Let's chat about memory...

[merry gardens]

Tell me what you remember about memory. :bigear:

[PeterPan]

I can't remember. Why?

[Shay]

Trouble with memory is common with learning disabilities.

 

Mnemonics are a powerful memory tool with a solid research base.

 

What do you want to discuss about memory?

[peacefully]

.

[VinNY]

Trouble with memory is common with learning disabilities.

 

Mnemonics are a powerful memory tool with a solid research base.

 

What do you want to discuss about memory?

 

YES, I am finding the use of mnemonics in math, spelling etc. to be a great help for my dd!

 

I still try to to use things with her that supposedly help boost memory, but I am finally getting the hang of utilizing mnemonics.

[i.love.lucy]

:lurk5:

[momsuz123]

I saw this brought up in another thread. Are you meaning a child just not remembering what they just were read, etc? The question I ask is this - my 6 y/o dd often just sits there and looks all cute when asked a question. It could be her piano teacher asking her, or me. Instead of just saying "I don't know", she will just sit there and look with her big eyes at you. I am know wondering if she just doesn't "remember" what she is told, etc. Am I making any sense? I am tired, probably not. I will just have to watch this thread.

[ElizabethB]

I am reading "How the Brain Learns" and am finding it very interesting.

 

There is a lot of information about memory in there. The 4th edition is in blue font with a bit of green font...I am now on page 103 and still haven't figured out why the font is blue, it is very annoying.

[PeterPan]

I saw this brought up in another thread. Are you meaning a child just not remembering what they just were read, etc? The question I ask is this - my 6 y/o dd often just sits there and looks all cute when asked a question. It could be her piano teacher asking her, or me. Instead of just saying "I don't know", she will just sit there and look with her big eyes at you. I am know wondering if she just doesn't "remember" what she is told, etc. Am I making any sense? I am tired, probably not. I will just have to watch this thread.

 

It's awfully hard to have any memory if you're not *attending* ie. putting brain power into comprehending it. No attention, no memory. Bored and drifting hence not attending, no memory.

 

Or auditory processing problems can do the same thing. Or she just has earwax.

[peacefully]

.

[momsuz123]

Okay, so how do we help our kiddo's working memory?

[merry gardens]

I can't remember. Why?

:lol:

 

Did I forget to tell you? :tongue_smilie:

 

I just want to focus on memory more and chatting about it here with you ladies helps me.

 

Okay, here's the deal. My son's memory is weird. He forgets some things yet remembers others. Working memory? Auditory memory? Visual memory? Long term memory? All of them are problem areas. I want to discuss all of them on this thread, but really I want to just talk about memory in general.

 

I'm doing the LinguiSystem memory book with him. He'll forget some of the words that I've just said that he's suppose to repeat back, but later on in the lesson he starts repeating the words that he forgot earlier in the session. I'd say his working memory is like writing on a white board with a marker that doesn't show it's mark right away, but later on when you try to write on the white board, those old marks show up and get in the way. That's his short term memory.

 

Longer term memory? He forgets many of the things that we've worked on extensively, but his memory is once again weird and atypical. It's not exactly like he doesn't remember because he's remembering something but what he remembers is wrong. It's consistently wrong. When we do these things over, he often repeats the exact same mistakes over and over.

 

I want to say more, but I'm out of time for now.

[sixpence1978]

My DH and I were talking about how our DD doesn't have a filing cabinet for her memory. Instead she has post-it notes. Sometimes she runs out of room on one post-it note and has to write on another and then they get stuck in different spots. Post-it notes about movies or animals are always covering up the post-it notes about math and spelling :lol:

 

I wish I could wrap my head around the complexity of memory. I do think that yllek is right about working memory being a large factor for learning disabilities.

[i.love.lucy]

Longer term memory? He forgets many of the things that we've worked on extensively, but his memory is once again weird and atypical. It's not exactly like he doesn't remember because he's remembering something but what he remembers is wrong. It's consistently wrong. When we do these things over, he often repeats the exact same mistakes over and over.

 

My dd definitely has memory issues. As does her dad. She is not diagnosed with any kind of LDs, it's just something I have noticed. Not enough to where I think she needs a diagnosis, although it's getting more problematic the older she gets and the more difficult her school work is.

