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Sensory Integration Disorder: Is it real?

Posted by Tracy No Comments Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Under: ADHD, Autism, Working Memory, dyspraxia

Did you every play Marco Polo as a child? I used to love closing my eyes and spinning around faster and faster when I was ‘It’. Now imagine playing that game in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars are honking, dogs are barking, siren sounds get closer, and people are yelling. You are ‘It’ and are trying to listen to the where ‘Polo’ is coming from. For a student that is hypersensitive to sound, touch, and light, the world is a chaotic place. As a result, new surroundings can be very disorienting for them. Some label such sensory hypersensitivity as sensory integration dysfunction (SID).

The label of sensory integration disorder may come as a welcome relief to some parents who want an explanation for why their child has not reached certain milestones, like walking or talking. As parents, it is instinctive to worry that something may be wrong with our child. We view Bobby obsessively lining up cars in a row as a symptom of Autistic Spectrum, and Daisy mixing up words as dyslexic. Yet, does a label like SID actually help parents? Although it is a ‘condition’ identified by some health practitioners, there are many psychologists and neurologists who think that the label of SID is actually doing a disservice to parents. I will outline several reasons for why this is the case. The first issue is that the difficulties associated with SID reflect a neurodevelopmental immaturity, rather than a distinct disorder. The absence of adults receiving a diagnosis of SID begs the question of whether in some cases, the child might outgrow the symptoms naturally without the need for expensive and unproven treatments. The next point is related to this issue as sensory hypersensitivity is a symptom of other disorders such as dyspraxia, ADHD, and Autistic Spectrum. A label of SID might falsely lead to parent to feel comforted that their child is receiving support, when more serious problems might be going undiagnosed, and as a result, untreated or supported. Finally, there are very few published clinical trials on either the diagnosis of SID or the treatment of it. Those that are published have been criticized as flawed research, due to small samples and heterogeneous samples (ie, including students with ADHD, ASD, in the sample). It appears then while the symptoms of SID are indeed real, they can point to more serious disorders which merit diagnosis and treatment.

Dyspraxia and Language problems: Double deficit?

Posted by Tracy 2 Comments Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Under: Dyslexia, dyspraxia

Students with dyspraxia (DCD) can also have comorbid language impairments (SLI). While these developmental disorders are distinguished by the domain of principal deficit, they are both associated with significant learning difficulties. Studies that followed 7-year olds with dyspraxia found that they struggled with reading and comprehension by the time they were 10 years old. I wanted to know whether the combination of motor coordination difficulties plus language impairments lead to worse learning outcomes compared to those with only motor coordination difficulties or language impairments. I looked at three groups of students: 1) those with SLI but no dyspraxia; 2) those with dyspraxia but normal language skills; 3) those with dyspraxia + language impairments.

There were two key findings. First, visual-spatial memory was the single best test to successfully distinguish a student with dyspraxia from those with language impairments. If you have a student with dyspraxia but normal language skills, their memory profile is the same as those with dyspraxia + language impairments: they will have marked difficulties in visual-spatial working memory. The second finding was that despite relative strengths in language, those with dyspraxia but no language impairments performed as poorly as the group with dyspraxia + language impairments. This means that for a student with dyspraxia their working memory abilities determine their learning difficulties. Any strength in language that they have is not able to sufficiently support their learning. If their working memory is not addressed, then any additional strengths they have, such as in language, will not provide a sufficient platform for learning.

Alloway and Archibald (2008). Journal of Learning Disabiliities. READ

Working memory: a better predictor of academic success than IQ?

Posted by Tracy 2 Comments Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Under: Assessment, School, Working Memory

I was invited to write a blog post for SharpBrains. Here is the entry:

Working memory is the ability to hold information in your head and manipulate it mentally. You use this mental workspace when adding up two numbers spoken to you by someone else without being able to use pen and paper or a calculator. Children at school need this memory on a daily basis for a variety of tasks such as following teachers’ instructions or remembering sentences they have been asked to write down.

The main goal of this article was to investigate the predictive power of working memory and IQ in learning in typically developing children over a six-year period. This issue is important because distinguishing between the cognitive skills underpinning success in learning is crucial for early screening and intervention.

In this study, typically developing students were tested for their IQ and working memory at 5 years old and again when they were 11 years old. They were also tested on their academic attainments in reading, spelling and maths.

The findings revealed that a child’s success in all aspects of learning is down to how good their working memory is regardless of IQ score. Critically, working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ in the early years.

This unique finding is important as it addresses concerns that general intelligence, still viewed as a key predictor of academic success, is unreliable. An individual can have an average IQ score but perform poorly in learning.

Some psychologists suggest that the link between IQ and learning is greatest when the individual is learning new information, rather than at later stages when it is suggested that gains made are the result of practice.

Yet the findings from this research that working memory capacity predicted subsequent skills in reading, spelling, and math suggests that some cognitive skills contribute to learning beyond practice effects.

