help me identify this skill

[mamashark]

Part of my dd8's testing included a subtest that had her trying to guess an object based on a series of 5 clues that got progressively more specific. For each clue my daughter guessed a novel object without considering the sum of all the clues thus far. So what skill is it that has you synthesize information and come to a conclusion? 

So for example: if the first clue was something you wear,  the second clue was something made of leather, and the third clue was you wear it on your feet, and she guessed socks. So she's not putting the clues together to build a more accurate picture of what the object should be.

Searching for "synthesis of information" is getting me no where, so what is the skill that helps to build information synthesis?

[Lecka]

It could be.... gestalt thinking/gestalt processing.... or attributes or feature/function/class....?

[Lecka]

https://www.expandingexpression.com/

This is an example of something that can work on this..... it mentions:  defining and describing, making associations, stating functions of objects, and categorization ———— that could all be possibilities. 

The word like “synthesizing” is “gestalt,” but there are other synonyms used that I can’t think of right now.  

“Big picture thinking” is one, but there are other synonyms that would be good search terms that I’m not thinking of right now.  

[Lecka]

Central coherence!  That’s what I was trying to think of.  

[Lecka]

Also though she might have had trouble remembering all the clues, and then I don’t think it would be the same thing.

Just responding to the last clue given could be that as well?  

I think that can be working memory?

There are things I have seen then, where the child can’t think up a lot of possible items very easily.  

[Lecka]

Word retrieval?

[Lecka]

/curious what they say when you get to ask questions about the results

[mamashark]

12 minutes ago, Lecka said:

Also though she might have had trouble remembering all the clues, and then I don’t think it would be the same thing.

Just responding to the last clue given could be that as well?  

I think that can be working memory?

There are things I have seen then, where the child can’t think up a lot of possible items very easily.  

ok working memory was really low too so that could be a possibility.

[mamashark]

verbal reasoning was high, 

processing really low and working memory really low when asked to manipulate data - she can give basic digit spans back but when asked to manipulate the data and give it back in a different order her results bottomed out.

[PeterPan]

Has she had language testing or language issues? That's definitely a language issue.

Remind us who was doing the testing and what the test was? And what did they recommend?

Edited August 20, 2019 by PeterPan

[Pen]

Did she understand that she was supposed to be putting the clues together?

and have you ever played anything like 21 questions where she’d have had some prior experience doing that?

eta: if you have done so, can she do that appropriately for her age (choice of thing to guess at being reasonably simple, perhaps in room or part of her daily life).   If you never have, how about trying that out and seeing what happens, clearly explaining the way the game works, and maybe modeling how to play it or letting her team with someone if your family is big enough. 

it could be nothing other than not understanding what she was supposed to do and not having had any practice at that sort of thing

Edited August 21, 2019 by Pen

[PeterPan]

13 hours ago, mamashark said:

the first clue was something you wear,  the second clue was something made of leather, and the third clue was you wear it on your feet, and she guessed socks.

something you wear=category

made of leather = attributes

wear on feet = function

ANY person with proper language development should be able to do that. That's like saying you can't test someone's ability to make a sentence with prepositions if you haven't taught prepositions. If a person can't say "My hat is on the chair" the person has a language problem, not an instruction problem.

So it will be interesting to know what the test was and why they were doing it. But having filled out 8 zillion EF forms including under the author of one of the major EF forms, I can't see it. This is basic language stuff. If spectrum is on the table, it's the kind of language issues we'd expect. The ASD people will call it feature/function/class, while the SLPs call it attributes, function, category.

[Lecka]

Well, but she did give a correct answer if only considering the last question that was asked.  

If she got all the questions correct if only considering the last question, then she can do that part of it, at least.  

Edit:  I mean — if the whole question was “name something you wear on your feet,” and she said socks, then — she would have gotten a correct answer.  

Edited August 21, 2019 by Lecka

[PeterPan]

So there's a question for you, how common is it for a 6 yo with say ADHD and no DLD and no whatever not to be able to visualize or use some kind of strategy. To drop that much language is something my ds would have done, because the language was not computing and therefore it was just drop drop. But my dd, with that more typical low working memory, etc. and no DLD would have had ZERO issues with that.

