Assistive technology: Samsung Galaxy Core Advance

Samsung Electronics introduced a trio of accessories that are designed to help users who are disabled and visually impaired, those with partial or greater loss of vision.

Their smartphones can be transformed in this way into tools that enable easier handling of messages and more.

The three newcomers are called the Ultrasonic Cover, Optical Scan Stand, and Voice Label.

The three are designed for the Galaxy Core Advance mobile device.

Samsung said that the accessories are already available and are offered separately from the device.

To be sure, smartphone handling, not to mention struggles reading small-screen text, have been barriers for those with special needs for vision support.

Back in December, Samsung had already revealed its intentions of providing an Android smartphone with accessibility options.

Assistive technology was on its agenda. The company referred to the Core Advance, which it said would be available early 2014.

At the time, it spoke of an Optical Scan which "can automatically recognize text from an image and read it aloud to disabled and visually impaired users."

Samsung officially described the three on Friday as the Ultrasonic Cover, which allows users in unfamiliar places to detect obstacles and navigate by sending an alert through a vibration or TTS feedback.

"By holding the Cover in front of the user," said the announcement, "it can enhance a visually impaired user's awareness of their surroundings by sensing the presence of a person or object up to two meters away."

The Optical Scan Stand positions the device to focus on printed materials; doing so automatically activates the Optical Scan application, which recognizes text from an image and reads it aloud to the user.

With the Voice Label, users can make notes and tag voice labels on-the-go.

"With NFC technology enabling a seamless connection to their smartphones, users can record, stop and access their notes.

This feature can also help a user distinguish how to use electronics by allowing them to record a short explanation."

In the United States alone, approximately 10 million people are blind or visually impaired, though estimates vary.

Samsung said the accessories are the result of research and in-depth interviews, resulting in their being specially designed with the needs of specific communities in mind.

Among the tech sites responding favorably to Friday's announcement TechCrunch made the point that "these hardware add-ons really show Samsung is committed to provided the best phone experience possible for those who might ordinarily find smartphone operation frustrating."

Hearing: Brain mechanisms makes the auditory system sensitive to behaviourally relevant sounds

How do we hear? More specifically, how does the auditory center of the brain discern important sounds – such as communication from members of the same species – from relatively irrelevant background noise?

The answer depends on the regulation of sound by specific neurons in the auditory cortex of the brain, but the precise mechanisms of those neurons have remained unclear.

Now, a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has isolated how neurons in the rat's primary auditory cortex (A1) preferentially respond to natural vocalizations from other rats over intentionally modified vocalisations (background sounds).

A computational model developed by the study authors, which successfully predicted neuronal responses to other new sounds, explained the basis for this preference.

The research is published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. Rats communicate with each other mostly through ultrasonic vocalisations (USVs) beyond the range of human hearing.

Maria N. Geffen

Although the existence of these USV conversations has been known for decades, "the acoustic richness of them has only been discovered in the last few years," said senior study author Maria N. Geffen, PhD, assistant professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery at Penn.

That acoustical complexity raises questions as to how the animal brain recognizes and responds to the USVs.

"We set out to characterize the responses of neurons to USVs and to come up with a model that would explain the mechanism that makes these neurons preferentially responsive to these relevant sounds."

Geffen and her colleagues obtained recordings of USVs from two rats kept together in a cage, then played the recordings to a separate group of male rats, while their neuronal responses were acquired and recorded.

The researchers also used USV recordings that were modified in several ways, such as having background sounds filtered out and being played backwards and at different speeds to mimic unimportant background noise.

"We found that neurons in the auditory cortex respond strongly and selectively to the original ultrasonic vocalisations and not the transformed versions we created," says Geffen. "

"Using the data collected on the responses of A1 neurons to various USVs, the researchers developed a computational model that could predict the activity of an individual neuron based on the pitch and duration of the USV. "

"Geffen observes that "the details of their responses could be predicted with high accuracy." It was possible to determine which aspects of the acoustic input best drove individual neurons.

Remarkably, it turned out that the acoustic parameters that worked best in driving the neuronal responses corresponded to the statistics of the natural vocalizations rats produce.

The work makes clear for the first time, says Geffen, "the mechanisms of how the auditory system picks out behaviorally relevant sounds, such as same species communication signals, and processes them more effectively than less relevant sounds.

This information is fundamental in understanding how sound perception helps animals survive. We conclude that neurons in the auditory cortex are specialized for processing and efficiently responding to natural and behaviourally relevant sounds."