The study also found that, as opposed to IQ, working memory is not linked to the parents’ level of education or socio-economic background. This means all children regardless of background or environmental influence can have the same opportunities to fulfil potential if working memory is assessed and problems addressed where necessary.

Working memory is a relatively stable construct that has powerful implications for academic success. While working memory does increase with age, its relative capacity remains constant. This means that a child at the bottom 10 percentile compared to their same-aged peers is likely to remain at this level throughout their academic career.

In summary, the present article suggests that the traditional reliance on IQ as a benchmark for academic success may be misguided. Instead, schools should focus on assessing working memory as it is the best predictor of reading, spelling and math skills six years later. At present, poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers, who often describe children with this problem as inattentive or as having lower levels of intelligence. However, there are standardized assessments that are suitable for educators to use to screen their students for working memory problems. For example, the Automated Working Memory Assessment (published by the Psychological Corporation) allows non-specialist assessors such as classroom teachers to screen their students for significant working memory problems quickly and effectively.

Problems with working memory can be easily addressed in schools—an advantage over IQ which is more difficult to influence by teachers. Early intervention in working memory could lead to a reduction in the number of those failing schools and help address the problem of under-achievement in schools.

Alloway & RG Alloway (2010) Journal of Experimental Child Psychology READ

Are the 3Rs enough to improve grades?

Posted by Tracy 3 Comments Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Under: Assessment, Classroom Strategies, Learning Disabilities, School, Working Memory

The 3Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. We all remember going to school and trying to memorize spelling words and our times tables, to write a coherent paragraph and to calculate our long division. But for some students, this clearly isn’t enough. Despite the focus on the 3Rs why do we still see so many students diagnosed with learning disabilities? Furthermore, why do these students fail to improve after one-to-one instruction or tutoring?

In a recent study that I conducted, I looked at a group of students from 8 to 11 years with learning difficulties. All the students were receiving extra educational support, like tutoring and special classes. I tested their IQ, working memory, and also looked at their grades in the 3 Rs. These students received special tutoring in small groups for the next two years. Yet, when I saw these students two years later, there were still performing at the bottom of the class! Their learning outcomes had not improved, they were still struggling. Except now they were becoming more frustrated because of their learning difficulties and this was manifesting itself as behavior problems, including truancy.

What happened to these students? Why didn’t they show any improvement?

I found that it was their working memory scores, but NOT their IQ, that determined their grades. If they had poor working memory, they struggled in reading, writing, and math. It didn’t even matter what their IQ was. Working memory was the critical skill linked to their learning.

What does this mean? Simply, that focusing on teaching reading and math isn’t enough. That ‘hard work’ without focusing on working memory is just hard work. That drilling the 3Rs without improving working memory is like entering a bike race with flat tires. This is not to say that the 3Rs are unimportant. They are! Even a child with the high working memory needs to learn the 3Rs to do well in school and life. However, if we don’t develop working memory skills, the 3Rs won’t make a difference.

*TP Alloway (2009) European Journal of Psychological Assessments. READ

Working Memory on BBC

Posted by Tracy 1 Comment Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Under: Assessment, Learning Disabilities, School, Working Memory, brain training

BBC

I was recently invited to share my research on BBC Radio. Here are some details on the programme from the BBC website:

IQ TESTING

IQ testing has long been a controversial way of measuring intelligence, but now there are claims that there’s another, more accurate method of predicting academic success: working memory, or the capacity we have to learn. Dr Tracy Alloway, whose recent experiments showed that testing working memory predicted children’s grades more accurately than traditional IQ, speaks up for working memory. LISTEN

Brain Training Can Improve Grades

Posted by Tracy 2 Comments Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Under: Learning Disabilities, School, Working Memory, brain training

There is exciting research emerging on the benefit of brain training. The question is: what works? Is it enough to memorize numbers in backwards order? Previous research outlines programs where students remember number sequences for a few weeks. Although improvements in working memory were reported, there are clear limitations. Most notably, there was no transfer effect: training working memory did not improve academic attainment. This leads to the possibility that some brain training programs are just ‘training for the test’, which means you are just getting better at playing the training games.

In order to address this issue, I recently conducted a clinical trial with two groups of students: the Training group participated in a working memory training program (www.JungleMemory.com) and the Control group received targeted educational support (IEP). The two groups did not differ in their IQ, working memory, or academic scores pre-training.

Both the Training and the Control groups underwent 8-weeks of their respective training programs and then were retested on the IQ, working memory, and academic tests.

The results were dramatic. The Control group did not perform much better without intervention, and in some instances they performed even worse in math and working memory.

In contrast, the Training group demonstrated a clear improvement not only in IQ and working memory tests, but crucially in learning outcomes as well. Students on the working memory training program went from a C to a B, or a B to an A after just 8 weeks of training! This is an exciting step in demonstrating that the right brain training can significantly boost academic attainment.