Some things that look like working memory, like the ability to repeat a sentence, are actual directly linked to language development. We use our working memory with chunking, so if you have language issues you're holding JIBBERISH rather than holding chunks of processed information. 

[Pen]

 

10 hours ago, PeterPan said:

If a person can't say "My hat is on the chair" the person has a language problem, not an instruction problem.

 

If you wanted to elicit “My hat is on the chair” as a response, what would you tell me by way of instructions?   I am capable of saying that, but how would I know that it is what you want me to say if you were testing me, without giving me the actual sentence you want?

 

[PeterPan]

36 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

 

If you wanted to elicit “My hat is on the chair” as a response, what would you tell me by way of instructions?   I am capable of saying that, but how would I know that it is what you want me to say if you were testing me, without giving me the actual sentence you want?

 

You don't NEED to. That's the whole point of a test like the SPELT=structured photographic expressive language test. You give a picture prompt and set them up for it and a native speaker with no language disability will be FINE. Like sentence completion, you give the first part of the sentence and show them the picture with the content and they naturally do it. The person with the language disability might use some other construction, talk around it, etc. because they can't just crank it out. 

That's why tests like the CELF under-identify kids with language issues, because they provide models that bright kids can fake out and imitate. My ds can breeze through the CELF with it's idiotic multiple choice and models, but he BOMBS the SPELT. 

And that's why that first example can be a test, because it's been normed against a population, because they know what it correlates to (development, instruction, whatever). They do demographics when they norm things, so they know what it correlates to.

[mamashark]

9 hours ago, Lecka said:

Well, but she did give a correct answer if only considering the last question that was asked.  

If she got all the questions correct if only considering the last question, then she can do that part of it, at least.  

Edit:  I mean — if the whole question was “name something you wear on your feet,” and she said socks, then — she would have gotten a correct answer.  

no, it was a test that asked her to figure out the meaning of a made up word - so xyz is something you wear. xyz is something made of leather. xyz is something you wear on your feet, and the understood point was that each clue was to help her figure out more specifically what the object was. so in this case, xyz was "shoes".

[mamashark]

This was part of neuropsych testing due to tourettes and possible SLDs. But the psych who did it was not really used to working with parents who are teachers and who actually care - most of the recommendations were unhelpful for my purposes, especially since she got stuck on the executive function deficits (eg. take a parenting class to learn how to implement a token economy... I've got a kid with autism and you want to teach me how to implement a token economy?!?!) and didn't really break out suggestions for the stuff I found most interesting...but the testing results were very helpful. I've been processing them and going over the test results each day, thinking about how the pieces fit together and how they fit into what I'm seeing. 

I spent a bit of time yesterday researching my original question here and found a slew of skills that I want to focus on that can help. Thanks for providing the synonyms for me! basically the bottom line I've come up with is a whole list of language pieces that when put together help with this issue. 

[PeterPan]

Just to nitpick, it wasn't meaning of a made up word. It was figuring out the word what given the category, attributes, and function. We play this as "I Spy" with little children and it's built int games like 20 Questions. With my dd we had this little electronic toy and it would flash up yes/no questions going through those very things. It's a GAME for people with no language disabilities.

Go look at EET. Expanding Expression Toolhttps://www.expandingexpression.com/

 

[PeterPan]

4 minutes ago, mamashark said:

This was part of neuropsych testing

Yes, neuropsychs run language screening. So what all is on the table? She's 7, has spectrum been on the table? Not everyone demonstrating these issues is on the spectrum, but you're already walking there with ADHD + tourettes.

See what usually happens is neuropsychs write these evals, the kid is seen by the school IEP team, that team includes an SLP and IS=intervention specialist, and they know what to do with it. The parents don't, but the IEP team does. So your next move is to get an eval with an SLP who specializes in literacy to figure out if there are MORE language issues going on. 

I agree with you that you can do much of the intervention, but you would do well to continue the evals and dig deeper on language. You'll miss things for lack of testing and knowing what to work on. 

