Autism: refering to themselves as 'you'

One of the first things that autism pioneer Leo Kanner noticed about the children he was seeing was that they had a tendency to refer to themselves as 'you,' echoing his phrasing of questions he asked them.

Nearly 70 years later, we have a technology — functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI — that can peer into the brain to illuminate which regions are involved when people switch personal pronouns in conversation. This task, called deictic shifting, is impaired not just in children with autism, but also in some adults with the disorder.

A new fMRI study published in Brain in July reports that connectivity between two brain regions involved in self-awareness is greatly reduced in people with autism when they engage in deictic shifting.

In the study, researchers presented 15 adults who have high-functioning autism, all but one of them male, and 15 matched controls with images of the front and back covers of a book held by a woman named Sarah. The book covers depict different objects, for example, a carrot on the front and a house on the back. Sometimes Sarah opens up the book to display both covers and sometimes she folds the book so that only one cover is visible.

Over 24 trials, Sarah asked study participants four variations on a single question: "What can ? see now?" Half the time, the "?" was the proper name of the participant or Sarah. The other half of the time, Sarah used a pronoun, either 'you' or 'I.'

In this manner, participants had to execute a series of rapid shifts between "What do you see now?" to "What do I see now?", "What does Sarah see now?" and "What does (participant's first name) see now?"

The researchers found that people with autism respond more slowly and less accurately to questions that require them to shift perspective from 'you' to 'I.' The scans revealed that connectivity between the right anterior insula and the precuneus is significantly lower among individuals with autism when carrying out this task.

Conversely, the precuneus is far more active in the individuals with autism when they're confronted with proper names, suggesting that this brain region is working overtime to properly identify self versus other.

These results suggest that pronoun reversals in autism are not simple semantic glitches. Instead, they appear to provide yet another example of the profound impairment in autism of the ability to understand self and other in reciprocal relationships.

After all, if I can't distinguish between you and me, how can I ever get to the immeasurably more complex category: We.

Dyslexia and Boggle: Using Word Games to Help Spelling Practice

We all learn better and concentrate more if we're doing something that's FUN, rather than a chore. Many adults and the parents of childrenwith Dyslexia enjoy using word games to make spelling more fun.

Simple Games such as Hangman and Boggle are now available online, or Downloadable format for the PC, MAC and iPAD, from the internet

The rules of Boggle are indeed simple.
Each player searches for words that can be constructed from the letters of sequentially adjacent cubes, where "adjacent" cubes are those horizontally, vertically or diagonally neighbouring.

Words must be at least three letters long, may include singular and plural (or other derived forms) separately, but may not use the same letter cube more than once per word.

Each player records all the words he or she finds by writing on a private sheet of paper. After three minutes have elapsed, all players must immediately stop writing and the game enters the scoring phase.

You will find a number of versions from different suppliers/ developers at the CNET Download site here

NB: Remember to only download games or other internet content from reputable sites and be very careful to scan apps for viruses and malware.

The mysterious world of dyspraxia

Most of us have heard of dyslexia – the disability causing difficulties in reading, speech and spelling and affecting 5 to 10% of us.

Dyspraxia, on the other hand (not a misspelling of dyslexia) is another common learning difficulty, which has just not had the press, despite research showing up to 10% of the population may suffer from it.

Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) Rowan Kirby believes “dyspraxia is the poorer brother of dyslexia,” something she hopes will change as more people begin to understand it…

Dyspraxia is an impairment or immaturity of the organisation of movement – an immaturity in the way the brain processes information, causing messages not to be properly or fully transmitted.

The common denominator with the disability is a weakness of certain motor skills, for example, anything related to movement, whether it be through fine motor control – holding a pen, writing, brushing teeth and getting dressed; gross motor control – running around, kicking or catching a ball; or control of balance – sitting on a chair, or climbing the stairs.

Various labels have included Clumsy Child Syndrome, Minimal Brain Damage, Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD) and Motor Learning Disability.

GP Dr Amanda Kirby who provides training for occupational psychologists on dyspraxia and has a son with the condition calls it, The Hidden Handicap, as although someone with dyspraxia may look “normal”, they will have underlying problems that may affect their life.

