Brain training is a growing and exciting new area in scientific research. In particular, there is a lot of evidence of the brain’s plasticity: that it can actually change-shrink or grow-depending on what we do. I wanted to investigate whether students with learning disabilities can also benefit from brain training.
I recently completed a study together with Dyslexia Scotland and the Autistic Treatment Trust on the impact of brain training. A group of students aged between 8 to 16 years old took part. They completed some tests of IQ and working memory and then participated in an 8-week training programme called Jungle Memory.
The findings were very exciting! The students who used the Jungle Memory training programme regularly (4x a week for 30 minutes) had higher IQ and working memory scores, compared to those who only trained 1x a week and those who didn’t train at all. By training your brain you will be able to improve your child’s prospects in classroom and beyond.
If you would like further details on this study, please contact me.
Read these sentences and decide if they are true or false:
1. Bananas live in water: True or False
2. Flowers smell nice: True or False
3. Dogs have four legs: True or False
Now, without looking at those sentences, can you remember the last word in each sentence in the correct order? If you were able to remember them, congratulate yourself. Your working memory is like an average 10 year old. This test is an example of the Listening Recall test from the Automated Working Memory Assessment. It measures verbal (auditory) working memory.
Brain imaging has confirmed that when we perform working memory tests, like the one above, there is electrical activity of neurons in the prefrontal cortex. We use different parts of the brain to remember verbal and visual-spatial information. Scientists suggest that the lower area of the prefrontal cortex (ventrolateral) is responsible for verbal working memory, while the higher area (dorsolateral) is linked to spatial working memory. These two areas are also linked to the different processes in performing a working memory task: the ventrolateral areas are engaged with keeping information active and the dorsolateral areas are involved in processing or managing information. Other areas of the brain are also activated during working memory tasks. When we engage in visual-spatial tasks, parts of the right-hemisphere and the hippocampus are also activated. In verbal working memory tasks, there is activation in the left-hemisphere, particularly in the ‘language centers’ such as Broca’s area. What is the take home message? Protect your head, you will need it for the rest of your life!
Adapted from Improing Working Memory: Supporting Students’ Learning (Sage Publication, 2010)
You may already know that working memory is important to academic success. But did you know that working memory is one of the most important skills that predict learning outcomes. Working memory is even more important than IQ. Let’s take a step back. Before we get to working memory in the classroom, let’s look at how environmental factors, such as financial background, can impact working memory
Think of a classroom in rural Brazil. There is so much working against these kids. Less than 15% will finish elementary school. Most leave without learning to read. Schools can’t afford to pay their teachers much and those teachers that do stick around don’t always have the skills and training to do their job. But could these students have the same ability and potential of their richer urban peers? My colleagues decided to test this theory*. They compared rural low-income kids with those from wealthy urban areas in Brazil in IQ and working memory tests. You would expect that the rural kids struggled behind their urban peers. Indeed, that was the case with the vocabulary test used to measure IQ. The urban students excelled in matching words with the correct definitions. They far superseded their rural counterparts in their knowledge, because they had more experience using the words on the test.
But here is the surprising finding: they were no better than the rural students on the working memory tests. It boils down to one thing-opportunity. The urban children had more opportunity to learn-at home, their parents have the skill and time to teach them, at school they receive more attention from teachers. They have had a rich base of knowledge cultivated over the years. But the exciting news is that students from deprived backgrounds have the same ability to succeed. Their working memory skills are no different from their urban peers. It is not an issue of IQ. It is a matter of giving these students the same opportunity to unlock their working memory potential.
Excerpt from IMPROVING WORKING MEMORY
*Engel et al (2008). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Is technology impairing our working memory? From our ever-increasing reliance on word processing to help us improve grammar, Blackberries to remind us of appointments, speed-dial so we don’t have to remember phone numbers and a universe of information available at the click of a mouse. What is the trade-off: what we do give up when we rely on new technology? Are the likes of Facebook and YouTube reducing our ability to engage in everyday life? In fact, the opposite may be true; technology can dramatically improve our working memory.
Facebook one of the most popular social networking sites with more than 300 million active users. Apart from the novelty of connecting with people you haven’t seen since you were 5 years old (for better or for worse!), it can also promote a sense of social connectedness. Those who are cut off from others often become isolated and may miss out on many benefits within education and employment. Studies on elderly populations found that those who spent more time meeting up with friends or talking on the phone experience less memory loss than their peers who were more isolated.
Technology is advancing quickly and more and more students use social networking sites. But what impact does this have on education? Can virtual social connections boost working memory? I looked at these questions in a recent study. A group of high-schoolers filled in a questionnaire about how long they spent using social networking sites, such as Facebook. I also measured their IQ, working memory, and academic attainment. I found that those who used Facebook more regularly (1x a day) had better working memory scores, as well as higher spelling and vocabulary. The sense of belonging and social connectedness that we feel when using social networking sites such as Facebook, releases a feel-good hormone, which bolsters our working memory. Good news for schools who are integrating social networking sites into their programs.