Edited August 21, 2019 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

When my ds was in that position, this is what I used. http://www.e4thai.com/e4e/images/pdf2/100_vocabulary_primary.pdf  Expanding Expression is pretty popular in the SLP world, but it doesn't go as deep as what my ds needed. But, you know, see what you think. And I used this Rothstein workbook as a spine, fleshing each chapter out with workbooks from https://www.linguisystems.com/Products/31856/spotlight-on-vocabulary-level-1-6book-set.aspx

If you go through Linguisystems, you'll find tons of stuff. But the reason you want that testing is you don't yet quite know how extensive the issues are. So what you're talking about is called "vocabulary" in the SLP world, which means way more than just I know a word. But there are also "concepts" (which aren't concepts at all but grammar and language junk) and syntax and semantics and narrative language and and and.

The other thing is that if you go forward without further language evals, you might work on something good and either over-emphasize or miss how you could weave it in. So your work will be more *efficient* if you get more complete language testing. For a school IEP, she would be seen by a team that would include an SLP. That neuropsych testing is the flag to tell them to do that. Mainer here is an IS, and she does this kind of intervention with her students too, sure. And you can do it, but you need more terms so you can know all the areas you need to be hitting.

Working memory is a funny thing to work on. A little bit helps, but it's also the kind of thing that grows with use, maintains with use, and drops with disuse. So there's not a lot of utility to raising it artificially or even working on it too much in isolation. You want to see the other language areas where it should have been occurring and work on them and weave them in.

The other thing to realize (that I didn't know when I started this, haha) is that if there's a test, there's a therapy material available for it. It's literally that linear, like flag on a test, use this. It doesn't look that way on the outside to us, but that's what the SLPs in the ps know. So they will look at that test and go use EET. Portions of the CELF (which I slam regularly) correlate to the GPP=Grammar Processing Program from Super Duper. You don't have to innovate or wonder, because the materials are directly available. 

I really like GPP btw. Fun, fast, nice start. Improved my ds' reading by bumping his language. The Grammar Processing Program

[Pen]

37 minutes ago, mamashark said:

no, it was a test that asked her to figure out the meaning of a made up word - so xyz is something you wear. xyz is something made of leather. xyz is something you wear on your feet, and the understood point was that each clue was to help her figure out more specifically what the object was. so in this case, xyz was "shoes".

 

And she repeatedly didn’t put the clues together? For multiple trials? 

 

[mamashark]

10 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

And she repeatedly didn’t put the clues together? For multiple trials? 

 

correct.

[mamashark]

37 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

So what all is on the table? She's 7, has spectrum been on the table? Not everyone demonstrating these issues is on the spectrum, but you're already walking there with ADHD + tourettes.

ASD is not on the table. And while I recognize some of the issues mirror asd, I also agree with the lack of an asd diagnosis. It's not a concern. 

She didn't get the adhd diagnosis - the psych could have diagnosed ADHD unspecified type, but she professionally disagrees with that and flat out told me she would diagnose an executive functioning disorder if that were an option, but since it's not, here are the ef skills to work on. But, I'd already identified the ef skills I needed to work on over the summer by getting my own resources to look at that and have already put in place many of the ideas she suggested for helping those. 

OCD and anxiety as a whole was ruled out.

She has already had the language testing with an SLP. so we have all that info as well. Globally speaking, we are basically looking at dyslexia and dysgraphia if we were to go back and pay for the academic testing, but even the psych said the only benefit of those tests at this point, in her opinion, is the label, which would be only helpful if we were putting her in public school. She felt like we could meet her needs at home without paying for the labels but said we could come back to her at any point and she'd do them if we wanted.

I've seen EET mentioned and I've looked at it before and I can't remember now why I decided against it. 

I'm weaving Braidy, Social Thinking, and Color my Conversation together right now, and working with her on Barton reading. I've got the Rothstein workbook and many of the linguisystem books to work through as well - we finished the categorizing book last school year and I attribute her scores on one of the tests that asked her to list things by category to my work with that since I knew it was an issue from language testing when she was 4. 

 

[PeterPan]

48 minutes ago, mamashark said:

She has already had the language testing with an SLP

What did she run and what did it turn up?

48 minutes ago, mamashark said:

I'm weaving Braidy, Social Thinking, and Color my Conversation together right now, and working with her on Barton reading.

Ok, so this is all AWESOME stuff. If your 7 yo needs Social Thinking, then there's more going on and you've just intervened enough that the psych isn't seeing it. My ds, now labeled ASD2, "passed" a pragmatic test (SLDT) at age 6 with a raw score of *1*. The expectations are very low.