Mild dyspraxia can be difficult to spot, particularly if it’s the parents’ first child and there are no other siblings for comparison. Only later, perhaps at school, do the differences become apparent.

Other symptoms can include difficulties with reading, concentration, coordination, short-term memory, organisation, social skills, speech and sensitivity to light, sound, taste and touch. This may be a heightened sensitivity or a lack of it, or both.

Not only are these characteristics hugely variable but often dyspraxia exists with other conditions such as dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, speech and language impairment and autistic spectrum disorders such as Asperger’s syndrome, which can make a diagnosis confusing.

Dr Kirby says: “Parents often go from place to place only to be left asking ‘what has my child got?’ One person said dyspraxia, another dyslexia and someone else ADHD.” It may be that the child is diagnosed with the most dominant symptom at that time but as different symptoms emerge, so the diagnosis changes.

Children with mild to moderate symptoms may not be diagnosed at all, but simply written off as clumsy, lazy or stupid by their teachers and peers but, as with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia has no relevance to IQ whatsoever.

Occupational therapist, Jane Horwood, explains. “These are neurological in-built developmental difficulties and schools need to understand this. There are still people that don’t believe dyspraxia exists.

They think it’s the child not trying, or intentionally winding up their teachers.” For a worried parent, a diagnosis can be an enormous relief as they realise it’s not their fault and their child is not acting up.

A common problem with dyspraxia is poor concentration and the inability to focus for very long, especially when there are other distractions like background noise or copying from a board while concentrating on holding and using a pen, balancing on a chair and taking in what the teacher’s saying.

Phew! For most of us, multitasking like this isn’t too demanding but for a dyspraxic child it is very difficult, exhausting, stressful and physically uncomfortable.

Sarah Ailsby, nanny to a dyspraxic child and a learning support teacher says, “you want as little distraction around them as possible.

Avoid sitting them near a window and if you have to work on a blackboard give them a crib sheet, so they’re not having to lift their head to memorise something, then looking down to concentrate on writing and probably forgetting it. Ask, whether they really need to sit down. Can they not stand?”

Read the remainder of this article on the First Eleven website: Welcome to the world of dyspraxia

OR the YUDU version on Pgs 34-35 of the First Eleven's magazine: 

Dyslexia: Recognising accents and voices can be difficult

People with dyslexia may not notice how people pronounce words differently, something that makes voice recognition possible, U.S. researchers say.

Tyler Perrachione, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says even though all people who speak a language use the same words, they say those words just a little bit differently from one another -- what is called phonetics in linguistics.

Listeners are sensitive to phonetic differences as part of what makes a person's voice unique, but individuals with dyslexia have trouble recognizing phonetic differences, whether a person is speaking a familiar language or a foreign one, Perrachione says.

The MIT scientists trained people with and without dyslexia to recognize the voices of people speaking either the listeners' native language of English or an unfamiliar foreign language, Mandarin Chinese.

The neuroscientists found people with dyslexia were significantly worse at being able to consistently recognize the voices of the English speakers, but they were about the same as listeners without dyslexia at recognizing the Chinese voices. Both groups were very poor at recognizing voices speaking an unfamiliar language, Perrachione says.

The finding, published in Science, reaffirms the theory that the underlying deficit in dyslexia isn't about the act of reading per se, but instead involves difficulty with how sounds of spoken language are heard and processed in the dyslexic brain.

Listen Up! ADHD, Dyslexia and Hearing loss!

There are many possible interventions that can occur when a child performs poorly in school, but one that can be easily overlooked is a hearing check.

Yet a growing body of research indicates hearing loss--even a minimal amount--can have a dramatic effect on everything from attention and behaviour to academic performance.

At the same time, data indicates, and experts in the field believe, that the introduction of sound reinforcement and sound amplification systems can help with this problem.

Normal hearing for children is 15 decibel hearing level(dB HL)or better at all frequencies with normal middle ear function. Anything less can place a child at risk in the academic setting.

There are approximately 46 million K-12 students in the United States; more than 9 million--about 20 percent of them--have some type and degree of hearing loss.