The Parts of a Listener

More pictures at PinInterest

ADD vs APD: When an Attention Issue is Really an Auditory Issue

When your child is struggling in school, you want to get to the root of the issue as quickly as possible. Nowadays there is more awareness about a wide spectrum of learning problems.

Most teachers receive some training about the major diagnoses, and educational psychologists have a full toolkit of diagnostic assessments.

Once you have a name for the symptoms you are seeing, plans can be made to ensure that the education provided is appropriate for a child’s needs.

But what happens if you suspect that the diagnosis your child receives is the wrong

ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is a familiar term to most parents. ADD diagnoses have been on the rise for the last few decades. However, there is a lesser known disorder, with a similar list of symptoms, which may be overlooked: APD (Auditory Processing Disorder).

APD may initially present as an attention deficit issue, but in reality it has nothing to do with a child’s ability to sit still. Rather, APD stems from a weakness in the ability of the brain to process the sounds it receives.

This specific weakness can be either acquired through brain injury or illness, or genetically inherited.

Symptoms

• ADD and APD share a number of symptoms, such as:
• Struggling to focus in a noisy environment
• Fidgety and easily distracted
• Showing some aggression or even isolation socially
• Difficulty following directions
• Lower academic performance
• Zoning out in a conversation

Each of these external symptoms has a different internal cause, depending on the diagnosis. Both can in turn cause reading problems, and both appear in the 7 Main Causes of Reading Difficulty (video).



Children with ADD struggle with the above symptoms because there is insufficient activity in the frontal lobe to regulate the strong neuronal activity in the cerebral cortex.

Without the necessary control over the cerebral cortex, the activity there is just unregulated ‘brain noise’ of neuronal chaos.

Children with APD, on the other hand, struggle with these symptoms because the world around them sounds ‘foggy’ or unclear.

A child with APD will have perfect hearing; the problem lies in the brain’s interpretation of incoming sounds, not the hearing mechanism itself.

You can imagine how not being able to properly understand what people are saying could lead to all of the above behaviours, and then some!

You can read the full article here at Easy read System

ADHD at School: Help Your Children to Learn!

One of the frustrations for teachers and parents of children with ADHD is getting a child to stop, listen, and understand what is being taught or asked of him.

These tips and strategies will enable students to listen and learn in school and at home.

Tools for Teachers

• Get your students' attention! Clap out a rhythm and have your students clap the rhythm back until the class is quiet. This signals that it is time to move to the next activity. During group lessons, keep students involved by asking them questions. Play music or sing a song to keep them focused on the material being taught.
• Repeat it back. When giving instructions, limit the number of steps involved and have the students repeat the steps back to you, one at a time. Use the words first, next, and last to give order and structure.
• Go beyond textbooks. Relate concepts to real-life experiences through visuals, sign language, or gestures. Bring vocabulary words and stories to life by giving students examples from everyday life. If you are starting a story about a supermarket, bring in items that you buy there.
• Make directions concrete. Make sure your commands and directions are precise. "Do careful work" or "Be respectful" are too vague. Be specific in what you expect to see: "Eyes looking at me, bottoms in your chairs, book open to page 21, and desks cleared except for a pencil."
• Take small steps. Read a few pages of an article or story at a time. Teach students how to stop and ask themselves questions about what they have read. Allow them to draw a picture or write a key word on a sticky note and attach it to the page.
• Use attention-getting strategies. Make your voice go up or down, or make it louder or softer while doing a read-aloud or giving directions. Buy a garden glove and write a story element on each finger.

Pointers for Parents

• Keep it predictable. Be consistent with the words you use to give directions, and stick to established schedules in your household. This will increase a child's listening comprehension because he knows what to expect and feels secure and calm.
• Show them what you want them to do. Walk through the steps of a task. Check for understanding of directions. Write down the task you want done (in words or pictures) and give it to your child for reference.
• Check in with a child to make sure he isn't tuning out. Before, during, and after chores, homework, or a task, have your child tell you specifically what he is doing. This continuous reminder of the task at hand keeps your child focused. It may seem redundant, but it works!
• Move to remember. Get your child up and moving to help with listening skills. Use hand gestures, exercises, or dance moves to help him remember what to do.
• Help a child recall. If your child is watching TV, ask her about what she is watching. When your child gets off the phone, ask him what he talked about -- and, above all, don't interrupt.

