Research about what works for dyslexics

Hello Margo,

Here are a few links:

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/new/releases/nrp.cfm

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubskey.cfm?from=nrp

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/crmc/cdb/reading.htm#cpc

Hi Margo,

You will find a lot of research supporting multisensory methods. Unfortunately, much of that same research draws the conclusion that vision problems are not responsible for the type of reading problems associated with dyslexia.

Yet, I have seen a reasonable number of kids who would be considered “dyslexic” who have benefited a lot from effective vision therapy. In fact, I’ve seen enough of this that I’ve drawn the tentative conclusion that, at the root, dyslexia is often a result of an unaddressed vision problem.

I say this because, with a combination of effective vision therapy and a multisensory reading therapy, I have seen a number of kids who have not previously read for pleasure be converted to pleasure readers. To my mind, this is the acid test as to whether a remedial method is working. Until a child “likes to read” he is not likely to read sufficient volume to overcome his problem, even if he thoroughly understands the instruction.

So, my point is to dig some into the vision therapy side of things also…..Rod

Rod,
Do you keep up with the growing body of research on essential fatty acid (EFAs) deficiencies and learning disabilities? EFAs are critical for brain cell function and eye health. I’m not an expert on this, but I suspect that the reason my son reads better since EFA supplementation (besides PhonoGraphix!) is EFA supplementation, and that vision improvement is a big part of the equation.

How are you supplementing EFA’s? How long did it take before you saw a change in your son? Thanks!

For several years I used Efalex. I just switched to Eye-Q from Equazen which one has to order from the UK. I haven’t decided what I think of the switch yet. Eye-Q is higher in EPA; Efalex is higher in DHA. It’s pretty complicated and the research is in fairly early stages so it’s hard to know which formula is best.

I don’t know how long it takes…the changes are gradual. And it depends on why you are supplementing… (ADHD, reading difficulties, dyspraxia). If you haven’t read Dr. Jacqueline Stordy’s book, I suggest you do. Go to her website drstordy.com and you’ll get lots of info. You can order the book from amazon.com. The Equazen website is also good.

Good luck to you! I think EFAs are a very important piece of helping kids with LDs.

Linda

Hi Linda,

No, I haven’t looked at EFA’s. However, I would be surprised if EFA supplementation was the final answer to this because of the strong family tendency I see in vision problems. It seems like one of the parents (or their siblings) almost always have a vision issue or had problems learning to read themselves.

Of course, it’s possible that the family diet down through the years was always low on EFA’s I suppose……Rod

This is an interesting statement. The NICHD doesn’t even include vision issues with their research. Their conclusions as well as other respected researchers throughout the world states deficits in phonemic awareness as the issue.

Segmentation and oral language ability is critical. This isn’t to conclude there are not a few children with visions problems. I would be very suspect of a huge number.

Regards.

Jimmy Kilpatrick

I am wondering about whether visual processing plays a larger role in reading disability for some than has often been thought. There is certainly some research that implicates visual processing areas in the brain. Now that my school has implemented, for some years, a very strong early phonics base in reading instruction with phonemic awareness and teaching in segmenting and blending, the number of classic looking LD readers coming to me is diminishing. I am getting very slow readers, some think this part of phonological processing and others think it is something else. I am also getting some very sloppy readers who miscall words right and left, but give them a test of nonsense words, like Word Attack on the W.J., and they go to the top. Just tested one today. He read everything, including “mafreatsun” and as a third grader he is so sloppy he could only score 2.0 on the passage comprehension. I don’t think this is a purely phonological issue.

Hi Anitya,

As an adult with a variety of LD’s, I think it definitely does. Recently, through a fluke, I discovered that using a small dark letter opener, helps me process printed text alot better where I have gone from dreading reading to actually looking forward to it. So that’s the basis for my opinion.

I don’t doubt the research that shows phonological processing plays a role as I am sure not being able to hear sounds correctly (Decoding is ok) has been a factor in my problems. It is my understanding that if you have this type of difficulty, it causes information to go into your brain on a degraded form and you have trouble as a result in using it when you need it. I know there is more to it than that but that’s my amateur explanation:)) But it just didn’t make sense that it was the only issue and because of my experience, I feel stronger than ever about that.

