NYMag
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Generation Me vs. Others
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Finding the Right Ways to Praise Kids
Eide Neurolearning Blog: The Biology of 'Choking' Under Stress
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Stealth Dyslexia: When Writing is the Problem
Eide Neurolearning Blog: More Boys, Girls, & Different Brains, and Longer Times to Process
Stereotype Threat and Girls' Math Performance

Technorati tags: gifted, education, parenting, learning styles, underachievement, dyslexia, self-esteem, motivation

The Development of Self-Control

It's not your imagination. It takes a long time for kids to develop adult levels of self-control. Bunge and Wright have an excellent review in Current Opinion in Neurobiology entitled Neurodevelopmental changes in working memory and cognitive control. Some of the key figures can be seen below. The limitations in working memory for children remind us that we need to take care to break down new information into smaller "bits" and provide plenty of supports to working memory (e.g. handouts, listing of key steps, examples of correctly solved problems).

Self-control of emotion is a different issue, but it also has a developmental course and is affected by intrinsic (innate) and extrinsic (external) factors. For a nice review, check out the second reference at the bottom.



Neurodevelopmental Changes in Working Memory and Cognitive Control pdf
The Development of Self-Control of Emotion pdf

Technorati tags: children, brain, parenting, ADHD, self-control, psychology, fMRI, emotional, memory

Spring Equinox - March 20, 2007

Spring is here! Or Vernal Equinox, or "Equal Night". This means the days will start to get longer after this, and the nights shorter. Because the sun will pass directly over the equator, days and nights will be of equal length all over the world. There are many holidays and celebrations associated with equinoxes - Easter is designated as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Spring Equinox
Introduction to Astronomy - Vernal Equinox

Technorati tags: Spring, Equinox, science, astronomy

The Mind, Brain, Responsibility, and Neurolaw

Thanks Idealawg for NYTimes HT: The Brain on the Stand.

Functional brain imaging studies have shaken the legal justice system, but have the conclusions gone to far? Examples cited in Rosen's article include the case of serial killer Bobby Joe Long whose legal defense used his PET scan results, and the Roper v Simmons decision in which Supreme Court abolished the juvenile death penalty because "adolescent brains are not fully developed."

But as Stephanie West Allen at Idealawg points out, "Curious omissions from the article were the phenomena of neuroplasticity and self-directed neuroplasticity. Rosen described the brain as if it is static and unchanging, as if we are stuck with the brain we have."

Great point. Our brains are not static and unchanging, and differences in brain functioning do not indicate definite disease or the impossibility of moral self-control. Brain imaging studies may be persuasive to a science-naive jury, but they also have a high potential for abuse. From Joshua D. Greene (author of Neural Basis of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment): "To a neuroscientist, you are your brain; nothing causes your behavior other than the operations of your brain...If that's right, it radically changes the way we think about the law." Can your scan absolve you of guilt?

The misuse or misinterpretation of fMRI studies often comes form its presentation as a soundbyte or "visualbyte" - rather than within the context of the appreciation of wide variations that exist among individual subjects, practical limitations of fMRI experimental design, and legitimate differences in interpretation that can be applied to objective scientific data. By its nature, functional brain imaging is better at determining associations than causes, there are many unknowns about differences in brain structures and behavior. The assumptions about biology and blameworthiness need to be considered with care.

From a recent AJP Letter to the Editor by Mossman and Morse: "It is the "fundamental psycholegal error" to suppose that biology or any other type of causation precludes blameworthiness for harmful actions if the behavior reflects choices that might be influenced by reason, including better recognition of and attention to long-term consequences. The mind-brain problem is ferociously complex. But when we ascribe responsibility for behavior, the key factor—both in morality and law—is not causation, but whether the behavior reflects a rational process that might be influenced by foreseeable outcomes and consequences."

Mind-Brain Dualism in Psychiatric Reasoning
Functional magnetic resonance imaging - Wikipedia

Technorati tags: brain, science, neuroethics, neurolaw

Gender Matters in the Learning Brain

Here's more evidence that gender really does matter in understanding differences in learning and motivation. At right, the different structures are that are larger in male or female brains, and below, how the menstrual cycle (P proestrus, O oestrus, D dioestrus) was found to affect the selection of maze learning strategy.

