The Learning Success Blog

Rubin was in his first year at school (kindergarten in NSW). His teachers told his mum, Lani, that he was not concentrating, he fidgeted a lot, and he could not complete his work.

He was also having great difficulty with his early reading, struggling to sound out simple sentences like "I am Tim. Tim sits."

Because his older brother Kito* had benefited from the Fast ForWord brain training exercises a few years ago following an audiologist's recommendation for his auditory processing disorder, Lani decided to have Ruben do the exercises as well.

Elliot’s mum, Elaine had been concerned about his learning ever since he started school. Elliott is now aged 10 and in Year 5 at school.

He did not seem to be making progress with learning to read in Year 1, and by Year 3 he was having trouble with literacy concepts, particularly with comprehension. He also struggled to understand maths concepts. He found it difficult to make sense of the relationships between mathematical symbols and what he was meant to do with them.

As a primary school teacher, Elaine saw a discrepancy between her very energetic, able, motivated, and clever-in-many-different-areas little boy, and his lack of learning progress at school. He needed a lot of help to grasp simple concepts in reading and maths.

Many of the children I work with in my speech pathology clinic who have dyslexia also have additional difficulties with processing information and sustaining their attention.

They often have some or many of these challenges: 

• Difficulty following verbal instructions
• Need instructions to be repeated
• Slow to process information
• Easily overloaded with auditory information
• Difficulty sustaining attention for learning tasks
• A tendency to daydream
• Easily distracted
• Academic difficulties

These symptoms could indicate that they have one or more of the conditions known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), auditory processing disorder (APD), or specific language impairment (SLI).

At a recent neuroscience conference in the USA, I heard Dr Martha Burns give a wide-ranging talk summarising the latest neuroscience research about learning and learning disorders. She related the latest research findings to how the Fast ForWord & Reading Assistant programs improve language skills, reading and learning capacity for many children.

Dr Burns is a neuroscientist, author of over 100 journal articles and multiple books, and a leading expert on how children learn.  Her talk covered topics including autism, attention & listening skills, working memory, self-regulation & cognitive control, dyslexia, intelligent tutoring systems, the neuroscience of learning, goal setting, and what's next for neuroscience. 

"Neuroscience now is very interested in attention disorders.", said Dr Martha Burns in a recent presentation at a neuroscience of learning conference in Tuscon, USA.

Dr Martha Burns is a neuroscientist, author of over 100 journal articles and multiple books, and a leading expert on how children learn. She explained:

"So what we were talking earlier about listening skills, that's the term teachers use. Listening skills. Can the child sit in the classroom and pay attention to me?

Listening skills is auditory attention. One of the great things about Fast ForWord is it builds auditory attention. One of the best studies that's independent, that it has a control group, is on auditory attention.

Interesting new research from the University of Vermont, USA suggests that children who learn a musical instrument may be improving their brains in ways that help them well beyond their music lesson or practice.

Learning music might help children to:

• Improve their attention
• Enhance their working memory
• Develop better organisation and planning skills
• Control their emotions
• Reduce anxiety

Does a child need to keep doing Fast ForWord exercises to continue to get the benefit of the brain training?

No, children don’t have to keep doing the exercises to maintain their improvements in learning reading and self confidence. The benefits of Fast ForWord are long lasting after the exercises are completed.

Research, and reports, from parents and teachers of children who have completed the Fast ForWord program, confirm that the gains made from the exercises are permanent.

Children typically complete the Fast ForWord programs appropriate for their age and development in 3 – 5 months. During this time they work on exercises that strengthen the cognitive and language skills that are essential for learning and reading.

I recently came across the story of a primary school aged child who was experiencing a mental road block with subtraction. The child was otherwise reasonably comfortable with maths, but complained that what the teacher said about subtraction made no sense and that, as a result, they pretty much chatted with their friends instead of paying further attention. This may have appeared to the teacher as a lack of interest and inability to concentrate. To the parents though, knowing their child as they do, the coded message was different. It meant, "I want to understand this, and I am frustrated that I can't, so I need to make light of the fact that I tuned out of the lesson".

Have you ever been reading a textbook and found that a figure referred to in the text is located over the page? Which means you need to interrupt your train of thought to go looking for the figure, then reintegrate the information into what you were reading a moment ago. This is an example of "split-attention effect", whereby learners are required to divide their attention between two related pieces of information. The result is an increase in extrinsic cognitive load (see post 14/4/14). In other words, the way the information is presented is making you work just that little bit harder to understand the information itself. This in turn puts that little bit more pressure on your working memory, making it harder to commit the information to your long term memory.

How many screens have you got in the house? How many do you watch at the same time? It wouldn’t be surprising if you had to sit back and think about that for a minute or two. It’s not like the old days where you’d be lucky to have one TV in the house and you’d gather around to watch a special show with the whole family. The average family collection of devices would probably include a desktop computer, a laptop or two, a tablet or two, and almost certainly a smart phone for everyone. And that doesn’t include the televisions. It could be up to 10 screens per household.

Do you ever use more than one at a time? Have you considered the effects on your attention?