To read the full article with helpful links visit here

Dyslexia: Cause may be different than previously known

Iris Berent

New research has argued that dyslexia may result from impairment of a different linguistic system than previously thought.

Speech perception engages at least two linguistic systems: the phonetic system, which extracts discrete sound units from acoustic input, and the phonological system, which combines these units to form individual words.

Previously, researchers generally believed that dyslexia was caused by phonological impairment, but results from the current study, led by Iris Berent of Northeastern University in Boston, suggest that the phonetic system may actually be the cause.

“Our findings confirm that dyslexia indeed compromises the language system, but the locus of the deficit is in the phonetic, not the phonological system, as had been previously assumed,” says Berent.

In the study, Hebrew-speaking college students had difficulty discriminating between similar speech sounds, but had no problem tracking abstract phonological patterns, even for novel words, suggesting that the phonological system is intact but the phonetic system is compromised.

“Our research demonstrates that a closer analysis of the language system can radically alter our understanding of the disorder, and ultimately, its treatment,” concluded Berent.

Read the full article here

The study has been published in the open access journal PLOS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044875

Assistive listening devices drive neuroplasticity in children with dyslexia

Children with dyslexia often exhibit increased variability in sensory and cognitive aspects of hearing relative to typically developing peers.

Assistive listening devices (classroom FM systems) may reduce auditory processing variability by enhancing acoustic clarity and attention.

We assessed the impact of classroom FM system use for 1 year on auditory neurophysiology and reading skills in children with dyslexia.

FM system use reduced the variability of subcortical responses to sound, and this improvement was linked to concomitant increases in reading and phonological awareness.

Moreover, response consistency before FM system use predicted gains in phonological awareness. A matched control group of children with dyslexia attending the same schools who did not use the FM system did not show these effects.

Assistive listening devices can improve the neural representation of speech and impact reading-related skills by enhancing acoustic clarity and attention, reducing variability in auditory processing.

Read the full article here

A Profile of Paula Tallal Co-Director, Center for Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience

A Profile of Paula Tallal, Co-Director, Center for Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience & Professor II. Her Faculty is the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience

Correcting Language Problems Through Neuroplasticity

Similar to a traveler who unknowingly sets out on the wrong route and needs to be redirected, the brain's plasticity can be utilized to guide the development of neural networks to correct language learning problems.

That key finding and insights into the brain's auditory processing system by Paula Tallal, Rutgers Board of Governors Professor of Neuroscience, has helped to bring positive change to hundreds of thousands of children worldwide who struggle with language.

With her co-researchers, Tallal helped to devise a revolutionary technique and software program - Fast ForWord - to assist children with establishing and strengthening the neural networks for language development.

For more than 30 years, Tallal, co-director of the Rutgers Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, has been studying the connections between auditory processing, attention, memory and language learning.

What her research has shown is that timing is critically important for learning language and speech. The central problem for many children who struggle with language, including those with dyslexia, is that their brains have difficulty perceiving rapidly successive acoustic changes, such as the difference between "da" and "ba."

Tallal and her co-researchers hypothesized that the brain's neuroplasticity could be used to rewire neural networks to increase that processing speed or to "fire and wire" as she describes it. 

Neuroplasticity refers to the fact that the brain, rather than being molded and set, is able to reorganize itself in response to new situations or changes in the environment.

In 1996, she and co-researcher Michael Merzenich, professor emeritus, University of California, San Francisco, founded Scientific Leaning Corporation to bring their research out of the lab to help children who struggle with language.

The result was Fast ForWord, a computer-based program that corrects auditory processing problems by pushing the brain to handle auditory information at faster and faster speeds. The software, with an 80 percent success rate, has been used by children in more than 40 countries.

In her research, Tallal found that many children who struggle with language have a listening "window" that is slower than 1/4 second long.

Yet to differentiate fast-changing sounds, the brain needs to be able to perceive differences at the millisecond range to learn the smaller sounds inside of words, the phonemes.

If auditory information could be slowed down, Tallal theorized, it should become easier for children with processing delays to learn those differences.

That instead of mistaking "cat" for "tat," for example, they could learn to hear the discrete changes and if that information then could be presented at increasingly faster rates, their brains could be remodeled to make learning language easier and permanent.

That is just what Fast ForWord and the team's related learning tools accomplish. As shown by fMRI studies, the brains of children who have used the program develop the same firing patterns as children who do not struggle with language.