 

We are doing CC. We can work and work and work on memory work and it often won't stick in her long term memory. She also remembers things wrong and I work with her not to "test" herself so as to make wrong pathways. A lot of times the memory work we do to music is pretty beneficial, but the best is when she writes it out over and over and over, etc. Could that mean an auditory processing issue. If am trying to get her to repeat and repeat and repeat and then she still doesn't have it, vs writing it out over and over...

 

She also has documented issues with working memory, although not enough to be part of an LD that I know of. While in speech therapy for her stutter, we participated in a research study that used a number of techniques to test different brain processes on stuttering. One that she failed miserably at was hearing a muli-syllable nonsense word, identifying how many syllables it has, then they change one syllable and say the word again and you have to identify which syllable (using colored blocks for each one) had the change. She couldn't hold the sounds in her memory to figure out where the change was. Same with strings of numbers repeating back and then reversing. Epic fail.

 

All that to say, I don't know how to help her. I got the book Lost, Scattered, and Unprepared about executive function, but I am just getting started on it.

 

:bigear:

[LaughingCat]

Okay, so how do we help our kiddo's working memory?

 

The suggestions I've seen most are -

1-practice -

auditory - repeat lists of numbers, repeat forward and backward, ask questions like what was the 3rd #, do with words/sentences as well, bounce a ball while repeating (or other motor/distracting activity)

- other choices might be read a sentence and ask about the details in it

- also phonics substitutions/additions/deletions work this (we've done a lot of this - she started out very, very slow at it and now can do it much more quickly)

 

I have the super duper book "Working with Listening" that gives "lessons" - several sets of numbers or words to repeat back, some phonics substitions/deletions, and a set of sentences to remember the details.

 

games: simon, bop it, grandmothers purse

 

visual - have them look at a picture and recreate it without looking again(often done with pictures that are just lines). Merry Gardens suggested (in another thread): "We play Castle Logic by taking a short look at the picture, but we don't refer to it when building the structure." I've done some work with DD with dolch sight phrase flash cards - where I hold it up only for a second or two, and then she has to tell me what it said.

 

games: dragon tales/chicken cha cha cha, gobblet jr, rat-a-tat-cat, sole mio, sherlock, the secret door

 

cogmed game: http://www.spaceminespatrol.com/gamepage.html

 

2- memory "tricks" - mnemonics, acronyms/acrostics, purposeful chunking (remembering a series of numbers as phone numbers or bigger numbers - i.e. 2 3 7 = 237), series of loci (tagging each item to a place - usually I seen this described as a house you're walking around in your head)

 

I "think" the lingua systems books cover stuff like this (based on their sample only). I've read various books like "A Sheep Falls Out of a Tree" but they haven't helped me apply it with DD - "Moonwalking with Einstein" was especially interesting though, because it's an account of a writer who undertook improving his memory to win contests (in order to write this book about it) and got so good he went to the World Championships (and won a contest there too).

 

 

Note: One thing I've noticed with DD is that different areas she struggles differently. For example, lists of numbers are very hard for her and lists of words are much easier (although unrelated long words (multisyllable) are much harder for her)- but she does great at games like grandmothers purse where you are repeating back the whole list of things. Same for motor memory - at VT they suggested bouncing a ball back and forth and having each person do what the other did before bouncing it. We changed it to do everything done before in a "grandmothers purse" kind of way because she was so good at it. But she can't remember 3 2-digit numbers, and with sentences she replaces words with other words that mean the same, or replaces "a" with "the" (kind of like her reading :glare:). I guess she's using some kind of personal mnemonic for the grandmother's purse type games, but how do you tell something like that?

Edited February 28, 2012 by LaughingCat2

[peacefully]

.

[PeterPan]

Merry, remind us, you've *done* a neuropsych eval or no? Cuz honestly, an eval is where I would start. I don't mean to be some kind of broken record, but you can't fix something when you don't know what the problem is.

 

I'll add a few more things to the mix. Is he on omega 3? (flax, fish, whatever) Is he hitting puberty or a serious growth spurt? (that totally fogs 'em up and makes 'em look like idiots) Those don't fix things, but they create a backdrop, kwim?