All of this very basic research is a far cry from issues affecting the classroom, but an essential point still comes through, our gender affects how we learn and process information.



Studies of students show that boys and girls and men and women tend to differ in terms of intrinsic motivation, study strategies, and learning strategies - females tend to prefer cooperation, note-taking, and task mastery, whereas men are more likely to prefer competition and independent work, and challenge, and avoid note-taking as a study strategy.

Why sex matters pdf
Gender Differences in Learning Strategies of Business Students
Study Strategy and Gender
Does Learning Come in Pink and Blue pdf
A Teacher's Gender Affects Learning
Congressional Quarterly: Gender and Learning
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Boys, Girls, Different Brains and Processing
Eide NL Blog: Gender and Emotional Learning
Eide NL Blog: Boys and Reading

Technorati tags: boys, girls, learning styles, gender, brain, fMRI, science

Attention Better with Practice

Grandma was right, attention gets better with practice...

Using a challenging task of working memory, researchers found that "...general task practice ha(d)the effect of modulating activations so that they become more similar to activations demonstrated by superior performers." Not only did working memory areas need to work less for a given level of performance (more efficient), inhibitory control seemed to get more stronger. So did we need fMRI to tell us this? Maybe...



Practice Strengthens Attention fMRI pdf

Technorati tags: attention, ADD, training, brain, science, brain, fMRI

Learning from Observation: Your Brain and Tinker Toys

Here researchers looked to see how brains watched and learned how to construct a simple structure with Tinker Toys.



Not surprisingly, a lot more activity was seen if test subjects were watching to learn (anticipating that they were to do the task later) vs. watching only. The cerebellum (orange arrows) was very active with this process, consistent with its role in motor learning and expertise. When researchers look for brain areas that provided the best predictor of accurate learning, the right parietal lobe seemed to win. Perhaps R parietal activation signals a good "impression" of the demonstrated task.

Hands-on building is not just for budding engineers, scientists, and architects. Children who avoid building like the plague often benefit from patient instruction...it might be because they are weak and challenged in the areas of spatial awareness, cerebellar, and other motor controls. Are you building incompetent? If so, maybe K'nex lesson plans would be a good place to start...

Advanced builders might like looking at this MIT-built Tinker Toy computer- it plays tic-tac-toe:

Learning from Observation article
Learning from Observation and fMRI
Tinkertoy Computer
Design Challenge Lessons from the Tech Museum
Knex and Lego Lesson Plans

Technorati tags: fMRI, education, science, hands-on, learning, brain

Flexible Minds

What does it take to have a flexible mind? Memory, for one thing - researchers found that areas important for juggling information (working memory) were the best correlated with task switching efficiency.

In the figure below, the VLPFC (ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) figures prominently in task switching activities (red arrow, bottom); look at the comparable location on the maturing brains (above)...they are still quite immature in the late elementary school years.


Flexibility is often confused with creativity and intelligence, and consequently its converse, a lack of flexibility or rigidity, a lack of it. But this dichotomy is overly simplistic. A strong working memory is a valuable tool for creative and intelligent thinkers, but it isn't essential. In fact, the biographies of many famous people (like Enrico Fermi) are rife with descriptions of these individual struggling in certain situations with their feeble working memories, nevertheless finding opportunities (and environments) to think deeply and create in the paths they'd chosen. Often these souls needed a little extra protection from the world to think - especially periods of quiet (reduced distractions) and time (longer to process). The greatest troubles came when people or institutions tried to force them into working in way that was poorly suited to them.

The developmental piece is also important to keep in mind, as many children are labeled as ADHD or having an autism spectrum disorder if they show inflexibility (meltdowns) with the routine task-switching demands in the early elementary school years, but this is too non-specific. The pool of people who struggle with working memory is much larger - and as could be expected has its own variation pattern among the normal population.