Based on the number of audiologists employed by school districts to manage students with hearing loss, less than 1 percent of these children with hearing problems are receiving professional help through their schools.

Of course, it's possible that not nearly all those students need professional help with their hearing loss. In fact, many times the loss is not even noticeable by most observers, and the same loss likely would not affect the behavior of adults.

However, for a child trying to integrate new information, even "minimal" hearing loss can have a huge impact on learning.

"The issue that needs to be addressed is hearing clearly for effective teaching and learning," says David H. Parish, president and CEO of Woodbury, MN-based Calypso Systems, a manufacturer of integrated classroom products, including classroom acoustic systems. He stresses that children who have trouble hearing what is going on in the classroom may perform below standards both academically and behaviourally.

"Studies show that children who fail basic hearing tests have to repeat a grade at 10 times the rate of those who pass them," says Parish. "That statistic clearly demonstrates that the ability to hear--especially at younger ages when language skills are not as advanced or for those learning English as a second language--is critical for good academic outcomes."

Loud and Clear
The Acoustical Society of America, in conjunction with the American National Standards Institute, has published standards that define, for classrooms, the acoustical standards necessary for effective teaching and learning environments.

The key standard is signal-to-noise ratio. The "signal" is the teacher's voice or the audio of media employed in instruction. "Noise" is everything else that makes it more difficult to hear the signal: students' chatter, the fish tank, street noise, HVAC systems, and so on.

"The signal needs to be sufficiently greater than noise to be heard and understood, and very often that is not the case," says Parish.

Another eye-opening statistic in this context: Roughly 72 percent of all children referred to special education courses also fail a basic hearing test. "Why does this happen?" asks Parish. "Which is the cause and which is the effect here?"

According to Parish, these children are more easily distracted, which makes it more likely that they will be disruptive in the classroom. As a result, they often move into special education programs.

This raises the question: Could schools reduce the number of referrals into special education through the introduction of sound reinforcement and sound amplification systems? Studies suggest the answer may be "yes."

According to research compiled by Pamela Millett, assistant professor and educational audiologist at York University in Toronto, a number of studies show decreases in special education referral rates following installation of sound field acoustic systems across school districts.

For example, in the Oconto Falls School District (WI), special education referral rates fell from an average of 7.72 percent between 1989 and 1998 to 4.6 percent between 1998 and 2000, when sound field amplification systems were installed in all classrooms in the district from kindergarten to grade 5. This is a reduction of more than 40 percent.

Dyslexia: Reading aloud in class broke my confidence

Chef Marco Pierre White today told of his battle learning to read - and revealed that he still relies on "giant picture books".

The restaurateur said he used cooking as a way to cope with his difficulties reading and writing.

Pierre White, the youngest chef to attain three Michelin stars, said that at school he found reading aloud in class "very belittling, very humiliating".

"The teachers knew that I struggled and I could hear the other children laughing so it broke my confidence down. When I left school I was 16 years old. Did I struggle with how to read? Yes I did. Did I struggle with how to spell? Yes I did," he said.

He was speaking in support of the London Evening Standard's Get London Reading campaign. To date, it has raised more than £150,000 to fund 310 new volunteer readers with our partner charity Volunteer Reading Help. They provide £500 per volunteer, which is matched by schools, with the readers then working one-to-one with three children each at struggling primary schools.

Pierre White, 49, said: "I think what the London Evening Standard is doing is creating awareness and by creating awareness it dissolves the embarrassment so young men and young women are not embarrassed."

He added: "I was very fortunate that I entered a world where I didn't have to read or write. I entered a world of cooking where I expressed with my fingers and so that built my confidence. Over the years I've taught myself how to read. I've taught myself how to spell.

"I still struggle but I have to read very slowly and because I read slowly and because I struggle to absorb, I tend not to read, even though I have thousands of books at home, they're all giant picture books."

Pierre White said he realised he was dyslexic when his son was diagnosed after his school alerted the family. "They went into great detail about dyslexia and that's when I was able to label myself as being dyslexic. They could have been talking about the same boy, but many years previous when I was a boy they never spoke of dyslexia."

