This is great to hear! From what you have observed in the Kung Fu your family does, are there many character-building activities, eg, teaching values, asking questions like "why are you here", "what do you do with the kung fu you have learned", etc? There is another thread discussing EF and talked about martial arts: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/528135-executive-function-training/ It seems to me the word "traditional" means it includes the teaching of values.

Just wanted to add that you can get all the articles for free at this site: http://www.onlinedigeditions.com/allarticle/13959/210099/210099/allarticle.html

Hi Heathermomster, I thought I'd paste something I just read that explained why "traditional martial arts" is good for EF building since you wondered why Tae-Kwon-Do was mentioned in EF articles but not Karate, although the following didn't mention Karate. This link has the original video and the PDF slides went with the presentation. http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/cae-videoaudio/2011-symposium-videos/1093-dr-adele-diamond I have copied the part related to martial arts below, with the original colour of the font so you can see what has been emphasised. "Exercise alone appears not to be as efficacious in improving EFs as exercise-plus-character development (traditional martial arts) or exercise-plus-mindfulness (yoga). Lakes & Hoyt (2004) randomly assigned children in grades K thru 5 (roughly 5-11 years-old) by homeroom class to Tae-Kwon-Do martial arts (with challenge incrementing, N = 105) or standard physical education (N = 102). For the first 3-4 months of school, students in Tae-Kwon-Do were trained in 2-3 periods/ wk (about 28 hours total). Periods were 45 min & during school. Unlike many investigations that have studied is advantaged children and/or those known to be behind on EFs, children studied here were mostly socioeconomically advantaged, making the studies’findings especially impressive. Besides including physical exercise, each martial arts session began with 3 questions that emphasized self-monitoring and planning: (1) Where am I (i.e., focus on the present moment)? (2) What am I doing? (3) What should I be doing? The later two questions directed children to select specific behaviors, compare their current behavior to their goal, and prepare concrete plans to improve their behavior. Children who had been assigned to Tae-Kwon-Do training showed greater gains than children in standard phys. ed. on all dimensions of EFs studied (e.g., cognitive [distractible —focused] and affective [quitting —persevering] - subtests of the Response to Challenge Scale). This generalized to multiple contexts and was found on multiple measures. They also improved more on mental math (which requires working memory). Traditional martial arts emphasize self-control, discipline (inhibitory control), and character development. In a study with adolescent juvenile delinquents (Trulson, 1986), one group was assigned to traditional Tae-Kwon-Do (emphasizing qualities such as respect, humility, responsibility, perseverance, honor as well as physical conditioning). Another group was assigned to modern martial arts (martial arts as a competitive sport). Those in traditional Tae-Kwon-Do showed less aggression and anxiety and improved in social ability and self-esteem. Those in modern martial arts showed more juvenile delinquency and aggressiveness, and decreased self-esteem and social ability. Whether EF gains are seen depends on the way an activity is done and the amount of time spent doing it, practicing and pushing oneself to do better. Even the best activity for improving EFs if done rarely produces little benefit. "

Thanks for the advice. Is it Occupational Therapist and Neuropsychologist I should be seeing for a test? Child psychologist? Could you say a few things I should be testing for, like primitive reflex test from OT I read in this forum? Are these reflexes related to EF? Thanks.

Sbgrace, It seems that task-switching training is to train the brain to switch between two tasks (two simple cognitive tasks, say task A is to identify the colour and task B is to identify the shape,) without losing the quality as to only one task is being performed. The performance of doing task A, A, A repeatedly (or doing task B, B, B repeatedly) is compared to doing A, B, A, B, A, B repeatedly, the performance degradation of doing A, B, A, B is called the "switch cost", this "switch cost" is best to be at zero. Does c8science have something like that, switching between task A and task B? If I find anything about task-switching training program for children, I'll post it here. I'm starting from here: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/brain-training/8RRxIOm7jyY A lot of articles on the web talk about task-switching but are very academic, very dry, one term/acronym after another, very exhausting to read. I wished I did a degree in neuroscience instead of computer science, compared to human brain, computers have close-to-zero brains. Geodob, Thanks for your post. I'm just not going to sit here waiting for the EF to show up in my child. I truly believe It's already there, just need some strengthening.