We're going to be traveling to give an Educator's Conference, so brief break from the blog. We'll be back March 15th.

Task Switching and Memory and fMRI pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Forgetful Learners
Developmental Changes in Task Switching
Cognitive Flexibility pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Your Brain with Time- What About Teen Brain?
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Working Memory & The Classroom

Technorati tags: brain, memory, cognitive flexibility, creativity, ADHD, autism, fMRI, development

Flash from the Past: "...expelled from his first school..."

He was..."a juvenile deliquent. He was expelled from his first school in his first school in Dundas, Ontario after a series of pranks which included locking a flock of geese into the school-room over night, unscrewing all the benches and desks and hiding them in the attic, and shouting disparaging remarks about the headmaster through the keyhole of the classroom...(At a second school), he proceeded to organize a trio of trouble-makers who were baptized "Barrie's Bad Boys..." The list goes on, including theft, some jail time for smoking out the school matron's room with a mixture of molasses, mustard, and pepper..."

But reform for this delinquent came from inspiration rather than further punishment. A weekend School Warden took packs of boys on trips that included collecting nature specimens and reading English literature by the fire. He was hooked, and he was to transform into one of the world's most beloved and inspirational teachers - Sir William Osler.

From the Osler Library Newsletter:"The impact of (Father) Johnson's unconventional and informal style on Osler was electric. ...It was Osler's first exposure to what he later came to define as "real" teaching- teaching about the real world, teaching by doing, teaching by example rather than coercion."

Osler was to develop into an unconventional teacher, the most famous physician in the English speaking world, author of the highly influential book, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, and a revolutionary and beloved teacher and clinician who first brought medical student teaching to patients' bedsides and continues to inspire students and physicians today. Read the Newsletter article if you get a chance - it's marvelous.

Another tidbit: Osler's advice to professionals who wanted to know how to avoid deadening by routine: 1. The Art of Detachment (self-discipline to resist the drift into routine), 2. The Art of Method (the habit of having know-how and systematic approach to tackling problems daily), 3. The Quality of Thoroughness (standard of exact and careful work), 4. The Grace of Humility ("humility to recognized that the truth is hard to attain, that mistakes must be acknowledged, regretted, and above all, learned from.").

Osler continued to have a lot of joy in living and a big heart for other people his whole life long. One of many memorable Osler quotes:"We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it."


Osler The Eternal Student (Newsletter)
Sir William Osler's Writings on the Web

Osler Quotes
Wikipedia Goose

Technorati tags: biography, Osler, teacher, education, childhood, gifted

Beyond DNA: Nurture Over Nature

This neat story came from a surprising source, my daughter's Muse Magazine (sorry article not online). In an article entitled, You are the Guardian of Your Genes science and children's writer Diana Lutz reported on recent surprising discoveries that the epigenetic markers on the DNA of identical twins will dramatically with time (epigenetic markers are small chemical groups added to DNA).

When the epigenetic markers of 3 year-old identical twins were compared, the results were nearly identical. By the time twins were 50 years old, though, four-fold increases in variations between epigenetic markers were seen. What's more, the changes were more dramatic if the twins were raised separately and had no contact up until that point.


The data are interesting, too, because animals studies have suggested that these epigenetic changes can be passed down for several generations (up to 4 - so children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren). So maybe Lamarck was a little right? Remember he's the fellow who's often laughed at for his giraffes and long necks idea in evolution.

Interestingly, some old data from the early 1900's had shown that spatial maze learning ability could be passed down through inbred mice lines (good maze runners gave birth to mice who were faster, in turn, their children were even faster). No epigenetic markers will undoubtedly being investigated as a possible source of that phenomena.

These findings might remind us that what we do is very important to what we become.

Diane Arbus photo
Epigenetics: The Science of Change
Epigenetic Differences and Twins

Technorati tags: science, epigenetic, DNA, brain, learning

Losing Our Literacy

In the Educational Testing Service's latest report, America's PerfectStorm, there's concern that U.S. literacy woes are a crisis-in-the-making.