Her current research is focused on the neural and genetic bases of language development, and early detection methods for language learning difficulties.

In research that followed a set of babies across several years, she and her team found that identifying how fast the brain can organize simple incoming auditory information at very young ages is the best predictor of successful language development.

Such findings could open the way for earlier correction methods to spare children the struggles so many experience because of processing delays.

Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines

This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early reading.

Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described.

Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading.

Considerations for assessing children's phonological awareness are discussed, and descriptions of available measures are provided.

Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream

Bow, bow, bow your boat
bently bown the beam.
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily;
Bife is but a beam.

Sow, sow, sow your soat
sently sown the seam.
Serrily, serrily, serrily, serrily;
Sife is sut a seam.

Activities like substituting different sounds for the first sound of a familiar song can help children develop phonological awareness, a cognitive substrate to reading acquisition.

Becoming phonologically aware prepares children for later reading instruction, including instruction in phonics, word analysis, and spelling (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Chard, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998).

The most common barrier to learning early word reading skills is the inability to process language phonologically (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989).

Moreover, developments in research and understanding have revealed that this weakness in phonological processing most often hinders early reading development for both students with and without disabilities (Fletcher et al., 1994).

No area of reading research has gained as much attention over the past two decades as phonological awareness.

Perhaps the most exciting finding emanating from research on phonological awareness is that critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed through carefully planned instruction, and this development has a significant influence on children's reading and spelling achievement (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1991; O'Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1993).

Despite the promising findings, however, many questions remain unanswered, and many misconceptions about phonological awareness persist.

For example, researchers are looking for ways to determine how much and what type of instruction is necessary and for whom.

Moreover, many people do not understand the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics.

Still others are uncertain about the relationship between phonological awareness and early reading.

Read more of this article here: Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines | LD Topics | LD OnLine

Hearing Disability Linked To Poor Touch Sensitivity

Touch and hearing are very distinct, but German scientists have found a possible genetic link between the two sensory systems.

Superficially, the two senses might seem worlds apart, but both rely on the ability to translate motions - vibrations in the ear and movement and pressure on the skin - into signals to the brain. A common set of molecules or mechanisms might be at work.

To determine if touch sensitivity can be inherited genetically, Henning Frenzel of the Max-Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine and his colleagues first examined 100 pairs of fraternal and identical twins in a study outlined in the journal PLoS Biology.

They tested the twins on two kinds of touch sensitivity traits: "vibration detection threshold," or how low a vibration the subject could detect with their pinky finger; and "tactile acuity," or the ability to distinguish between two pressure points on the skin that are very close together.

Since the identical twins are genetically identical and the fraternal twins share up to 50 percent of the same genes, any genetic effect on touch should be more pronounced in the former.

Next, Frenzel and his team calculated the heritability of the two traits, a figure that explains the degree to which genetic variation contributed to the variation in the traits seen in the subjects. On average, 28 percent of the differences in tactile acuity and 52 percent of the differences in vibration detection could be chalked up to genetic influence.

Second Experiment
In a second experiment, the scientists found that some - but not all - of a population of young people that were born deaf also had impaired tactile acuity. But since there are about 70 known genes that are involved in hearing impairment, the researchers wanted to focus on a smaller group of genes to test the link between hearing and touch impairment.

Third Experiment - Usher syndrome
The scientists next examined patients with Usher syndrome - a hereditary condition that causes both hearing and visual impairment. They zeroed in on USH2A, one of the nine known genes that, when mutated, cause Usher syndrome.

Of the Usher patients studied, the 19 individuals that had a mutation in USH2A had both impaired hearing and poor touch sensitivity. It's possible then, that this gene may play a role in both touch and sound.

"Our next task will be to investigate some of these other cases to see if they are also correlated with problems in touch," senior author Gary Lewin said in a statement Tuesday. "This will give us a better understanding of the genetic mechanisms that underlie both types of perception."

Autism: Why Some Children ‘Bloom’ and Overcome Their Disabilities

A new study offers some good news for families with autism. Most children affected by the disorder do not have intellectual disabilities, the study finds, and even among the severely low-functioning, about 10% may improve dramatically over time, with some growing out of their diagnosis by their teens.

The study tracked nearly 7,000 autistic children born in California between 1992 and 2001. The group included most of the children who received an autism diagnosis in the state during that time period.

The kids were followed from diagnosis to age 14 or the oldest age they had reached by the time the data collection was concluded.