 

Yllek, sigh, the perpetual thing to work on working memory. We've been so busy with co-op and waylaid, not getting our own stuff done. We're actually dropping it or pseudo-dropping (skippping the rest of the month and going to just the last session, if that). I'm just totally tired of not being able to get our things done but then being responsible for them not being done. This week we finally feel like we're getting our peace back.

 

BTW, people have already said this, but you have so many ways to access memory (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.). You could have one channel be stronger than another. You could have a situation where the stronger one is actually *not* the one the dc is wired to have stronger, meaning he's hitting a wall in his weaker channel and hasn't even started really maximizing the one that *will* be stronger when you're done. Freed (Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World) maintains all kids with ADHD are VSL. (I'm not sure he's saying the reverse.) So that whole idea is very interesting, that there could be untapped potential in our kids if they're using their auditory to do something their wiring would do better in visual with more work to get it there.

[amo_mea_filiis.]

Tell me what you remember about memory. :bigear:

 

SLEEP!

 

Let's say the kiddo has a normal sleep cycle (no sleep disorders). When we sleep we cycle through the sleep stages and get about 5 cycles per night. Every time we cycle through, our REM sleep gets a little longer, so we should have 5 periods of REM sleep with the eary morning REM lasting longer than the first.

 

It's thought that we make memories concrete during REM sleep. If a kid doesn't get enough hours of sleep, they don't get enough REM, and don't make the day's memories concrete.

 

Sleep is extremely important and not many people, especially kids, get as many hours as they need.

[ElizabethB]

:

Okay, here's the deal. My son's memory is weird. He forgets some things yet remembers others. Working memory? Auditory memory? Visual memory? Long term memory? All of them are problem areas. I want to discuss all of them on this thread, but really I want to just talk about memory in general.

 

 

Memory is weird in general! There are some strange things I remember, and it is interesting how and why different things are remembered easier than others. My daughter remembers language things much easier than my son, my son remembers math things much easier than my daughter. They both will remember odd things yet forget a key historical fact we've covered for the last 2 months...

 

One that she failed miserably at was hearing a muli-syllable nonsense word, identifying how many syllables it has, then they change one syllable and say the word again and you have to identify which syllable (using colored blocks for each one) had the change. She couldn't hold the sounds in her memory to figure out where the change was. Same with strings of numbers repeating back and then reversing. Epic fail.

 

All that to say, I don't know how to help her. I got the book Lost, Scattered, and Unprepared about executive function, but I am just getting started on it.

 

:bigear:

 

Well, I have found that work with nonsense words and oral spelling of real words and syllables (a type of "nonsense" word because it doesn't exist outside of a part of a word) has been helpful both for spelling and reading remediation AND in improving general memory in my remedial students.

 

Before I added in nonsense words and oral spelling, there was some overall memory gain and improvement in other subjects such as math and history, but after I added in these 2 things, I saw a marked improvement in many of my students' memory skills and much more improvement in other subjects such as math and history.

[LaughingCat]

As well as fish oil, I've also read that coconut oil can have an affect on memory. DD gets coconut oil occasionally (I use it, DH doesn't, DH does majority of cooking) - I haven't tried tracking those times to see if it makes a difference (had read previously of it affecting Alzheimer's but only recently read of it helping kids).

[peacefully]

.

[onaclairadeluna]

So what do folks around here do for retrieval issues?

[peacefully]

.

[merry gardens]

SLEEP!

 

Let's say the kiddo has a normal sleep cycle (no sleep disorders). When we sleep we cycle through the sleep stages and get about 5 cycles per night. Every time we cycle through, our REM sleep gets a little longer, so we should have 5 periods of REM sleep with the eary morning REM lasting longer than the first.

 

It's thought that we make memories concrete during REM sleep. If a kid doesn't get enough hours of sleep, they don't get enough REM, and don't make the day's memories concrete.

 

Sleep is extremely important and not many people, especially kids, get as many hours as they need.

