Skill RX vs. PACE vs. Fast For Word

I am trained in FastForWord and PACE, so I can compare those programs.

I took a quick look at the website you posted. This looks like a clinic that offers speech therapy and other programs plus LearningRx programs. LearningRx is the franchised version of PACE. LearningRx franchises receive all of the new programs developed by the company, and my guess is that SkillRx is a program they have developed for younger children.

FFW and PACE are very different programs. FFW is a sound therapy that is much more foundational than PACE. The child does listening exercises at the computer while wearing headphones. The primary purpose of FFW is to train the brain to process the sounds of speech more efficiently. The program has different exercises that start out very slowly and gradually increase in difficulty as the child is successful. Basically, 3 correct answers in a row will cause the software to make an exercise slightly more difficult, while a wrong answer will cause the software to reduce the level of difficulty. One of the exercises works on differentiating pitches (one higher than the other). At first the pitches are far apart, but gradually they are sounded closer together in both pitch and time. Another exercise has the child listening for a specific sound (perhaps “bah”) in a string of sounds, and he has to click when that sound appears. All of the exercises involve the sounds of speech. The company offers other software programs now, but FFW is the first one offered and still (to my knowledge) the most effective. It is not a reading program but, for children whose reading has been held back by slow processing of sounds (diagnosable with a functional MRI), it can be dramatically helpful. Children with a reading problem who do not have this particular auditory processing disorder do not seem to benefit from FFW. 7yo is often considered the ideal age for FFW because at that age the auditory system is fully developed but still very malleable. However, the program can be effective with those both younger and older than 7.

PACE is a program that is done entirely one-on-one with the child (no computer). It consists of about 100 different exercises designed to develop a wide variety of cognitive skills including auditory short-term memory, auditory sequencing, visual short-term memory, visual sequencing, directionality, working memory, attention, reasoning and logic, etc. It also contains exercises that work on auditory processing skills — namely segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation. The exercises begin at about a 6yo level of function, so it is usually best to wait until a child is at least 8yo before starting the program (so the child can experience some success at the very beginning). PACE tends to create significant gains in a wide variety of children. However, sensory-level deficits lower the ceiling on possible gains. SID (sensory integration disorder) especially seems to interfere with cognitive training programs. It is best to remediate sensory level deficits as much as possible before starting a cognitive skills training program. One example of a PACE exercise would be having the child read the directions of a page full of arrows. Once the child can read the arrow directions on the page correctly, the metronome is introduced and the child works on reading the arrow directions in time to the metronome. As the child is successful, metronome speed is increased. At a higher level of this exercise the child might be required to read the direction of all the arrows turned one-quarter to the right. Each of the 100 or so exercises has gradations of complexity like this. Each exercise has benchmarks so you know when to move the child to the next level.

Hope this answers your questions!

That’s a terrific answer. Thanks for the info.