Crimson Wife Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 This came across my FB feed the other day and I thought it might interest some of you: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150624/10-week-reading-intervention-improves-brain-activity-in-autistic-children.aspx The study looked at kids with ASD who are fluent decoders so we're not there yet with my little one. We're working on LiPS and I'm planning to add in Seeing Stars once summer school gets out. But it's good to know that V&V seems to be helpful for improving comprehension once kids have cracked the code. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 The increased connectivity in the brain is fascinating. I wish they had actually explained how the reading comprehension improved. It was a bit shy on stats. I could see where you could improve connectivity and STILL have comprehension issues due to other stuff. Still, very interesting. As you say, my ds very specifically has that contradiction of not seeming to understand even basic words when he reads. I've ben having him draw pictures, which is of course back door to visualization. I had not really thought about doing V/V with him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted June 27, 2015 Author Share Posted June 27, 2015 Here's a link to the actual study. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.1503/abstract;jsessionid=D16270EC3FCBC731908C0C53C344E132.f01t04 I don't have time to read it now as I've got a set of discussion questions and an exam both due on Monday but next week I plan to check the online library access through my university. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MistyMountain Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Thanks for sharing! My dd does not have ASD but she does struggle with comprehension but has no issues with decoding and spelling. I am trying to work through VV with her on my own. I do not think I am very good with working with the material but this inspires me to keep it up and muddle through. I would have loved the opportunity to get free sessions but we live nowhere near a center. Even if we lived near a center the cost is not something we come lose to being able to afford. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lecka Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 http://www.readingrockets.org/shows/launching/brain#transcript This is a video that includes using V and V for autism. If you go to "playlist" it is "from emotions to comprehension." I have a major soft spot for Henry Winkler who is the host/narrator :) The study looks cool! A couple of years ago now, my son did a speech eval where the woman was holding up a picture of a child who had fallen off a bike, looked hurt -- super-obvious. He had no idea what had happened or how to explain it. We used to read a mouse book (from those 'if you give a mouse a cookie' books) and it shows the mouse falling asleep, and then smoke coming out of the oven, then the mouse throwing away burned cookies. He would have no idea what happened. But he making progress now, we just read a No, David book (the Christmas one) and there was a picture where there are kids throwing snowballs, and David looks upset, and kids are kind-of running away from the middle of the picture. In the background you can see a broken window, and it is in the middle of the picture, but it is not super-obvious. I said "what happened?" and he said "the window is broken." It was huge, amazing progress for him, to be able to tell what was happening in the picture -- you are supposed to know David broke the window with a snowball, but he never got it before. There is a picture in another No, David book, where on one page he has a baseball bat and a ball. Then on the next page there is a broken vase on the floor, and the ball on the ground next to it. Last summer he had no idea what had happened from one page to the next page. Totally separately -- I went to an autism workshop and one of the presenters was a speech therapist. She was talking about kids around the "answering wh questions" level. One of the points she made was between questions with direct answers and questions with answers that were not directly explained and had to be inferenced. She had a copy of a study where she put the information in her power point.... there were two points. One, if kids practiced/were taught to answer direct wh questions, it did not transfer to being able to answer inferenced wh questions. But then she showed that if they were taught/asked inferencing questions, they improved with inferencing questions, too. But for some kids it took many more sessions for inferencing questions and they made much slower progress. But, all of the kids she showed data for did make improvement. It just took longer and had to be worked on. So I am just commenting :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 Lecka, let me make sure I'm understanding this. So that lecturer said if you work on inferencing questions, it funnels back to improvement in more direct comprehension as well? Yes, wh questions are an issue here and something the SLP always wants us to work on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted June 28, 2015 Author Share Posted June 28, 2015 Totally separately -- I went to an autism workshop and one of the presenters was a speech therapist. She was talking about kids around the "answering wh questions" level. One of the points she made was between questions with direct answers and questions with answers that were not directly explained and had to be inferenced. She had a copy of a study where she put the information in her power point.... there were two points. One, if kids practiced/were taught to answer direct wh questions, it did not transfer to being able to answer inferenced wh questions. But then she showed that if they were taught/asked inferencing questions, they improved with inferencing questions, too. But for some kids it took many more sessions for inferencing questions and they made much slower progress. But, all of the kids she showed data for did make improvement. It just took longer and had to be worked on. So I am just commenting :) Interesting. My DD has been working with her ABA team and the school SLP on wh- questions but they are all fairly direct at this point. She's gotten pretty good with the more simple who/what/where/when questions and now is working on answering the more complex why questions. But they're still obvious rather than requiring inferences. Things like "Why did the girl open an umbrella?" and my DD has to answer along the lines of "Because it's raining." She grasped the basic why...because format fairly quickly but getting her to give a logical answer has been surprisingly challenging. She tends to answer with a true-but-unrelated statement. The answer to "why did the girl open an umbrella?" is not "Because it's daytime" even if it is daytime in the picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lecka Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 No, she said more that they were two separate things and needed to be worked on separately, and that direct comprehension is easier and will come sooner/faster than the non-direct questions. Her examples were at the sentence level, but she said that kids were at varying levels for the study. Her point was more -- don't expect inferencing with wh questions if you only work on direct questions. My understanding is that she thought they should be worked on together, and you just expect kids to miss the non-direct questions that are otherwise the same difficulty as the direct questions they are getting right. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lecka Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 Okay, I am pretty sure that "because it is raining" would be considered non-direct for the (more basic levels at least) of this study. B/c you have not come out and said "it is raining." They have to infer that is the reason. Even if they have previously memorized "the function of an umbrella" or "why we use an umbrella" ---- it is still a correct answer and not a random statement or a non-sequitur. Edit: just realized I mis-read what you had written. Yeah, it is hard to get the sensible answers! And not some grammatically correct, true statement! I know what you mean. My son has memorized a lot of responses from when he did function/reverse function, though, so he can actually get a lot correct, which is exciting! Not everybody will know he memorized those, lol! But it was like a 45-minute lecture so I don't totally know! But I do have the copy of the notes (they gave us a copy of everyone's power points) and I think the study is listed at the end. I do know that saying "how does he feel?" or "why did he do x" are non-direct for my son's level. Even if it is mega-obvious, if it is not directly stated, it counts for him. Like -- anything where the answer is not literally said in the question or the preceding statement. Like -- direct is "the man is wearing a blue hat. What is he wearing?" That is a direct question, b/c the answer was exactly in the sentence. In the samples, it was at the sentence level, too. I feel like one of the sample sentences was "the girl is in bed" and a non-direct question was "why is she in bed" and "because she is tired" was non-direct, and direct questions would have been "who was in the bed? where is the girl?" But my impression is that as the direct questions got more complicated, you make sure to add non-direct questions, too, instead of allowing it to get really unbalanced by not addressing non-direct. But that it is fine/normal for non-direct to lag. More not to either a) wait until much later to add in non-direct questions and b) not think "oh no what is going wrong" when they lag. But I could have misunderstood this! I was just listening to the lecture and it may have been a little over my head. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lecka Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 I am also realizing, that she was saying "non-direct" (I think). I thought to myself "oh she means inferences." But really -- maybe they are not actually inferences, just questions where the answer is not found in the question or in the statement the question is about. Maybe it is lower than inferences, which would make sense. I am not sure what the terminology means exactly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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