I also think executive function and working memory issues have a role in reading disorders. As someone with an XF and memory impairment, I do fine with short articles but in spite of my letter opener trick, when I read a book, I cannot organize the material in my brain into main ideas and supporting details.
If the book has provided a good summary, that is extremely helpful as it brings everything back into focus for me but if it hasn’t, that’s another story.

But back to visual processing, I am glad you all are discussing it as I am concerned with all the emphasis on phonological processing playing a role in reading disorders, it will get lost in the shuffle.

PT

PS - I plan to inquire about V&V tutoring and previously, I was hesitant because of my difficulties in focusing on the printed page. Now, it will be alot easier.

Good point. Maybe the NIH needs to be imformed about the vision issues. All the research shows the majority of reading deficits have nothing to do with vision. Wonder what form of tests had been used besides an eying screening?

Regards,

Jimmy

I think if my son had received proper intervention in 1st grade, he’d be the kind of child you are describing. He has good auditory processing skills, and did well on the Word Attack part of the WJIII. But he was slow to “break the code” and even though he can decode now, his reading is slow and its not uncommon for him to miss small words, especially when he’s tired. The visual processing piece is another piece of the puzzle.

How who vision be a problem with this child? Maybe the fluency has develop through enoiugh practice or his underlining deficits haven’t been adequatly addressed. As I have mentioned vision issues occur in onlt a few children compared to the huge numbers with processing issues.

Regards,

Jimmy

Hi Jimmy,

First, there’s a lot of research supporting the existence of vision deficits underlying reading problems. It just isn’t in the reading journals, which have gone whole-hog on phonological processing skills for the past few decades. I suspect that the double-deficit search now underway in those same journals is due to the realization by those very researchers that something besides phonological processing skills is going on with some kids.

I’ve looked at some of the research supporting your statements and it simply doesn’t test for the types of vision issues that are important to reading. They test for convergence, for example, but do not then run tests to see if the child is still capable of converging efficiently after reading for some time. I have yet to see a study of the nature you’re relying upon for your opinion that I have not found problems with. However, I would love to take your strongest study in this regard and debate it with you in here or elsewhere.

Besides, I see success stories virtually every month in this area. I believe that over 50% of the clients I see who have not come through vision therapy end up going through it….to their benefit. My acid test for success in this regard is whether a child converts from “hating to read, avoiding reading, wanting Mom to read for him, etc.” to “reading on his own for pleasure.” Using a combined vision therapy and phonics-based reading therapy, I have seen nearly all of my clients convert to pleasure readers.

I know that you spend a lot of time on these issues. You will be doing yourself a disservice if you do not investigate the vision issues much more thoroughly rather than taking the PPS researcher’s word on this. They have their biases too.

Rod

P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t do vision therapy, but I do have a monetary interest in it because the vision therapists in our area have found that the reading program I use works well with their patients so I receive a number of referrals from vision therapists. I have also referred a lot of kids to them. Incidentally, almost 100% of the parents are appreciative of our combined efforts. I routinely tell parents of younger children that their money would probably be better spent on vision therapy than on my services….that is how strongly I feel on the issue…because of the results I’m seeing…real kids, converting to pleasure readers.

Interesting that well meaning folks always fine out of the box soultions to issues being research by the NIH. I have several very well informed resrachers that have looked all at the research. The fact is phonemic awareness is the key and underlining deficit found in reading disabilities.

You comments present is a simply soultion and the chidren just pick up a book and off to the races they go. Sorry, it isn’t that way in the real world as much as you may believe.

If there are crediable studies in this field I mustak why the NIH is spending time researching it. The reason is clear that we know how good readers read and the problem with non to poor readers.

It’s a mute issue since the majority of children don’t fall into this form or intervention.

Proper screening by a independent professional will provide the evidence needed to see which areas need attention.

