Thoughts?

[BlsdMama]

I'm thinking of taking a trainer position for one of these companies.  Other than the fact that cognitive training absolutely fascinates me, they make no play or claim to remediation or tutoring.  

 

For myself, I've seen remediation work in my mild and moderate dyslexic kiddos.  I have.  But my severe/profound guy also has working memory issues.  Barton remediation IS working, but I'm curious what we'd see if we work on the working memory  and processing components in tandem with Barton.

 

Found this article:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/a-new-kind-of-tutoring-aims-to-make-students-smarter.html?_r=0

 

 

I'm curious, before I accept the position, to hear folks thoughts around here.

[geodob]

The key point is :

"We measure every student pre- and post-training with a version of the Woodcock-Johnson general intelligence test,†said Ken Gibson, who began franchising LearningRx centers in 2003,..."

What they basically do, is take all of the sub-tests used in the 'Woodcock-Johnson general intelligence test'?

Then develop some exercises to practice doing each sub-test.

Where if one intensively practices these sub-tests daily?

Of course when one then takes an official 'Woodcock-Johnson general intelligence test' ?

Then higher scores would be expected.

Having just been practicing them.

 

Though with these 'general intelligence IQ tests', the companies state that to take their test again?

Their should be at least a 6 month delay, and preferably a year.

As redoing it any earlier, will give a false higher score.

But they are talking about 6 months, not just last week or yesterday?

As the IQ score is just an average.

Just improving scores in some sub-tests, will raise the IQ score.

 

But you could develop your own company?

Where you can get explanations of all of the sub-tests, without buying the full test.

Then looking at each sub-tests, you could develop some basic exercises to practice each of them.

With some of the sub-tests, such as a Coding in Processing Speed?

It can be done in 2 different ways.

So that knowing the best way to do it, will make a major difference in the score.

 

Where coaching in how to do all of the IQ sub-tests, will increase the IQ score.

But if an IQ test is taken again later?

Studies have shown that to maintain the IQ score?

That coaching will need to be done again, to get achieve the same IQ score.

[Crimson Wife]

A family friend has a PhD. in neuroscience and he was involved with developing content for Lumosity. So that one and CogMed strike me as being more grounded in legit science, KWIM? Lumosity is a LOT cheaper since you don't have to go through a PhD. for it.

 

Here's a skeptical view: https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/10/09/brain-games-work/rXjTWOKUYK5UOiNQ6St0fN/story.html

[PeterPan]

I'd do the training in a heartbeat.  Our VT place does PACE (the previous name) and was one of the first places to do it.  They have AMAZING stories.  It's not at all like Cogmed, and if the issues are EF and how you actually apply your processing (auditory or visual) to learning, the results with PACE are likely to be more dramatic than Cogmed.  

 

You don't have to be perfect to get results with good EF work.  PACE is all EF work, which is why it gets improvement.

[merry gardens]

It sounds interesting. By working there you could get paid to learn techniques that they use there, and you could then determine if you found it worth the time and effort to use with your own. It's kinda like the other parents would be paying that place to let you use their children as guinea pigs.

 

Did you also want my thoughts on your working in general?

[BlsdMama]

Nope, absolutely not inviting thoughts on my working in general, else I'd have put it on the Chat board.  Personal decisions are not something I generally invite strangers to weigh in on on these particular forums.  ;)  It always ends unhappily somehow.

 

 

OhElizabeth - I appreciate your thoughts in particular.  I'd been researching Learning Rx, CogMed, etc.  We'd been looking into it for DS but it was seriously out of our league financially.

 

I'm excited about metronome work to be honest.

 

I was very concerned it was going to be remediation and after working with Barton pretty extensively I was very apprehensive.  However, this addresses EF work - auditory processing, working memory, longterm memory, processing speed, etc.  While I'm not sure that I agree with the philosophy of doing this as a pre-cursor to remediation (rather than concurrently) I think it will be invaluable for me to have.  I know that the 4yo DD is currently showing very similar working memory / EF stuff that DS showed at her age.  This seems uniquely suited at giving me a peek into cognitive training while giving me experience working with a variety of people.

[BlsdMama]

The key point is :

"We measure every student pre- and post-training with a version of the Woodcock-Johnson general intelligence test,†said Ken Gibson, who began franchising LearningRx centers in 2003,..."

What they basically do, is take all of the sub-tests used in the 'Woodcock-Johnson general intelligence test'?

Then develop some exercises to practice doing each sub-test.

Where if one intensively practices these sub-tests daily?

Of course when one then takes an official 'Woodcock-Johnson general intelligence test' ?

Then higher scores would be expected.

Having just been practicing them.

 

Though with these 'general intelligence IQ tests', the companies state that to take their test again?