Reading proficiency should be a high priority on all lists because it can be a limiting factor for who can thrive in a job that requires flexibility and independent learning (auto-didact)in a changeable workplace.



The NEA's Report also paints a dismal picture. Fewer people are reading literature than ever before...at all educational groups, even with college- and graduate school-educated parents.

From the NEA's Reading at Risk Report and NEA Chairman Dana Gioia: "(Our) report documents a national crisis," Gioia said. "Reading develops a capacity for focused attention and imaginative growth that enriches both private and public life. The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general collapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity - and all the diverse benefits it fosters - impoverishes both cultural and civic life."

While all demographic groups showed declines in literary reading between 1982 and 2002, the survey shows some are dropping more rapidly than others. The overall rate of decline has accelerated from 5 to 14 percent since 1992." Yikes.

CSM: A Less Literate Workforce
Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline - Reading at Risk Study

The Thinking Spot

Here's a paper that shows us how the brain abstracts and makes new rules. The area that appears to be essential is the prefrontal cortex, or that thinking spot so important to Pooh and self-reflective thinkers.



Rule-based learning has a developmental course (no big surprise), but what is a little surprising is the degree to which 12 year olds lag young adults in tests requiring them to make new rules.



fMRI of Abstraction pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: The Examined Life: Cultivating Self-Reflection and the Return of Socratic Thinking
Development of Rule-Based Category Learning

Technorati tags: learning, abstraction, cognitive, development, thinking, fMRI, science, brain, children

Cap on Number of Special Education Students Unconstitutional

This is good news- a Superior Court judge in Thurston County ruled that it is unconstitutional to place an artificial cap (now 12.7%) on the number of students requiring Special Education within a school district. Over-identification can occur, and the system can be abused, but an artificial cap will not ensure services are allocated to need. This is probably not the last word on this issue, this case may be appealed to higher courts.

Seattle Times: Cap on Special Education-Identified Students Unconstitutional

Folate: Go Green for Your Mind

In a recent study, Netherlands researchers found seniors receiving three years of folate supplementation (800 micrograms per day) had better performance on tests of global cognitive function, memory, rate of information processing, and sensorimotor speed (No effects were seen on verbal fluency). Other new studies suggest that folate could reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, hypertension (especially in women), and age-related hearing loss. Folates are present in dark green leafy vegetables (romaine lettuce better than iceberg), beans, and folate-supplemented grains.


Folate Improves Cognitive Function
More Folate, Less Alzheimer's Disease
Folate May Slow Age-Related Hearing Loss
Folate and Hypertension
Folate in Foods
Wikipedia: Romaine Lettuce

Technorati tags: health, diet, memory, aging, brain, folate, Alzheimer's, seniors

Reading Between the Lines & Working Memory

Children who struggle with inference, or "reading-between-the-lines" may mistakenly be labeled as having an autism spectrum disorder - but because inference requires many different thinking steps, there are many reasons the process can get blocked.

This study found that both sides of the brain are required for inference; the right hemisphere beats the left to the punch, but the left hemisphere also has it's part recognizing the break in the story.

An additional interesting feature of this study is that researchers also looked at the effect of working memory on inference. Individuals blessed with a high working memory (ability to keep information in mind as it's applied to tasks) were better at inference - that makes sense, because some of the low working memory subjects may have been overloaded by story details.


This is especially important to remember because kids (or adults for that matter) who don't "get it" may not have anything wrong with their higher order thinking or inferencing ability - they just may need to take it down in text or listen in short bits in order to process all the information. Children (and adults) with working memory problems are often underestimated in terms of their ability or misdiagnosed as having ADD - because they may appear forgetful and easily overwhelmed...but the funny thing is, they may have terrific long term memories. So they may know an awful lot, but be natural autodidacts, or learners who have to learn it their own way.

Inference, Story Comprehension, and fMRI pdf
Eide NL Blog: Visual Learning / Avoid Failure First Grade
Eide NL Blog: Working Memory & The Classroom
Eide NL Blog: Efficacy of Working Memory Training for ADHD

Technorati tags: memory, fMRI, inference, science, language, ADD, autism