All the best,

Jimmy

My son did learn to read through good phonemic awareness based training in the form of phonographix despite some pretty bad visual issues. He has both tracking and visual processing issues. I didn’t start to address them until after he learned to read. I think kids can learn to read with these issues but as others have pointed out it will be more of a struggle and the enjoyment for reading just won’t be there.

I think that is why many see visual therapy as a failure. Visual therapy won’t teach you to read, the phonemic awareness piece so often missing in schools, is essential. I think improving vision will make it easier to get these kids where they need to be.

http://www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/~jfs/research1.html

If this link doesn’t work type Professor Stein Oxford into google and you should be able to find some information on his work.

Interesting. The facts are clear that just as many boys as girls have reading problems. Most never are identified throughout their school years.

This isn’t a research paper for someone’s opioion. The NIH which has done over millions of dollars of reseatch with over 60 published stuides show processing as the deficit.

Poor parents thinking glasses are the answer will just delay the process of proper assessment and intervention.

Sure there are always exception of all rules. It is interesting to see the defenders one one position haven’t mention the NIH. This leaves me to believe some folks haven’t read the current replicated research.

Regards,

Jimmy

Well stated. Most kids, even after proper intervention will not enjoy reading. Fluency and comprehension takes years to develop. Seldon is mention the multi-disabilities as long and short memory, retrevial, and attention that compounds the problems for many kids.

Regards,

Jimmy

Yes, I see students who have the capacity to sound out words correctly make multiple sloppy reading errors and who read slowly. Now, there may still be some auditory processing in the mix, but I have watched too many students struggle to believe that phonemic awareness and phonological processing explain the full range of the difficulties they experience. There is some research, albeit a minority, that attributes some problems to visual processing. You don’t pick this up necessarily with vision testing, this is speculation based upon brain research.

Hi Jimmy,

I haven’t seen your name in a long time! I don’t usually get into threads about visual perceptual skills, but I wanted to state a few things and then leave you all to your discussion.

There has been a huge amount of very rigorous research spanning decades from NICHD and other reputable sources that concludes that the core deficit of most reading disability is phonological processing. Most of the phonological processing factors that were isolated as contributing to this were phonological memory, phonological naming speed (word retrieval), and of most significance, phonological awareness, especially phonemic awareness. The Double Deficit Theory refers to those students who demonstrate a lot of difficulty with both phonological awareness and word retrieval. (But they’re both part of phonological processing.)

Phonological processing can affect anything involving letters and letter sounds—learning the names of letters, associating the names of letters with their sounds, understanding the structure of the language system, undertanding the nuances of spoken or written language (semantics and syntax), even remembering strings of linguistic information, e.g., the digit span subtest of the WISC-III, which involves numbers, but the numbers are verbally presented, stored, and repeated.

That all said, this research has always left room for other factors that may also be causes of reading disability. For one thing, phonological processing is the core deficit of most, but not all, reading disability. However, the percentage left over is very tiny and is usually attributed to visual-spatial difficulty. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be other factors for that small percentage, but those factors have not yet been demonstrated with rigorous, replicated research. And even where phonological processing is the core deficit, it doesn’t explain all of what’s causing the disability, just most of it. So there’s room for other issues to be considered.

The part of all this that I have some difficulty with is that visual perceptual difficulty was ruled out decades ago as the primary cause of reading disability. When I first entered this field in the late 1960s, that was the prevailing theory and I saw no reason to disagree. Many many kids were taught to trace geometric shapes with the expectation that it would improve their reading. Although this sounds as if it should work, in fact many research studies proved that it didn’t. Instead, the research found that if students had difficulty remembering letters or their correct spatial orientation, they did better when practicing with letters than with geometric shapes. I hate to see us reinventing the wheel as we so often do in education.

Does this mean that no students will benefit from visual perceptual training? No, because there are always exceptions. But it would be a mistake to think that this is the core deficit in reading disability.

Difficulties with remembering small words when reading or reading carelessly (or so it often appears to us as skilled readers) or reading dysfluently in general are hallmarks of poor readers and don’t necessarily mean that there are visual processing issues. Words are phonological. It takes time and hard work to build fluency. Could there also be a visual processing issue? Anything is possible, but those kinds of reading errors don’t necessarily point in that direction. I’d want to see more specific kinds of errors first.