That is a really good point! Sleep. :sleep: It sounds so simple, but it's not. My ds shares a room with his brother--and his brother likes to stay up past bedtime reading with a small light on and doing assorted other things that disrupt a normal bedtime. It drives me crazy to hear him up there over an hour after I put him to bed. :glare: Ds 10 complains that his brother keeps him awake, and they both look tired in the morning. That alone isn't enough to cause all of ds 10's memory problems, but it can't be helping them either.

[merry gardens]

Memory is weird in general! There are some strange things I remember, and it is interesting how and why different things are remembered easier than others. My daughter remembers language things much easier than my son, my son remembers math things much easier than my daughter. They both will remember odd things yet forget a key historical fact we've covered for the last 2 months...

 

 

 

Well, I have found that work with nonsense words and oral spelling of real words and syllables (a type of "nonsense" word because it doesn't exist outside of a part of a word) has been helpful both for spelling and reading remediation AND in improving general memory in my remedial students.

 

Before I added in nonsense words and oral spelling, there was some overall memory gain and improvement in other subjects such as math and history, but after I added in these 2 things, I saw a marked improvement in many of my students' memory skills and much more improvement in other subjects such as math and history.

Thanks for writing that. It helps to remind me that I'm not the only mom/teacher who has a child/student who forgets what I tried to teach. Math is far easier for my ds than language too.

 

Interesting what you shared about your experience working with nonsense words. We've done lots of nonsense words through Barton, which we've used for over two years now. He does okay with the nonsense words, and he can remember full sentences better now than when we first started.

[merry gardens]

As well as fish oil, I've also read that coconut oil can have an affect on memory. DD gets coconut oil occasionally (I use it, DH doesn't, DH does majority of cooking) - I haven't tried tracking those times to see if it makes a difference (had read previously of it affecting Alzheimer's but only recently read of it helping kids).

I read about coconut oil and Alzheimer's and wondered if there was any ramifications for children. Do you have any links on that? I've been cooking with coconut oil more lately. I haven't noticed any change, but from what I read on the Alzheimer's stories, they recommended larger quantities than we use. We already use fish oils. I haven't noticed any difference since ds started taking fish oils, but they are linked to several positive health benefits so we all take them.

[merry gardens]

Well, there's memory and then there's retrieval. Ds has issues with both. It's a very frustrating process (for him and me) to try to tease apart what he actually knows and what he has difficulty expressing. He often needs games to help him with retrieval, so that instead of generating the correct response, sometimes he only has to match a prompt with the correct response... and then we can talk about it. It's one of the ways that we try to deal with word retrieval and expressive language issues.

 

Another example: ds has difficulty with assessments that are short answer and cloze passages, but he will ace a matching or multiple-choice test almost every time.

Hmm. It could be a retrieval problem. How do they separate retrieval vs. memory when testing? They seem to overlap a great deal.

[peacefully]

.

[PeterPan]

As well as fish oil, I've also read that coconut oil can have an affect on memory. DD gets coconut oil occasionally (I use it, DH doesn't, DH does majority of cooking) - I haven't tried tracking those times to see if it makes a difference (had read previously of it affecting Alzheimer's but only recently read of it helping kids).

 

I've had my son on coconut milk for many months now, and his muscle tone is dramatically better than my daughter's. He's still low tone (the ped confirmed), but it's not as bad. I don't know how much the coconut milk has to do with it, but it is interesting!

[PeterPan]

She then went on to explain that I should be sure to design assessments that separated (or at least scaffolded) retrieval tasks from content knowledge. I was so flabbergasted by that little demonstration that i really took that advice to heart. I've been trying to tease apart what ds knows and what he cannot express ever since. Not an easy job, because ds has difficulty with so many steps along the pathway of learning—sensory input, attention, processing, working memory, storage and filing, and retrieval.

 

You're saying she suggested that as an *accommodation*? Or are you saying she told you a way to work with him that would make it better (as in go away, improve, not be that way anymore)?

[peacefully]

.

[LaughingCat]

For example, during our last couple of months of therapy, ds was naming 18-20 items for a given category within a minute, with the categories becoming progressively more abstract or limited (typical age-level responses would be 15-18).

 

I was wondering if your ST just gave you the categories to use or if you had a resource for this? Because I feel like when I try to do this kind of exercise with DD I am just randomly picking categories and would like to find a more planned out approach.