Geodob, There is a lot of info I need to digest in your post. I'm not sure I quite get you. I'll go off to read DLPFC first, then re-read your post. Re "So that their is no such thing as EF in children." Adele Diamond, named "2000 Outstanding Women of the 20th Century," focus her research of EF on children age 0-6. She has an analogy in which she compares children's EF to children's little legs, the legs, though little and 10 years away from fully grown, are fully functioning. In her research, she said bilingual at home, from birth, speaking one language to one parent and another language to the other parent, put the child's EF level one to two years ahead of their peers at the time they start school, because that's millions of inhibitory control practice. I regretted so much I missed that opportunity when I could have but I didn't.

Thanks, Heathermomster. I will look for an OT to start with. Read people mentioned your IM instruction. Is that to use with a metronome at home without having to go to therapist?

I copy/pasted my post from another thread, it's more appropriate under this one. So regarding a computer program, my thinking is, if I wanted to work on the root of EF, I wanted to work on IC and CF. I wanted to find a program that: 1. trains the three core EF, IC, WM, and CF. 2. incrementally increasing its difficulties. Based on Adele's researches, all trainings (except for one) only improves the area the training is on but not other areas, the exception is the task-switching training, only task-switching training is found to be transferable to other untrained areas. So could this "task-switching training" be the root solution of it all? I want to find it out. C8Scinces has 200 levels, so it meets my point 2 requirement. It covers 8 areas, it might meet my point 1 requirement, too. I need to find out whether it falls under task-switching training. And what exactly is "task-switching"? I have many hours of research ahead. I also googled the benefit of dancing, and found ballroom dancing has been researched to be good for the *adult* brain. http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htmI In this article, it said, "the essence of intelligence is making decisions" and social dancing requires "split-second rapid-fire decision making". I tried to think what "social dancing" involves.. it has a lot of dynamics, it changes partners, the follower, the girl, always has to adjust herself to follow the new partner's cue about what move to dance next, it requires inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility to do this, and it requires one to remember the moves, and not to play the moves back exactly but to re-order the moves, combine the moves, and that's WM. Then that's all three core EF areas covered! That research was done for adults to prevent dementia. I haven't found any article talks about dancing improves EF for children. But even if it doesn't improve EF today for my daughter, it's still a wonderful thing to do throughout life and she'll see the benefit at her senior ages. I'm thinking of finding a ballroom dance class for myself, with my husband, make it into a family thing. Anyway, that's all I know about EF for the moment, throw them in, open for discussions. :-) I will consider taking dd for further tests. OT and neuropsych. I don't like the guessing game either. But I have to convince hubby first!

<Heathermomster>The Liguisystems book that I linked above is intended for ages 12-adult. Yes, that link is for age 12+. Then I found the elementary book for age 6-11: http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10697 <4evercanucks> yes, working on skills like planning and organization do stimulate the brain and work on EF skills. EF covers a very broad range of skills and abilities. From the sample pages of the elementary book, I see it's just check-lists and reminders. I see those things as "reactive" ways to help EF. They are something Adele Diamond/Lev Vygotsky called "scaffolding", enough scaffolding will help children internalize it then scaffold can be removed. So, yeah, you're right, planning and organization skills do help EF. I should take my original comment back. :-) Regarding "EF covers a very broad range of skills and abilities", when I first read "Smart but Scattered" a year ago, I was thinking the same, and not sure it was because the way the book was written or because of my English as a second language, I got so overwhelmed and didn't even read half of the book. After meeting with Steve Hughes, I went on to read Adele Diamond, and Adele said, EF has three core skills, Inhibitory Control (IC), Working Memory (WM), and Cognitive Flexibility (CF), all other EF skills are branched off from these three. So, here is my thinking, if I could just focus on these three, actually two for me since dd scored 98%ile in WM, then I would be addressing EF "proactively" instead of "reactively", tackling the root, instead of the leaves, if the root is watered, the leaves will be healthy. DD only has had WISC-IV test, the child psychologist tested her ruled out her having ADHD on the ground her WM is so high, only recommended to revisit for ADHD in a year. From what I see, DD has very bad mind wondering (zoom out) issues, when I work with her, her mind wonders every less than 60 seconds. I'm learning how to do meditation with her because research shows meditation help modulate the default network in the brain which links to mind wondering.