I was curious about this Oxford research that was mentioned and I checked the link. I haven’t read the research and have no idea of its quality, but it looks interesting and could turn out to be part of the puzzle. Dr. Stein and his colleagues suggest that a weak visual magnocellular system causes some problems with visual processing and that there’s probably also an auditory timing system that’s not working well in dyslexics. Poor timing has been implicated for years but thought to be a secondary factor; in other words, that something else that was more primary was causing both the dyslexia AND the poor timing. This is all interesting and I’d like to watch what happens and see if other researchers can replicate it. I just think we need to respect all the research that’s been done and redone and redone again.

I am definitely one that agrees that we can not turn our backs on the profound evidence that phonological processing is the main cause of reading difficulties. I agree 100%.

I remember thinking that once I taught my son to read everything would be just fine. He did learn to read and decode well thanks to phonographix. He even reads fluently.

There are just so many other issues he faces that are certainly related to his visual issues. He can’t read for long periods of time. He gets headaches and does complain that the text moves. He is does poorly on tests that involve attention to visual detail. For instance he can add money very well but is constantly reading the dimes as pennies on the test. His attention to auditory details is superior. He will come home and tell me things the teacher said ver batim. He does not miss details that are presented to him through auditory channels.

So, while I agree that we must focus first and foremost on phonological processing, we have to look beyond reading and see what children are struggling with and why.

I think one of the most important points is that discussions involving visual processing often lose the very important point about the importance of phonological processing that both you and Jimmy expressed. Yet, we still have children out there whose learning is impeded by poor visual skills. We need to address those underlying deficits to help them become efficient learners.

nt

Geat points as always. I just dropped on several days and saw there was a just a few postings. I wonder what has happend. There was tons of posts years ago. I am afraid the parents are not getting correct information and as usual being mislead by their disticts. Oh well, time changes.

I certainly agree with the current replicated resarch in reading. I sure wish my former boss Dr. Paige and NIH Reid Lyon would step to the plate and really address the LD issues headon.

Have a great weekend and it was good to see you had stayed on the LD board.

Hey Jimmy,

No, I hadn’t stayed on this board either. I just came back too and try to post occasionally.

I think that Reid Lyon has tried very hard to get information out. He’s published a lot, spoken at just about every major conference, and testified before congressional committees. What would you like him (and Dr. Paige) to address and how do you think he/they should do it? (I’m always happy to find better ways to inform parents and educators…)

This is how the political issues get in the way. Yes, papers have been published but nothing of late that I am aware of. The NIH Houston study has vanished from the air. This was going to be a continuation of the Alief Study (a district outside of Houston) but I can’t get any answers.

Fact is the majority of folks in the research community have ended up making monies off this whole issue. Instead of continually pushing for the bottom 20% we know for a fact will have problems seldom is a word heard.

With upwards of 50-60% of the kids’ two grade levels behind is reading change hasn’t occurred from the mid nineties. All you heard in the open road discussions is replicated research programs as Open Court and Reading Mastery. Both programs will miss around 15-25% of the kids. I don’t consider this as great as the administration wants the public to believe. McGraw-Hill is making tons off the districts. This is criminal since they know what I know and still never point out the limitations.

I met with a staff member for a Texas State Senator this morning; I am working on a bill for teacher training that will address the issues needed on a CR/Rom & Internet format.

Back to the public forum. Just how many parents today are receiving the right type of information on reading acqusition? Few, I dare say. When we speak of LD issues the numbers drop even further regarding parent and teach friendly information.

Without open and honest discourse it will be hard for parents to become informed enough to help them make noise at the local level.

Through the national testing model based on the ‘Texas TAAS test we will end up with more kids being help back and no meaningful improvement in the delivery system.

…and the struggles continue for parents and teachers to be informed on real issues, deficits, solutions and interventions.

I would be interested in the brain research studies and their replicated studies supporting the conclusions you mentioned.