How is her reading comprehension? We assumed with my ds that the reading would click when he could decode, and it was held back by the language issues. 

So it's pragmatic not to pay for the academic testing, but the dyslexia diagnosis would open the door for NLS/BARD. Is there something in your paper trail close enough that your ped will sign the forms? That's how we get all our audiobooks now, saves us a ton of $$$.

52 minutes ago, mamashark said:

I've got the Rothstein workbook and many of the linguisystem books to work through as well - we finished the categorizing book last school year and I attribute her scores on one of the tests that asked her to list things by category to my work with that since I knew it was an issue from language testing when she was 4. 

Good job!!! So maybe at this point move ST and CMC to once a week and move language work to daily.

Who did your language testing before that turned up the category issues? When was that last SLP eval? 

You know, the good thing here is you're on it. You know these things are issues. Sometimes what happens is things become more apparent with time. The thing to watch at this point is her reading comprehension, because Barton is NOT going to be enough there.

[mamashark]

2 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

What did she run and what did it turn up?

Ok, so this is all AWESOME stuff. If your 7 yo needs Social Thinking, then there's more going on and you've just intervened enough that the psych isn't seeing it. My ds, now labeled ASD2, "passed" a pragmatic test (SLDT) at age 6 with a raw score of *1*. The expectations are very low.

How is her reading comprehension? We assumed with my ds that the reading would click when he could decode, and it was held back by the language issues. 

So it's pragmatic not to pay for the academic testing, but the dyslexia diagnosis would open the door for NLS/BARD. Is there something in your paper trail close enough that your ped will sign the forms? That's how we get all our audiobooks now, saves us a ton of $$$.

Good job!!! So maybe at this point move ST and CMC to once a week and move language work to daily.

Who did your language testing before that turned up the category issues? When was that last SLP eval? 

You know, the good thing here is you're on it. You know these things are issues. Sometimes what happens is things become more apparent with time. The thing to watch at this point is her reading comprehension, because Barton is NOT going to be enough there.

Don't have much more time today, with an afternoon full of appointments and commitments, so I can't pull out the slp testing and quote it for you, but off the top of my head I remember it turned up "average" narration skills (on the TNL) but poor organization within the narratives, and low sequencing. phonological processing was actually dead average for her age - I was quite impressed, so the work we've done with Barton up to this point has worked (Barton level 1 was like pulling teeth, but once she got it, it stuck). Cause and effect was an issue, and pronunciation of the letter "R". I'm sure there are other things I can't remember at the moment, but those are the big ones that I can think of.

the pragmatic stuff is more for my asd son and older daughter who has severe anxiety issues. I am including this dd because it's easier, and the psych said it was a good idea to ensure that she had the social skills necessary to rule it out rather than to assume it's all language, even though she passed the pragmatic stuff ... but realistically it's mostly language for her, combined with personality because she can be shy in public.

Right now I'm doing ST twice a week, Braidy once a week (with heavy emphasis on the stuff the narrative language test showed as weak areas), and doing 10-15 minutes daily of targeted language work. Barton we do 30 minutes daily unless something comes up and prevents me from getting to it. Whenever I last ran the QRI on her in the spring, her comprehension was actually better than I expected for how poor her word-attack skills were. If she's familiar with the topic, she is able to apply a good amount of knowledge to what she's reading and make sense of it. 

The old SLP testing was the celf, done by an slp that focused more on her low mouth tone than anything else (she was PROMPT trained and got my non-verbal son speaking), she told me to watch for dyslexia and that she scored really low on being able to list items in a category. She was 4 at the time and is 8 now.

[PeterPan]

You can use Pickles to Penguins to target language stuff.

Sounds like you've got a lot on your plate! 

[kbutton]

15 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Some things that look like working memory, like the ability to repeat a sentence, are actual directly linked to language development. We use our working memory with chunking, so if you have language issues you're holding JIBBERISH rather than holding chunks of processed information. 

Yes, that's very true. When one of my kids was little, he would memorize things that were meaningful and he could understand, but if he didn't understand something, he refused to memorize it. (He was little enough--toddler--that he was choosing concrete stuff to memorize. Very cute.) I suspect it was just too much to hang onto if it didn't make sense to him.