Thanks, OhElizabeth. I feel a book/workbook is not that useful. I replied in another thread the limited research I've done so far - 3 weeks of research only -about EF. At least for young children, I feel a computer program that can be spent some minutes a day everyday, or an activity that can progress from low level to high level over the years, would help build PFC in the brain. dd is only 6, she's not at the age to learn planning or organization skills. Plus I think planning and organization skills are the *product* of EF, good EF in the brain will produce those skills, but will teaching those skills directly strengthen EF? I don't know, probably not. dd has had only WISC-IV IQ test done and she scored 98%ile on working memory. Adele Diamond said Inhibitory Control works closely with Working Memory but I don't understand why dd has high WM but poor IC. What do you mean by "bilateral brain function" specifically? Thanks, Simar

I'm new on this board and I'm reading all threads related to EF. I have limited knowledge on EF but this what I could share with you: Three weeks ago I went to a parent talk by Steven Hughes in our local montessori school.(http://www.goodatdoingthings.com/Dr._Steve_Hughes/About_Dr._Hughes.html) Dr. Hughes mentioned a lot about EF in his talk and after his talk I went to ask him the requestion on how to strengthen EF for my 6yo daughter, he told me to do activities with "complex motor sequence". He mentioned 3 things, gymnastics, dance, and traditional martial arts (as opposed to competition focused modern martial arts) , because they use the same area as EF, the PFC, and because they constantly challenge the PFC by keep moving up to a higher level (learn one set of movement using the PFC then that set automatically moves out of PFC area to be handled by a sub-something area of the brain (I can't remember the term he used) and then learn a new, slightly more complex set of movement to challenge the PFC again and then that set, once mastered, automatically moves to the other area and then learn a even more complex set of movement, so when the level keeps going up and up the PFC keeps getting more and more strengthened.) He also recommended me to read everything on Adele Diamond's website (http://www.devcogneuro.com/) and particularly her EF review paper published in 2013. Adele Diamond's researches focus on EF and EF for young children. If you would like to read EF papers based on research, this is the list of all Adele Diamond's publications: http://www.devcogneuro.com/AdeleDiamond.html#Pubs And here is her 2013 review paper: http://www.devcogneuro.com/Publications/ExecutiveFunctions2013.pdf I'm reading the 2013 review slowly, with my pen and dictionary (I'm an ESL). Here is one paragraph from that paper: "EF gains from training in task switching (Karbach & Kray 2009), traditional martial arts (Lakes & Hoyt 2004) and school curricula (Raver et al. 2011, Riggs et al. 2006) have been wider, perhaps because the programs address EFs more globally. For example, training task switching (which arguably requires all three core EFs) transferred not only to an untrained task-switching task, but also to inhibition (Stroop interference), verbal and nonverbal WM, and reasoning (Karbach&Kray 2009)." and this: "EF demands need to be continually incrementally increased or few gains are seen". This last sentence backed up what Dr Hughes said about "complex motor sequence" Here are two youtube videos by Adele Diamond that I found helpful: - Talk about what is - Talk about what to do I'm now considering ballroom dancing for my daughter and looking for a task switching train program for home use. Does C8science Activate include task switching? Does anyone know? Its home pilot program is closed for maintenance at the moment so I cant buy it. Simar