I believe schools need to daily address visual and auditory skills such as are taught through the Schoolblox (Audiblox) program. This covers visual and auditory processing and memory (along with many other skills.) If we could develop these skills in the early grades K-2, there would be a lot fewer learning disabled students later.

I am not a program person myself. I like to see early testing, and the right form of intervention and follow-up. I have seen or heard about every program under the sun and they all have drawbacks. No doubt early is better.

Regards,

Jimmy, there’s still a lot of activity going on here and on the parenting board… and if you’d been around more often, you’d know Rod doesn’t really simplify things. Stick around & keep reading ;)

I’ve read some of the NIH research, but probably not all. Do they discuss at all how reading effects the different profile kids? high visual/poor auditory vs. poor visual/high auditory? These kids may have the same ‘phonological’ symptoms as it relates to reading, but clearly have different causes to their problems?

Cognitive skills are skills everyone can develop. Maybe there would be less need for testing and special services. Just a thought.

Could you go into more details on this?

Regards,

Jimmy

Not that I am aware of. They continue their focus for now on the phonemic awarness issue since it is a common factor in the majority of kids experiencing problems with segmentation.

I think you are right. I think programs that address phonological processing address these underlying issues even if these issues have not been diagnosed specificly. I think for some phonological processing improvement does not address these issues fully and something more specific to the disability is needed.

That is just my very unscientific take. So much is yet undefined. I have found that when it comes to helping my son I have to step outside the box and find answers. I have not found any professional that has all the answers. Most just understand their piece, whatever their piece may be.

I do try to stick to the research but in the U.S. research on visual processing is weak and mostly relegated to paramedical individuals. Opthamologists in the U.S. are taught that there is insufficient evidence that such problems even exist. Europeans seem to be more interested in pursuing answers to these very real questions.

I totally agree. Schools do not address underlying deficits. They address issues only from the academic level.
Academic failure is a symptom of the problem. We need to get underneath and address the actual areas of deficit. In doing so we can move kids out of sped and not have sped become a life sentence. (My son is a living example of this.) It would be more cost effective to address the actual deficit intensively while these children are young and not have them just stay in the system their entire lives.

We know that neurons can regenerate but this research has not made if off the medical library shelves and into the schools.

Although phonological processing requires obvious auditory skills, it also requires visual processing skills as well.

If we break down what’s necessary for good phonological processing what specifically would be necessary and to what extent?

It seems to me much more complex, particularly when considering a wide range of LD students.

Are “timing” skills related to visual processing — or rather overall sensory integration which in turn would include visual processing as a subcomponent?

I’ve often pondered and I’ve tried to research the connection between visual perception and visual processing. If someone with very good visual perceptual skills can have a problem with visual processing.

I haven’t review that issue. People are getting too far off base with visual issues. What we know and reseach supports needs to be addressed fisrt. I bet there are no more then a few thousand kids that have had the major intervention in phonemic awarness in this country. When the needs show at least 20% of the population.

If a child has been properly tested then work on the known verse the unknown first. If after all the intervention has shown progress that will be fine. If little or no progress then we have to go back retest and look at the teacher experience, child’s possible additional needs and then go forward. It’s a growing and on-going process.

For too many kids reading is very complex and they need indivual attention until they become firm in the weak areas. It sounds to me this board has the visual issues as the key deficit which it shouldn’t be.

Read the research is would I suggest to all having questions. When our child is hurting or needs attention then we begin seeking. Rule out the apparent first is all I ask. Secong guessing the known is foolish but I see it all the time.

Regards,

Jimmy

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Linda,

You have uttered the key phrase as I have had to do that myself. As an FYI, I am the kid of a scientist so one part of me goes nuts when people come up with these half baked theories that aren’t supported by research and try to present them as facts. But ironically going outside that research box first enabled me to come up with an antidepressant that finally helped me, St Johns Wort and now a partial solution to my reading problems in discovering that a black letter opener helps me focus on the printed page alot better.

However, I don’t claim my discoveries as facts and in my initial post, I did acknowledge most of the research shows that phonological processing problems are the main cause of reading disorders. But if you know in your heart, that they are not the main reason for your difficulties even though you can’t prove it scientifically, I would think anybody on these boards would continue to look for answers.