Their should be at least a 6 month delay, and preferably a year.

As redoing it any earlier, will give a false higher score.

But they are talking about 6 months, not just last week or yesterday?

As the IQ score is just an average.

Just improving scores in some sub-tests, will raise the IQ score.

 

But you could develop your own company?

Where you can get explanations of all of the sub-tests, without buying the full test.

Then looking at each sub-tests, you could develop some basic exercises to practice each of them.

With some of the sub-tests, such as a Coding in Processing Speed?

It can be done in 2 different ways.

So that knowing the best way to do it, will make a major difference in the score.

 

Where coaching in how to do all of the IQ sub-tests, will increase the IQ score.

But if an IQ test is taken again later?

Studies have shown that to maintain the IQ score?

That coaching will need to be done again, to get achieve the same IQ score.

 

 

It's interesting.  Talking to the director, I was told most students (or adults) aren't doing this to jump IQ points.  Most want to increase the speed of their processing.  I have seen split reports but most agree that with intensive training, you can, essentially, create new pathways in the brain so that it works more efficiently.

 

I know that many studies are now showing that academic success are more greatly decided by working memory function than IQ.  This has been both an encouragement and EXTREME discouragement, depending on which of my children we're discussing.

[merry gardens]

If you decide to do this, I'd love to read about your experience with it.

[PeterPan]

Nope, absolutely not inviting thoughts on my working in general, else I'd have put it on the Chat board.  Personal decisions are not something I generally invite strangers to weigh in on on these particular forums.   ;)  It always ends unhappily somehow.

 

 

OhElizabeth - I appreciate your thoughts in particular.  I'd been researching Learning Rx, CogMed, etc.  We'd been looking into it for DS but it was seriously out of our league financially.

 

I'm excited about metronome work to be honest.

 

I was very concerned it was going to be remediation and after working with Barton pretty extensively I was very apprehensive.  However, this addresses EF work - auditory processing, working memory, longterm memory, processing speed, etc.  While I'm not sure that I agree with the philosophy of doing this as a pre-cursor to remediation (rather than concurrently) I think it will be invaluable for me to have.  I know that the 4yo DD is currently showing very similar working memory / EF stuff that DS showed at her age.  This seems uniquely suited at giving me a peek into cognitive training while giving me experience working with a variety of people.

Our place likes to do PACE as an intensive thing.  I forget if it's a week or a month or what (mainly because I have peanut butter cup brain and am wiped out after our IEP meeting today), but it's intensive.  It's not like they just dribble once a week for a year, kwim?  Here it's actually double the cost of Cogmed, which is why we haven't done it.  They want $3500 upfront and you get their top person, just you and the therapist, bam, bam, bam.  And that lady is AMAZING.  It's super intense, super directed.  

 

So those would be questions to ask.  But me, if I could get the training, oh yeah babe I'd be in there.  You're going to come out with all sorts of stuff you start applying to your kids.  Crazy useful.  But that's why the waiting on academics doesn't matter, because we're talking 2 weeks or something of intensive, not a whole year.  I forget now how long, but it's intensive.  They usually try to get people to schedule it during the summer.

 

Around here Cogmed is $1500.  I just see each one as so different, which each therapy approaching a different angle.  I have my dd doing neurofeedback right now, so we'll see what happens.  It's way too early to know what effect it will have.  She says it chills her brain out, much like she assumes meds feel.  She's doing Zengar neurofeedback.  There are more targeted, channel-specific therapies, and then there's Zengar which attempts to be more global.  I really have no clue, but the deep/targeted nf was out of reach financially.  This I can get locally for a price I can make happen (scrape, scrape the bucket).  She has these anxiety and sensory issues, and I'm hoping that doing a month or two of the neurofeedback will put her in a better position so she CAN do Cogmed.  I don't think she can actually handle Cogmed as-is.  Crazy thing is, the nf seems to be fluffing up the sensory.  I have no clue what to make of that.  I just know it seems to be a profound effect.  First session it lasted 3 hours.  I don't know how long it lasted this time.  She's sick today.  It's almost like her whole system is overloaded trying to process the information.  At least that's how it seems to me.  I'm just gonna let her read and heal I guess, dunno.  Weird.

 

So yes, oddities of the testing aside, I see only good coming from anything you learn of PACE/Learning RX.  

 

[PeterPan]

It's interesting.  Talking to the director, I was told most students (or adults) aren't doing this to jump IQ points.  Most want to increase the speed of their processing.  I have seen split reports but most agree that with intensive training, you can, essentially, create new pathways in the brain so that it works more efficiently.

 

I know that many studies are now showing that academic success are more greatly decided by working memory function than IQ.  This has been both an encouragement and EXTREME discouragement, depending on which of my children we're discussing.