[onaclairadeluna]

Hmm. It could be a retrieval problem. How do they separate retrieval vs. memory when testing? They seem to overlap a great deal.

 

 

I just had a meeting with an SLP on Monday. It seems that retrieval shows up as a timing problem. I am not sure how they differentiate memory and more extreme expressive language though.

 

My DS has an almost photographic memory but it takes him about an hour (I am exaggerating...a little) or so to think of a word. So his case is fairly clear cut. I imagine there are cases which are less obvious though.

 

One thing I noticed with my son when he was young was that he could tell me in detail about something if he was telling it to me as a story. However if I asked him specific questions he was completely unable to answer. He has gotten better with this over the years though. Now as an 8th grader he *can* answer questions but he takes longer than your average bear.

[peacefully]

.

[onaclairadeluna]

Anyway, I'm just trying to suggest that in some cases, we might think a child can't remember something, but given a slightly different task to do, it turns out that indeed that kid may know the information but can't retrieve it given certain contexts. This complicates the idea of memory a bit, but I think it's a relevant distinction to make. If retrieval is not an issue, well then, it makes sense to go looking at other potential problems along the learning pathway.

 

I really appreciate everything that you are sharing about this. I have just now started to get DS evaluated. So I am finally getting so official "help". I am fairly certain that his retrieval issues are related to dyslexia which may or may not turn up in the evaluation since I have taken him through barton 10.

 

My son really couldn't answer direct questions. For many years. It was like looking into the sun. I just didn't do it. Still it was fairly obvious that at a fairly young age he seemed to have more general knowledge than me. So you can have retrieval problems and a pretty extraordinary memory.

 

I am still in the middle of the evaluation process but at this point I am not finding anything too startling or surprising.

 

As I have said I have just been winging it. But some things I have done with DS have been fairly effective. First off just talking. I have him explain things to me. He loves Magic and D and D so sometimes I just have him explain the rules. This is a particular challenge for him since if he doesn't do a good job I stop paying attention completely. So not only does he have to organize his thoughts he also has to pay attention to non-verbal cues that I give that might indicate I am daydreaming. Also sometimes on walks he likes to walk me through mathematical proofs and explain black holes. He can do all of this in his head (which is why I suspect that his retrieval issues are not working memory issues...but that will turn up in the evaluation) but I am not nearly as talented in following his train of thought. Again this poses a challenge for him so he has to walk me through it.

 

Or I'll just ask him to explain something interesting from history. He can go on for hours if he initiates it. But even in these situations when he is pretty fluent, he will get to a tricky bit where he can't think of the word or think of how to say something. So he gets plenty of practice trying to find words.

 

Another thing that really helped him was his complete love of math. He is so motivated to explain his thoughts. i have seen him blossom over the past years because of this.

 

About a year or so ago it seemed as if he would be able to actually answer questions so I started using SWB materials which actually have been quite useful. Some things are really easy for him and some quite hard. But he (and I ) have seen enough progress that we are plodding along. He is starting to actually be able to write it just takes a really long time. He really wants to write a graduate thesis but his writing is still very basic. I completely separate content from writing tasks, well not in math. He writes math very well. And I do have him write in content areas. I just don't evaluate it as "writing".

[peacefully]

.

[FairProspects]

One thing I noticed with my son when he was young was that he could tell me in detail about something if he was telling it to me as a story. However if I asked him specific questions he was completely unable to answer. He has gotten better with this over the years though. Now as an 8th grader he *can* answer questions but he takes longer than your average bear.

 

Isn't this the N-strength that the Eide's mention in Dyslexic Advantage? So, using narrative to respond would make sense because many dyslexics think in narrative rather than details.

[amo_mea_filiis.]

That is a really good point! Sleep. :sleep: It sounds so simple, but it's not. My ds shares a room with his brother--and his brother likes to stay up past bedtime reading with a small light on and doing assorted other things that disrupt a normal bedtime. It drives me crazy to hear him up there over an hour after I put him to bed. :glare: Ds 10 complains that his brother keeps him awake, and they both look tired in the morning. That alone isn't enough to cause all of ds 10's memory problems, but it can't be helping them either.

