Learning RX program

I looked at the site and the name of the founder—Ken Gibson— rang a bell. He heads up PACE, the name of a well-respected cognitive training program often recommended on these boards. In the past, PACE has trained providers who then find their own clients for cognitive remediation. My surmise is that the PACE company has decided to set up some of their own centers that they control, possibly through franchise arrangements, to provide this training, rather then relying on individual trainers working on their own. The franchise name would be Learning RX.

Yes, LearningRX is the franchised version of the PACE program. When someone purchases a franchise, the company stops training new individual providers (but allows already licensed providers who meet their annual quotas to continue).

It’s a very good program for most children, but it’s best to make sure the child going into it does not have major sensory-level deficits that could be reduced (these are usually developmental vision problems and/or sensory integration problems). Major vision or SI problems interfere with the gains that can be achieved with PACE or LearningRx.

Nancy

I am a licensed PACE “center provider,” and although I offer other programs as well, PACE & Master the Code (the reading followup program from Learning Rx) are definitely the main services we offer. I was licensed prior to the new “franchise” agreements. Learning Rx is no longer offering these “center” provider agreements, though they do still train individuals. They used to train parents, and parents can still take the “Brain Skills” training if they want to do it with their own kids. I understand the results with Brain Skills are not usually as good as with the regular PACE program, though that may be partly because it is so hard to do it with your own kids, especially six days a week!

We’ve been offering the PACE program in the Los Angeles area for almost four years now, with mostly great results. I’d be happy to share some more in depth details about it if you are interested, Erich. If you can tell me a little about the child you are considering it for, I can probably draw some comparisons and give you some examples from clients with similar profiles… Of course, I do believe at least part of the success comes from the level of training and care that is put into the program with each student. I’m hoping that will be true of the franchise centers also, I’m sure that is the intention of Learning Rx in this venture.

My son is a B student in math and slightly higher in reading, social studies and writing. He is about a c student in spelling. He is in a regular class with just a writing tutor one day a week provided by the school. I have found since remediating his deficits, academic tutoring from a good teacher has had a profound effect where before such interventions went nowhere.

He started this journey in kindergarten with what was termed a visual motor deficit by the school psychologist. He has always had excellent verbal skills but his performance IQ was an 89. After remediation it is now 105 on the performance side but he still scores low average in processing speed. Amazingly 2 of his subtest scores doubled Picture concepts was a 7 an is now at 14 block design went from 4 to 8.

What would you recommend for this profile? I have considered pace, would pace improve processing speed?

We have a already done interactive metronome, vision therapy, reading reflex, some audiblox but stopped because the exercises were redundant to vision therapy, started sequential spelling and will pick it up again this summer. We saw very good results after each of these interventions. My son’s developmental optometrist is on the PACE board of directors and helped to develop parts of the program. He believes in pace but was unsure whether or not it would help my son.

Thanks for any input.

Hi Linda,

Hmm, it sounds like you have gotten a lot of good interventions for him already. PACE does work on processing speed, among other things, though I would say that at least in my experience, that is one of the areas that is hardest to affect. We usually get somewhere in the vicinity of two years improvement, sometimes a little less, and that is one of the smallest effects we usually see. If you got a well-trained tutor who would be careful to really emphasize the exercises that deal with this aspect, I think that you could get really good results. There are a bunch of exercises that work on ps along with other issues, and some are “output” related, which is for many kids the other part of processing speed.

I am curious to know whether part of his processing speed issues have to do with a directionality problem. Even if he USED to reverse numbers and letters when he was younger, but usually self-corrects now, it could still be slowing him down. For many kids I have seen, this is at least part of the problem, because each time they encounter them they have to consider which direction the letter is facing, especially b, d, p & q of course. PACE also has some great activities for this, so those are the other exercises I would have the trainer emphasize, if so. I always make a note of it when I do a screening if I see this is an issue. The processing speed test on the Gibson Cognitive doesn’t specifically note it, but I have noticed that it usually has a definite impact there, and if we make sure we do one of those activities at least once each PACE session, we usually see better improvement on the post-test.

For many kids, Working Memory is also at least part of the picture in a processing speed weakness. PACE also works on Working Memory, especially the visual side of it, but also auditory to some degree. In my practice, we emphasize the auditory exercises because that is what more kids need to boost their reading (and that’s the number one problem kids come in with), but in your son’s case I might deemphasize it a little, in favor of the PS, and WM exercises, and/or the directionality ones, if that is a problem also.

One of the reasons I like PACE is because it impacts so many different skills, and there seems to be kind of a synergistic effect because of that. Most providers will let you “test drive” the program for a few sessions to see if you think it will help your son, for a minimal cost… we do! So it wouldn’t hurt to contact some providers near you and ask that question; you can also ask what they charge for the screening — many providers do it for very low cost or free. Sounds like you are really on top of things, so I congratulate you, I’m sure you will find something that will help him even more, if you keep at it!

Yes he did have directional issues. He was mixed handed and I remember reading that can play a role. He is now all right handed. We did alot of directional work in vision therapy, tons actually.

I am not so sure about memory, personally I think he compensated poor visual memory with his language skills. His recent testing had him at 11 for digit span and 11 for letter-number sequencing but a 7 for coding and 7 for symbol search. I also think he may still have some ocular motor issues. When I took him to vision therapy the therapist told me he had one of the worst tracking problems they had ever seen.

I must say, it does not really effect him in any severe way because he can compensate but still, we have come this far and with middle school looming I would like as much out of the way as possible.

As I mentioned, his Dev. Optometrist is on the PACE board and knows my son pretty well now. Maybe I will go see him again for something specific to work on.

Thanks again for your input. I am still considering PACE for the final fine tuning. Things are going well at school but I never really trust that bottom won’t drop out at some point.

Hi Linda,

Yes, I would say that would be a good idea to talk to your Dev. Opt. about PACE, ask him about the specific exercises that involve directionality and processing speed, and whether he thinks that would help your son. Feel free to have him contact me if he wants to, I have over 3 1/2 years experience doing PACE now. If he is mainly a Devel Optometrist, he may not do that much of it, even if he is on the board, where PACE/MTC is 90% of my business….

There is another program out there that works on processing speed and visual/auditory digit span. It is called Brainbuilder, comes on a CD, and is not that expensive, around $50 if I remember. My son did it before PACE, I remember that was what prompted him to say to me one time, “Mom, isn’t there something like this for all of the learning skills? Sort of like weight lifting for your brain?” Soon after that I found PACE and told him, “I think I found what you are talking about!” Anyway, it works mainly on digit span, both auditory and visual exercises are given, along with some fun games…

I agree with you that you should stay “ahead of the curve” if you can. You’ve done far more remediation with your son than I had when my son was that age, but he really did fall apart in middle school. You can read my post under the “Emotional Rollercoaster” topic on this board if you want the details of that! But he came out okay in the long run, that’s the good news!