The researchers found that 63% of the children did not have intellectual disabilities. Although autism is known to cause cognitive deficits in some children, it is also associated with certain enhanced intellectual abilities, and some affected children have extremely high IQs.

About one-third of the study group were considered low- to low/medium-functioning in terms of communication and social skills, meaning that they may have trouble talking, interacting with others or socializing and making friends with peers.

High-functioning kids with autism, meanwhile, can communicate effectively with others, maintain friendships and are willing to engage in social pursuits.

While the highest-functioning children tended to show the most improvement over time in the California study, about 10% of those who started out in the low-functioning group also moved into the highest group by age 14.

“The critical finding is that when you look at those children that this study refers to as ‘bloomers’, the children who seemed very low-functioning at the beginning and then did extremely well, they [tend not to] have any intellectual disabilities,” says Rahil Briggs, assistant professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she was not associated with the research.

Low-functioning children without intellectual disabilities were twice as likely to “bloom” as those who had cognitive deficits.

Briggs adds that another “very key” factor is that the mothers of the kids who bloomed tended to be more educated and not minorities.

This suggests that low-income immigrant or minority families may not be receiving the services and support for their children that educated, affluent parents are able to access more easily.

With developmental disorders, the earlier a child receives help, the more likely he or she is to overcome disabilities.

Early intervention matters because the brain is remarkably vulnerable early in life, built to shape itself to the environment it initially faces. “The young brain is disproportionately receptive to input, whether positive or negative,” says Briggs.

“That’s why young children can learn a second language easily and why early exposure to domestic violence and toxic stress are so incredibly damaging.”

If autistic children receive intervention before such coping mechanisms as repetitive behaviours and extreme social withdrawal are firmly entrenched, for example, their innate oversensitivity to their environment is far less likely to become or remain disabling, and their other abilities and gifts can flourish.

If these children are reached early enough, “we can actually start to change brain functioning if we provide the right kind of repetitive and focused intervention,” Briggs says.

Parents Need to be Aggressive Champions
The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that doctors screen children for autism at their 18-month well-child visit. Briggs adds that parents must become aggressive champions for their children.

“So much can depend on how good that parent is at advocating for the child,” says Briggs, noting that parents need to be aware not only of what services are available, but also which ones are best, which are not helpful and how to get the best care.

“That puts an incredible burden on parents,” she acknowledges. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting last week that autism now affects 1 in 88 children, it is becoming a burden shared by more and more American families.

Briggs says that the findings in the new study reflect the types of developmental trajectories she sees in children in her practice as director of the Healthy Steps program at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx (NY), which helps disadvantaged families access numerous services, including autism therapies, through their pediatricians’ office visits.

She describes working with a 5-year-old autistic boy and his family. The family said he would come home from kindergarten crying, but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

Finally, he described how he felt while he waited for his mother to pick him up in the school’s cafeteria:
“There were so many echoes bouncing off the walls that it felt like people were having a party in my head and they wouldn’t turn down the music,” he said.

Identifying the problem led Briggs to enroll the boy in listening therapy, which helped him cope with his sensitivity to sounds.

When such sensory issues, which are common in autism, can be mitigated, children become far less stressed and far better able to learn other skills like social interaction and communication.

Most children from disadvantaged backgrounds aren’t able to get these kinds of services, however. “If we still see these huge differences in children with autism based on socioeconomic factors, we clearly don’t have enough programs or haven’t made them available enough,” Briggs says.

The research was published in Pediatrics.

How Do Students with learning Disabilities Learn?

In this insightful interview, Associate Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College, Barbara Hong defines what a learning disability is, and tells us what elements we should start looking for, when analyzing educational websites to ensure children with learning disabilities are integrated in the educational process.

Listen up: Does Abnormality in auditory processing underlie dyslexia

People with dyslexia often struggle with the ability to accurately decode and identify what they read.

Although disrupted processing of speech sounds has been implicated in the underlying pathology of dyslexia, the basis of this disruption and how it interferes with reading comprehension has not been fully explained.

Now, new research published by Cell Press in the December 22 issue of the journal Neuron finds that a specific abnormality in the processing of auditory signals accounts for the main symptoms of dyslexia.

"It is widely agreed that for a majority of dyslexic children, the main cause is related to a deficit in the processing of speech sounds," explains senior study author, Dr. Anne-Lise Giraud and Franck Ramus from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France.