 

Probably not, but you'll never know until he's getting good sleep for the right amount of hours.

 

I know that my ds is in bed and asleep for 11-12 hours each night, but his sleep studies have shown that he doesn't get enough REM sleep and spends the most time in stage 3 when stage 2 would be normal.

 

I hesitate doing almost anything with my ds until we get this fixed (if it's fixable).

[PeterPan]

Isn't this the N-strength that the Eide's mention in Dyslexic Advantage? So, using narrative to respond would make sense because many dyslexics think in narrative rather than details.

 

Ok, as if I didn't have enough to do, now I need to RE-read DA... :D

[onaclairadeluna]

Isn't this the N-strength that the Eide's mention in Dyslexic Advantage? So, using narrative to respond would make sense because many dyslexics think in narrative rather than details.

 

Yes, exactly. But in addition to the advantage of being able to tell the whole story and grasp the big picture there is still the deficit when he needs to answer a question and especially when he needs to put his thoughts in writing. So we wind up working on two levels.

[peacefully]

.

[momsuz123]

Okay, some of what you are talking about lately is my dd. She is working with a slp who comes to our house. She explained to me that she sees this quite a bit - when my dd starts a conversation, she is in charge of it and can control the language. Therefore, she will be more likely to talk, etc. However, when someone else starts a conversation, my dd is not "in control" of it, and therefore, may "shut down" some because language - wise, it may be too much for her. My dd also likes to "fib" quite a bit. Again, I was told it isn't like my dd is trying to outright "lie", she is trying to control a conversation when she tells her little stories. I was told that we need to get dd to come out of her "little safe world", into the "real world" more.

 

Does any of this make sense?

[merry gardens]

Ok, as if I didn't have enough to do, now I need to RE-read DA... :D

Instead of just re-reading it and re-re-reading it, we should try to memorize it. :D

 

Now, thanks to Kelly's last post, "The Mislabeled Child" is also on my re-reading list. But I got that book from the library the first time I read it, so I'll have to track it down first.

[FairProspects]

My ds definitely has N-strengths (and I-strengths too), but other than the very comforting feeling of recognition that those chapters gave me, I didn't glean much that actually helped me with the deficits that accompany those N and I profiles.

 

This thread had me digging into my copy of The Mislabeled Child (also by the Eides) again. The chapter on memory, "Gone in Sixty Seconds," has some gems that is definitely of interest to those of us who want solid strategies to try with our kiddos. Since I've seen how much changing working memory has helped my child, I've been trying to call attention to that particular aspect of memory and learning, but this chapter has loads of information about memory in general. I'll share this bit about working memory, especially since I'm often asked about our SLP's exercises to improve working memory:

 

(emphasis mine)

 

*Just need to note here that our SLP included rhyming patterns and tongue twisters in our exercises, and her explanation was that the additional auditory discrimination that was needed to reproduce those patterns was a different "load" on working memory capacity. So our spans would start out straightforward, and then gradually introduce more auditory confusion, while continuing at the same level (same span length). So you can still "progress" even if you are not adding additional words.

 

There's more. This bit helps me understand why my ds does SO MUCH BETTER when we play games and do hands-on, out-of-the-box learning activities.

 

 

Basically, there's a gold mine here of information. Anyone else want to read their copy (you all have this one, right? ;)) and come back here to discuss? :D

 

Does that sound like dictation exercises to anyone else?

[peacefully]

.

[onaclairadeluna]

So I grabbed my copy of MLC last night and flipped through all the appropriate sections for my son. (Language, dyslexia, sensory processing, gifted)

 

Interesting about the dictation-working memory connection. One more reason that I think DS has no working memory problem as he could literally take paragraph long dictations from dickens with no problem and no previous practice.

 

Still when I ask a question he is completely blank. For him it was the narration that was impossible. He can actually do it now. He's in 8th grade. But he could not answer any sort of direct question about a text until very recently. And he still struggles with it.

 

I never did get through all of DA. But you know it was fantastic for DS. I handed him a copy and he read it cover to cover and told me all about it. He very strongly identified with the content of the book.

[LisaAnne]

subbing... DS has working memory problems- will read this thread tonight