Also, so-called established research can be proven wrong. The best example I can think if are ulcers. Look at how many years we thought that for sure, they were caused by stress until an Australian physician, Barry Marshall, discovered that it is caused by bacteria.

Again, I am not disputing the current research but I am also trying to point out the dangers of staying inside the research box.

By the way, a very prominent LD professional, Dr. Martha Denka, has written an article on the role that executive function may play in reading disorders. I have tried like heck to get the article but haven’t been able to. Here is the link to what I am talking about and perhaps someone will have better luck than I did:

http://www.dyslexia-ncbida.org/articles/feb02/readadhd.html

Enough of my two cents.

PT

One thing I’m trying to understand here is the difference between phonemic awareness and phonological processing.

Is there a difference?

Hello Laura,

Phonemic awareness is phonological awareness at the phonemic, or letter sound, level. Phonological processing is the umbrella term for these and other processes that require us to use and to think about using words or word parts. So phonological awareness (and so phonemic awareness) is one kind of phonological processing, as are auditory memory and rapid automatic naming (word retrieval).

Phonological awareness might mean being able to separate an orally presented sentence into words or a word into syllables or to rhyme words. Phonemic awareness might mean being able to blend individual letter sounds into words (so for example, /s/ /a/ /t/ can be blended into sat—at the oral level, without looking at the letters). Or it might mean being able to segment the word “sat” when it’s presented orally into its three component sounds, the /s/, the /a/,. and the /t/. Or it might mean being able to manipulate phonemes, such as taking away the /s/ in “sat” and substituting a /f/ instead (fat). These are just examples of some of the tasks that could be used. There are many others.

The term phonemic awareness is a misnomer. It’s not just an issue of awareness; it’s being aware at a conscious level that words are made up of different sounds and then being able to manipulate those sounds in different ways, or in other words, being able to act on that awareness. This might sound like a simple thing, but it’s actually a learned task and a lot of people don’t learn it without direct instruction. We actually hear individual phonemes coarticulated with the ones next to them; there is no acoustic separation between the phonemes in a syllable. This is what makes it so difficult for some people. And because we don’t hear the separation, we have to learn how to recognize it. Of course once we can do that, we don’t even realize that we’re doing it. Hope I haven’t confused you!

I just realized that I was posting a response in the Phonological Processing Requires Visual Processing part of the thread, which is where the question I answered was asked. But I want to clarify that I think there was an error because phonological processing doesn’t require visual processing. Phonological is by definition phonological. I think maybe the confusion is that both visual processing and phonological processing are needed to identify letters or words.

I realize I’m going off track here, but I’m wondering what you feel is the best way to help remediate a reading disabled child who has very strong phonemic awareness, but severe RAN deficit?

Do you believe the term “phonemic awareness” is used correctly on diagnostic tests?

Can someone score within the “gifted range” on tests of “phonemic awareness” (maybe this term is sometimes incorrectly applied?) and still have a severe problem with phonological processing?

but speech therapists teach students to use categories when they remediate a RAN problem. I am interested to see the work coming out of Tufts reading and RAN, but have not as yet. Have you seen it yet, Andrea?

I’m glad Dr. Kotula clarified that comment on Phonological Processing. Phono = sound. ology = study. The study of sound processing. As she said: to read, one must associate the sounds into language units in order to make meaning of what is being read.

Phonological processing is a very broad umbrella and includes much more than phonemic awareness (PA). Phonological processing includes the processing of units of meaning (roots and affixes) as well as detecting the stressed syllable, remembering names and lists, rhyming, and pronouncing whole words. Phonemic awareness deals with consciously identifying and changing individual sounds. Segmenting is a PA skill. (Definitions from Moats, L. 2000. “Speech to print.” Baltimore: Paul Brookes. p. 234.)

Children with language weaknesses could score very well on a test of PA yet score low in overall phonology.

Each diagnostic test (well normed and standardized) that I’ve reviewed has used the heading “Phonemic Awareness” properly. I hear teachers and administrators getting it confused with phonics, but the tests are not confusing it.