"It is also well established that there are three main symptoms of this deficit:

• difficulty paying attention to individual speech sounds, 
• a limited ability to repeat a list of pseudowords or numbers, and 
• a slow performance when asked to name a series of pictures, colors, or numbers as quickly as possible.

However, the underlying basis of these symptoms has not been elucidated."

Dr. Giraud and colleagues examined whether an abnormality in the early steps of auditory processing in the brain, called "sampling," is linked with dyslexia by focusing on the idea that an anomaly in the initial processing of phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can be used to make a word, might have a direct impact on the processing of speech.

The researchers found that typical brain processing of auditory rhythms associated with phonemes was disrupted in the left auditory cortex of dyslexics and that this deficit correlated with measures of speech sound processing.

Further, dyslexics exhibited an enhanced response to high-frequency rhythms that indirectly interfered with verbal memory.

It is possible that this "oversampling" might result in a distortion of the representation of speech sounds.

"Our results suggest that the left auditory cortex of dyslexic people may be less responsive to modulations at very specific frequencies that are optimal for analysis of speech sounds and overly responsive to higher frequencies, which is potentially detrimental to their verbal short-term memory abilities," concludes Dr. Giraud.

"Taken together, our data suggest that the auditory cortex of dyslexic individuals is less fine-tuned to the specific needs of speech processing."

What is up with Noises? The Science and Mathematics of Sound, Frequency, and Pitch - YouTube

Mathemagician Vi Hart creates another brilliant stop-motion movie, this time exploring the science and mathematics of sound, frequency and pitch. From Pythagoras to the anatomy of the ear, Hart uses her signature playful hand-illustrations to reveal how simple mathematical ratios make pleasing melodies.

Speechless: Arcola Theatre London

An extraordinary story of two girls struggle to be heard

Shared Experience (Bronte, After Mrs Rochester, Jane Eyre) presents the astonishing story of identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons.

Refusing to speak to adults, the twins communicate in their own private language, their only relationship being an intense and turbulent bond with each other. 

Speechless is a powerful portrayal of the twins secret world and their struggle to find a voice against all odds.

The winner of a Fringe First Award 2010, Speechless is directed and co-written by Artistic Director of Shared Experience, Polly Teale. 

Celebrated for her potent visual and imaginative style, Polly won the Evening Standard Award for Best Director for her own play After Mrs Rochester, which also won the Time Out Award for Best West End Production.

Arcola Theatre London

BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Podcast; dyslexia - can it be an advatage

Can dyslexia sometimes be an advantage? Presented by Jane Garvey.

Click on the link to hear the Radio 4 podcast
.

Dr Ron Minson: Integrated Listening

Ron Minson, MD had tried all the educational/medical solutions available and was still not able to help their daughter overcome the depression which resulted from a lifetime of dyslexia.

Dr. Minson’s background was traditional medicine– but the urgency of the situation led him to try something new.

The therapy showed signs of success within weeks and by the end of the 3-month program his daughter’s reading and organizational abilities had improved significantly.

More importantly, the depression which had held her back for years finally lifted

Based on clinically proven outcomes, iLs programs strengthen existing pathways and create new neural connections/pathways in the brain (“neuroplasticity”).

As these neurological connections grow stronger, language skills and emotional/psychological functions, such as self-confidence and regulation, also tend to improve.

The improvements in brain function are based on the premise that our higher brain functions – the “cortical functions” such as language, cognitive skills, socialization – rely and depend upon how well sensory input is received and processed as it enters the central nervous system and is relayed to the upper brain. iLs improves processing at both the sub-cortical and cortical levels.

iLs has a global effect on the brain and central nervous system, influencing the following systems: balance, visual, auditory, motor, coordination, behavior and emotional regulation. As a result, it is successfully implemented for a wide variety of conditions:

• Learning difficulties such as reading, spelling, math, auditory processing and attention
• Sensory processing and integration
• Stress, sleep, emotional regulation and mood problems
• Those with autism and neuro-developmental difficulties

Find out more about ILS here on their website

Henry Winkler, the Fonz in Happy Days, Honoured with UK OBE

Henry Winkler, who played the Fonz in the classic US sitcom Happy Days, has been appointed an honorary OBE for his educational work on dyslexia in the UK.

Winkler received the honour at the British embassy in Washington DC.

The actor-turned-children's author, who was diagnosed with dyslexia as an adult, said he was "overwhelmed" to have his work recognised.

In the past two years, he has toured schools in the UK, talking about the learning disability.