TRY IT FOR YOURSELF
When my research team interviewed Robert, a 10 year old, he was pleased to report that his memory for numbers is very good and he “can do 2, 5 and 10 times tables but 4 and 6 times tables are hard.” He said that if he can’t see the numbers he can’t remember them: “I need to have them written down because they don’t stay in my head.”
Like Robert, the student with dyscalculia has clear working memory deficits. However, the link between working memory and math skills depends on the age of the child as well as the type of math task. Verbal working memory plays a strong role in math skills in 7-year olds and is a reliable indicator of dyscalculia in the first year of formal schooling. Once children reach adolescence, verbal working memory is no longer significantly linked to mathematical skills. One explanation for this change is that verbal working memory plays a crucial role for basic arithmetic skills like learning arithmetic rules and retaining relevant data such as carried digits when they are young. However, as children get older other factors such as number knowledge and strategies play a greater role.
Visual-spatial working memory problems are also linked to dyscalculia. It has been suggested that visual-spatial memory functions as a mental blackboard to support number representation, such as place value and alignment in columns in counting and arithmetic tasks. We also use visual-spatial memory to solve multi-digit operations and problems presented visually, including those using blocks. Poor working memory is thought to be one explanation for dyscalculia because it limits their ability to remember mathematical rules, from basic concepts like counting in ascending and descending order, to more complicated algebraic functions.
What is working memory like in students with Autistic Spectrum Disoder (ASD)? Let’s first look at verbal short-term memory skills in high functioning ASD students. Their skills in this area can vary, in some cases, students can have above average short-term memory, while others perform at the same level of a student with language impairments. In my own research, I found that high functioning teenagers display a verbal short-term memory problem . The type of material they have to remember provides us with a clue to their memory profile. They struggle in particular with abstract information like nonsense words or new vocabulary. Why? The strategy they use to remember can over-burden them. Studies confirm that even high functioning individuals do not use their long-term memory or visual strategies to support immediate recall. Instead, they rehearse things over and over again to prevent forgetting. While this can be useful in remembering short sequences of information, it is ultimately a time-consuming and inefficient strategy to simply keep repeating things.
Now let’s look at their working memory profile. The majority of individuals with ASD do not have deficits in this area. In visual working memory tasks, they are shown a matrix with dots that appear in random locations and have to recall their location in backwards sequence. Both my own research as well as other studies confirms that their performance is similar to their same-aged typically developing peers, and those with the same IQ level. In the classroom, this means that they won’t have any difficulty with remembering information that is visually presented. The problem arises when they have to use their eyes to track the movements of a teacher as part of a lesson. Even high functioning individuals have trouble shifting their gaze from one thing to another and may misidentify the relevant information to focus on. Remember that one feature of ASD is their ability to concentrate on one thing at a time. In the classroom, they can find it distracting to shift their visual attention from the board to the teacher talking and back again, and as a result struggle to remember the lesson even if it is presented visually.
Verbal working memory is not impaired in individuals with ASD. Students who are low functioning can perform lower than their same-age peers but when they are compared with peers with the same IQ levels, their verbal working memory performance is similar. In some cases, psychologists have observed weaknesses in verbal working memory. However, this is likely the result of having to visually scan material to pick out the relevant information, rather than a working memory deficit per se. Studies of brain activity reveal a very interesting pattern. When a child with ASD is presented with two tasks and has to focus on one while ignoring the other distracting task, their brain activity reveals that they do not actually shift their attention to the more important information. They have a difficult time determining what information is important. In the classroom, some students with ASD might appear to struggle with certain memory-heavy activities. However, this may be connected to their difficulty in knowing what they should focus on, rather than poor working memory.
*Alloway et al (2009). Journal of Learning Disabilities READ
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
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
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.
There is often a greater number of dyslexics in English-speaking countries compared to countries like China, Japan, and even Spain and Italy. Why do we see this difference across countries?
The answer can be found by looking at one cause of dyslexia: a difficulty in processing and remembering the sounds of phonemes. English is a particularly complex language and one that has been described as ‘orthographically nontransparent’. This means that the phonemes do not always have the same sounds. Languages like English that are not ‘transparent’ give rise to greater difficulties in reading.
In contrast, other language such as Spanish and Italian are orthographically transparent and it is easy to match the letter with the correct sound. Languages, such as Chinese or Japanese (Kanji), that use characters require greater use of visual memory, rather than verbal memory skills.
Brain imaging studies have found dyslexics in different languages (English, French and Italian) all showed the same brain deficits involving difficulty in processing verbal information.
Some might suggest that the differences in the education system across countries lead to higher rates of dyslexia in some countries. However, studies that have looked at bilingual children have found that they can struggle in reading in one language (usually English), yet be excellent readers in another language (such as Chinese or Spanish).