Hello Laura,

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It depends on the test. Some people that I would think should really know better use “phonemic awareness” when they really mean “phonics.”

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First, I’m not sure how one could be gifted in phonemic awareness. Either you have the skill or you don’t, although you could have developed some ability in this area but not enough. Still, this is an area that is supposed to be developed by the primary grades, if not before. So “gifted” doesn’t seem to apply.

Second, as you state, we have to assume that it’s really phonemic awareness that was assessed. And third, we have to assume that it was assessed well.

That’s assuming a lot. But let’s just say that this student really has acquired phonemic awareness. Then your question is, could this child still have a severe problem with phonological processing? The answer is a conditional yes. He or she could still have difficulty with other areas of phonological processing. For example, a dyslexic student, even after remediation, is still going to be dyslexic and will still always be vulnerable with phonological information. Decoding will probably always be a little slower, reading rate will usually remain slower, spelling will most likely remain a problem, and written expression generally remains as an area of relative weakness (although all of these should have improved a lot with intervention). Auditory memory and rapid naming will also continue to interfere to some extent, although hopefully to a lesser extent.

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I’ve read a lot of her earlier work on rapid naming and heard her speak a number of times but haven’t read the recent work. It’s one of those things I keep meaning to do. I’m wondering if she’s clearly demonstrated that you can remediate something like this. I would think that you could improve a child’s ability to name words more automatically with weak RAN just as you could with any student with poor word recognition. But if someone has poor naming speed because of true difficulty retrieving information that’s stored in the brain, I’m curious about how well that can be overcome. It’s an interesting area, but I’m not very knowledgeable about it. The speech and language pathologists have always worked in this area, but I’m not sure how much success they’ve had. Any S-L-P’s out there?

For a couple of years, my school had an SLP that loved language much more than speech. She was a jewel and gave me many, many ideas to use in my classroom with RAN kids. It was all category development…like constructing file cabinets in the brain, labeling them, and practicing rapid retrieval. Since this is only one clinician, I’m sure there is more to be done to help these kids. I understand that Dr. Wolfe is presenting w/Dr. Lyon at the LDA national conference in Feb (a 3 hour presentation).

Hey there Doc—

One other thing on your comments on being gifted in phonological processing. The Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory does allow for this as a factor—like processing speed, verbal comprehension, working memory, and perceptual organization. It is one of the things I like about supplementing the WISC/WAIS with the Das Naglieri (CAS) or the Woodcock Cognitive (WJ-III) clusters that pertain to other factor loading besides just the “big four” on the WISC/WAIS.

The CAS and WJ-III examine mental fluency and there is a huge segment of the psych/neuropsych world that believe mental fluency to be an innate ability—a factor of intelligence. I tend to agree with that theory because, like you mentioned elsewhere, even if RAN or PA is remediated, it will still be slower.

While I would not necessarily use the term “gifted.” A better way to say it might be: “more well developed mental fluency as demonstrated by superior scores in rapid automatic naming and sound blending.” (Examples)

Just my two cents.

PT,

I also can’t stand half baked theories. I see alot of them in education. I am always trying to find objective evidence that that a particular intervention is working with my son. I can’t do double blind studies but I try to stay as objective as possible and use research whenever research is available. Problem is so often is is just not available or not reliable because of faulty methodology.

You should really read Dr. Stein’s work. It is not something you will see come out of an American institution, unfortunately.

Reading his work explained alot for me. I have considered trying monocular occlusion with my son. I doubt I will be able to find an American physician who uses this technique.

That ulcer thing bugged me for years. I was at a dinner party with a group of pharmaceutical marketeers and one of their wives mentioned that she had ulcers. I told her about the fact that it has been proven that bacteria is usually the cause. She looked at me blankly and then at her husband and said, “Why didn’t you tell me this if you knew it?” Another friend in sales for a big pharma company said she was supposed to play down this fact. There is just too much money being made in the sale of treatments, so the cure is played down.
I am not surprised that a cure came from a physician in Australia.