Winkler told BBC Breakfast he was delighted with the "unexpected" honour.

"I got a letter from the Queen saying she graciously agreed to confer on me the OBE," he said.
'Inspiration'

He is the author of the Hank Zipzer children's book series, which features a young dyslexic protagonist.
Undated file photo of the cast of the television series, Happy Days Winkler shot to fame playing Arthur Fonzarelli (centre) in Happy Days

Zipzer's adventures are based on Winkler's own childhood struggles with school and the resulting bullying.

The author said visiting UK schools was "one of his favourite things to do".

"I walk into the room and ask if anybody has trouble in school and maybe one or two people raise their hands. By the time I've read to them from Hank Zipzer... everybody wants to be dyslexic.

"We say our goodbyes just hugging. It's very touching."

British ambassador Nigel Sheinwald presented the OBE to Winkler during the ceremony at the embassy.

Mr Sheinwald said: "Through [Winkler], thousands of young people have seen a role model and an inspiration for overcoming their learning challenges."

Winkler shot to fame playing Arthur Fonzarelli - a leather-jacket clad, motorcycle-riding, ladies' man, who was the epitome of "cool" - in Happy Days, which ran over a decade from 1974.

The Queen makes honorary awards to non-British citizens on the advice of the UK Foreign Office. It is not clear whether she is a fan of the Fonz.

Why Current In-the-Ear Hearing Aids Fail

Hearing aids have improved greatly over recent years, but they continue to be a surprisingly frustrating experience for new wearers.

Clearly, today’s hearing aids are tiny, nearly invisible in fact, and they amplify sound and are able to present a higher range of frequencies, but they have not yet completely solved the problem of amplifying the peripheral sounds we just don’t want, or don't need to hear.

For new wearers the crumpling of a paper bag on the other side of a room can sound like a jackhammer.

This is a huge challenge for technology because it is dependent on how the brain perceives sound and how we have learned to filter peripheral sound out of normal hearing. Andrew J. Oxenham is a psychologist and hearing expert at the University of Minnesota and an expert in psychoacoustics.

Oxenham explains: The ear works by analysing sound and breaking it into different frequencies and with many forms of hearing impairment it’s this frequency selectivity that is impaired.

What that means is that the ear doesn’t filter as well as it did before. So instead of having very sharp tuning to filter out different frequencies the filtering becomes much broader and there is no real way of compensating for that.

You can’t sharpen the filters or you can’t pre-process sound so it’s sharp. It’s like a broken TV set. You can process the signal going into the TV as much as you like but you still won’t get a clear picture of the output.

Recent hearing aids have made a lot of progress, like being able to present frequencies of up to 6000 Hz as opposed to limited frequencies up to about 4000 Hz, by using digital signal processing, and a lot more computing power on a lot smaller chip.

Another big leap forward has been made with directional hearing. They can focus the microphones toward the front and filter out a lot of the sound coming from the side and back. And although that is a fairly simple technique, it involves signal processing that wasn’t possible with earlier hearing aids.

Ambient or peripheral sound is horribly distracting for hearing aid wearers. A paper bag being crumpled across a room sounds screechingly loud.

This is common complaint of people who recently start wearing a hearing aid. Their hearing has deteriorated, often without them being completely aware of it, over a period of time.

When they are suddenly fitted with a hearing aid, they hear sounds they’ve got used to not hearing. The sounds are suddenly annoying and distracting. It’s a contrast effect.

It’s more to do with perception i.e the brain’s ability to analyse and prioritise different sounds.

It’s a complex interaction between the ear and the brain. The ear sends signals up to the brain; the brain does an awful lot of processing on top of that; then sends signals back down to the ear. These signals change the way the ear accepts input.

This is partly why hearing aids are not perfect because the hearing aid is not part of that natural feedback loop. There’s no way with current aids that the brain can interface with a hearing aid directly to change its characteristics.

Hearing Loops
To deal with background noise there are things called “hearing loops.”

These are systems that are set up within places like concert halls and churches that interface directly with the hearing aid. It’s like sending a radio signal to the hearing device.

The idea is that this hearing loop picks up the sound directly from the microphone in front of a speaker.

If you are in a conference and the speaker is talking into a microphone. Normally we hear the sound acoustically through the airwaves.

If you are wearing a regular hearing aid the microphone will pick up the sounds on the airwaves but that is together with all the background noise and reverberation in the room.