I'm new in this board. I'm also interested in anything EF for children. My daughter is almost 7. Never got her tested for EF or ADHD but noticed she has lots of mind wandering moment and is easily distracted. I'm still trying to understand the different elements in EF. After reading articles by Adele Diamond, it seems what I should focus on is inhibitory control, which is linked to sustained and selective attention. Anyone has any suggestions in training a 6-7yo in this area? I read some of the book Smart but Scattered but didn't get much about attention training. Thanks, Simar

Thanks, Elizabeth.

Hi Elizabeth, >For people who need scripted, idiot proof instructions for syllables, use link #4 at the end of my how to tutor page. This thread is more than two years old. I followed the link and went to your HowToTutor page, but link #4 is Blend Phonics. 1. Before and after tests--the NRRF and the MWIA. 2. Phonics concentration game. 3. Blend Phonics Reader. 4. Guide to using Blend Phonics, incorporates rules (not in original Blend Phonics) <-- ?? 5. Spelling and phonics rules. 6. Syllable division rules. 7. Syllable division exercises. 8. Sample schedule. 9. Readings from Hebrews 12 marked to show progress through program. 10. Webster's Speller. Could you point to me where the scripted instructions for syllables is? I started Webster's speller a few months ago, we are now at No.27 of Don Potter's 21st centry book. I have quite a lot of questions along the way and feel often at lost on how to teach the rules. So I'm looking for resource on how to teach using Webster's speller. I started off using your weekly schedule. But the weekly schedule only covers the syllabary and a few tables at the very beginning, am I right in saying so? Thanks in advance, Simar

I used Hooked on Phonics for my then 4y8m daughter, now she's 5y4m. It got her to read quickly. We did K to 1 maybe started on 2 within 4 months), then she got realy bored from the program. Today I found she appears to be able to read very well, but I found she can't read 3 and 3+ syllable words. Then I came to this forum to read people's posts, especially ElizabethB's. This is what I found: 1. There are many programs in the market, but there are only a limited number of approaches. Somewhere I read "choose the approach first, then choose the program". This page explains the approaches: http://www.verticalphonics.com/ click on the left, 5 "vertical and horizontal", and 6 "More methods". 2. Personally I feel that vertical approach is the best approach. I'm thinking of purchasing TATRAS. 3. One could use Webster's Speller together with a phonics program. Webster's "studying syllables" method seem to be the cure for my daughter's can't-read-multi-syllable-words issue. I started Webster's Syllabary two days ago with big hope this will turn my daughter into a truely good reader and a good speller. My 2c from teaching phonics only less than a year.

Hi Elizabeth, Thansk for your reply. I've read a lot of your posts on spelling and phonics in this forum. Your experience is so valuable. I wish I had read them earlier. I found your weekly schedule using the webster's speller: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/208407-k-websters-speller-to-teach-reading-weekly-schedule/ Do you have a more formated lesson plan on your website? I tried to look for one but couldn't find it. I started teaching the Syllabary last night. I feel I found a big treasure. I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions to ask but I'll read your posts first, you have answered a lot of questions already. Thanks, Simar

Hi, I just joined the forum. I’m from Australia. I was researching how to teach spelling to my 5yo daughter and found many posts in this forum discussing about Webster's Syllabary. I'm already using All About Spelling Level 1 (half way into the book) and I have found I need to adjust some bits to suit Australian or British way of pronunciation. Now I’d like to use Syllabary with AAS 1 together but I was just wondering whether there was a British equivalent to Webster’s. Rosie in a post mentioned Denning’s Speller on Google Books, but I can’t find it. Has any British/Autralian English speaker actually taught Webster’s Speller and what’s your experience about it? I’d also like to hear any experience on using AAS to teach British English as well. Thanks, Simar