I'm not sure, are they saying they have evidence to indicate processing speed jumps?  

 

You know when we did VT, it seemed like dd's *visual* processing speed bumped amazingly.  However I'm not sure that translates into school work processing speed and do your spanish and math homework processing speed, kwim?  There you have so many things that have to connect.  So if they target a factor, get it faster, and then test it, that's all well and dandy.  I'm just thinking visual processing bumps might not improve language processing speed or other things, kwim?

[BlsdMama]

I don't know what I'll see. I am thinking of it this way:

 

I tutor DS1, DD2, and DS2 in Barton.

 

DS1 has a mind-boggling quick processing speed, and some awesome memory and working memory skills.  He absorbs new information like water.

DD2 does awesome.

DS2 is a bright boy but has seriously impaired working memory.  To get Barton to S-O-A-K into him takes incredible effort.  He has a tiny working memory - so a very small tray on which to put information to "play" with and it means we teach and re-teach the same information.

 

I'm curious - if we can make his "tray" bigger, then ideally he can "hold" information - more of it and longer, so that we can work with it.

 

I don't foresee actual IQ jumps.  But then again, DS doesn't need that.  He's got the IQ.  And his processing isn't slow.

 

But my curiousity is piqued and I really believe he is THAT kid this was meant for - stretch the working memory through additional exercises so that he can "hold" information given in tutoring in order to gain a skill, in this case, reading.

 

 

I am left to wonder if this is why it's such a mixed bag of reviews?

 

You have parents hoping this will, essentially, do the job tutoring is supposed to do? 

Or kids are struggling academically for Reasons A, B, C, or D - but this would only suit Reasons C or D sufficiently WITHOUT tutoring  concurrently or after.  And, yet, the expectations are that this would fulfill the goal.

 

Does that make sense?

 

The excitement of getting to work with other people's brains, especially adults, is so thrilling to me, it's unbelievable.  I have to admit I still REALLY love homeschooling.  I do.  And  I LOVE being with my kids.  But the idea of 15-20 hours a week doing something like this just really lights my fire.  I also think it will create a personal challenge to do all this with Tim at home.  Win.  Win.  ;)

[LaughingCat]

DD got like 5% on working memory in the speech testing she did.  I have an old PACE workbook that I found at a library sale.  Exercises from that plus the metronome work has been part of my 'bits and pieces' made up stuff I have been doing with DD the last year or so.   I think it has been very helpful to her working memory to do activities where you have to do multiple things at once -- and especially if I change the activities to target areas that she struggles with most which I did due to the various studies showing that often these things do not generalize (so for example, changed numbers to words to target reading). 

 

 

[geodob]

Though perhaps we should have a discussion about what working memory actually is?

Where we actually have a separate working memory for each sense.

Which use in different parts of the brain.

The primary ones are auditory, visual and spacial, which are classed as 'Cognitive', because they can be used for 'thinking'.

Each of these begin development from birth, and involve 'acquiring the skills' to use each of them.

As the skills with each develop, another part in the mid-brain, develops the ability to merge them together.

Where this developmental process typically takes around 8 years.

 

While each type of sensory working memory, is constantly processing information, that comes and goes and is discarded.

But what it can also do, is use a 'Capture process' to capture a segment.

It then uses a 'refresh/recall process', that will pass the segment to short term memory.

Where multiple segments can be briefly stored.

Which can then be recalled into a combined working memory, and form a pattern of associations.

That can then use a process to begin integrating it into long term memory.

 

So that to 'improve working memory'?

The part or parts in the process that need improvement and further development, need to be identified.

[BlsdMama]

So, I attended the intial training this weekend.  I have to admit I'm impressed.   I can't wait to see the actual application over weeks.  I was able to see the THINK program and the READ program and I admit I believe the THINK program is the superior program.  

[Lecka]

Sounds cool!

[PeterPan]

Well make sure you teach us what you learn!  Or are you sworn to secrecy?  :)

[Mom22ns]

I'm excited for you. I'd do it! It sounds like a wonderful opportunity. Please continue to keep us posted. I'd love to hear more. I'd also love to find something similar here!

[BlsdMama]

I'll keep you posted.  I'll be honest it is entirely based on their curriculum.  Because I've never even looked into this I don't know what else is out there!  I'm excited!  Observation all week this week, two different trainers, a few different kiddos.  Very fun!!

[drjuliadc]

Well, they know both that antisaccades are good for frontal lobe function (executive function), and that interactive metronome is good for it, that is impressive. I learned about those through chiropractic neurology training and I don't know how common that knowledge is. I didn't recognize the names of the other techniques, so now I have to find out what they are.