With a hearing loop it sends the signal directly from the microphone to the ear and bypasses all the acoustics in the building itself. So the ear is getting a much better, clearer and cleaner signal of what’s coming into the microphone.

Two hearing aids better than One?
It’s only recently that people have routinely been fitted with two hearing aids. Often people only got one.

Directional hearing and the way we localise sound: To know where the sound is coming from the brain compares the signals coming into the two ears. So if it’s slightly louder on one side then the brain knows the sound is coming from that side.

More importantly it’s the time of arrival difference between the two ears. If you think about a sound coming from the right. The sound will reach your right ear a little bit before it reaches your left ear.

Although we are talking about millionths of seconds, your brain needs two ears to make a distinction. If you only have one you lose that ability to localise sound and tell which direction it is coming from.

It’s also an important part of filtering out sound and noise. The brain can determine if there is speech right in front and background noise in back of and to the side. The brain can use those differences in localisation to help to make the speech more intelligible.

So the biggest technical challenge is developing hearing aids that can focus on what we really need and want to listen to. This is the current problem.

The Solution
We are hoping through even more sophisticated signal processing schemes that we’ll be able to work on artificial source segregation; i.e. analysing the signal that is coming in and figuring out what is speech and what isn’t, and only presenting to the ear the wanted signal.

Distinguishing between speech and noise
The assumption is that what you really want to listen to is speech, and so there are certain acoustical aspects of speech that we can recognise and there are certain acoustical aspects of noise that are different from speech.

So, we need to establish a suitable algorithm to be able to distinguish between speech and noise that will help you towards filtering the unwanted signal.

A more complete solutiion could mean that brain-computer interface may be part of the hearing aid systems of the future. Where the hearing aid is tapping into brain responses to pick up the specific signal the person wants to pay attention to.

This is an ongoing process with incremental steps and we will continue to see improvements over the next 15 years.

Coping with Central Auditory Processing Disorder | Pride Learning Center

Are you a parent coping with a child who suffers from Auditory Processing Disorder? The other big question is: How would I know? To answer this, here are a few pointers that determine the nature of the condition and ho wit reveals itself in every day life.

• Is your child easily distracted or bothered by loud or sudden noises?
• Are conversations difficult for your child to follow?
• Are noisy environments upsetting for them?
• Are verbal (word based) maths problems demanding?
• Does your child have difficulty following directions?
• Is abstract information tough to interpret?
• Does your child struggle with reading, spelling, writing, or other speech-related language difficulties?

Central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) occurs when the ear and the brain do not coordinate together completely. Many of the behaviours associated with central auditory processing disorder also appear in other conditions such as learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADHD), also described as ADD.


The symptoms in each individual can range from mild to severe and only a trained professional, such as a speech-language pathologists and an audiologist who specialise in CAPD, can determine if your child actually has a central auditory processing disorder.

If your child does have central auditory processing disorder and finds it difficult to concentrate and follow directions, there are numerous strategies that parents can implement for their child.

What was I supposed to do again?
To help a child with CAPD follow directions, try reducing background noises, always have the child look at you when you are speaking and use simple, expressive sentences. Speaking at a slightly louder volume and at a slower tempo will also help significantly. Have your child repeat the directions back to you aloud a few times and be certain that they understand the directions they are repeating and not just mimicking your voice.

I left my book at school.

A student with CAPD will thrive on routine and structure. Teach your child how to focus and cope in chaotic environments. Before going home for the day, for instance, have the child check his or her assignment book and list what he or she needs to take home that day.

I can’t concentrate; it’s too loud in here.

At school the child should sit towards the front of the room facing the teacher with his or her back to the windows, doors, and other sources of distraction. The teacher can periodically touch the child’s shoulder to remind him or her to focus or get ready for a transition.

Teachers should also use lots and lots of visual aids jotting down instructions or key words on the board, and providing simple written outlines. For younger students a picture or drawing may work better as a reminder.

At home, provide the child with a quiet study place. If you want them to concentrate better, be sure to keep the TV turned off and keep any possible outside stimuli far away.

Make sure the work desk is kept free of clutter and well organised. Maintain a peaceful, organised lifestyle that encourages good eating and sleeping habits and keeping a neat room and desk.

Teachers and parents both need to remember that central auditory processing disorder is a real condition. The symptoms and behaviours are not within the child’s control. Children with CAPD are not being defiant or being lazy.

Help them build a strong self-esteem and learn to advocate for themselves, as they get older. Keep it positive and keep life fun!