He added: "It's not a stigma to be labelled with dyslexia. Individuals with dyslexia have great talents and great qualities."

Online Courses: 70 Excellent Links for Dyslexia Support

Online Courses website offer a number of links to courses supporting people with Dyslexia.

Click on the picture to go to their website or click on this link.

NB: We offer you this content for information only and in no way endorse the products or services provided by Kaplan University.

We will however be very keen to hear your comments and feedback.

Concern over UK secondary pupils' reading ability

Researchers from York University warned that secondary teachers could be failing to notice reading difficulties suffered by their students.

The study of 857 pupils across 28 state schools also found that 53 per cent of pupils who had serious reading problems were registered as having special educational needs (SEN).

But in once case, a 15-year-old pupil was not on the SEN register despite having the same reading ability as a normal eight year old.

The findings could be an underestimate because some pupils may be on the SEN register for other reasons than reading problems, the researchers added.

Dr Sue Stothard, who co-authored the study, told the Times Educational Supplement: "It is a very important question for teachers and the Senco (special needs co-ordinator) on how the SEN register is managed. Is it identifying all children with difficulties and making sure they get appropriate support."

Concern over secondary pupils' reading ability - Telegraph

Revised approach to SEN set for UKl roll-out

A UK Government project to help teachers overhaul the way they work with children with special educational needs is set to be rolled out nationally.

Achievement for All (AfA) aims to get schools to review their support for all pupils, rather than just labelling some as having special needs.

The programme, designed to improve the aspirations of the lowest-performing children, reduced persistent absence by 20 per cent in participating schools and improved behaviour in others when it was first piloted.

The pilot scheme began in September 2009 in 460 schools in 10 local authorities. It will end this August.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has been awarded a contract by the Department for Education to manage the expansion of the programme into more areas. All schools can now become involved if they choose to do so. Around 200 more have already registered to join.

Children's minister Sarah Teather hopes Achievement for All will help schools to deliver many of her SEN reforms, outlined in the recent green paper. She wants to stop the "over-identification" of children with SEN.

Schools will also be held more accountable for how well they support children with special educational needs. Their progress will be shown in detail on league tables.

Sonia Blandford, who led the AfA pilot, approached PwC to lead the expansion. She and a group of headteachers have set up a new charity to develop Achievement for All, called "AfA (3As)".

A DfE spokesman said: "This partnership brings together the business rigour of PwC with the expertise of some of the most innovative school leaders who understand system improvement. In time the consortium will be run solely as a not-for-profit social enterprise."

AfA will eventually be run as a social enterprise. Brian Lamb, who led a recent government enquiry into SEN, has agreed to chair the charity's board of trustees.

Dyslexia makes voices hard to discern, study finds

People with dyslexia struggle to recognise familiar voices, scientists suggest.

The finding is the first tentative evidence that small sounds in the human voice that vary between people are difficult for dyslexics to hear.

Writing in the journal Science, the scientists say that many people could have some degree of "voice blindness".

By studying it, scientists hope to better understand how the human brain has evolved to recognise speech.

Humans rely on small sounds called phonemes to tell one person from another.

As we first try to form the word dog, for example, phonemes are the "duh"-"og"-"guh" sounds that our parents prompt us to make.

But as we master the ability to read, we become less reliant on recognising these sounds to read, and eventually stop noticing them.

Despite ignoring them, however, phonemes remain important for voice recognition.

The tiny inflections in the way people pronounce phonemes gives a listener cues to tell one voice from another.

Because people who suffer from dyslexia are known to struggle with phonemes when reading, a US-based team of scientists wondered whether they might also struggle hearing them in people's voices.

Listen well
To investigate, the team grouped 30 people of similar age, education and IQ into two camps: those with and without a history of dyslexia.

The subjects then went through a training period to learn to associate 10 different voices - half speaking English and half speaking Chinese - with 10 computer-generated avatars.

The subjects were then later quizzed on how many of those voices they could match to the avatars.

Non-dyslexics outperformed people with a history of dyslexia by 40% when listening to English.

However, this advantage disappeared when the groups were listening to Chinese.

read more of the article here: BBC News - Dyslexia makes voices hard to discern, study finds