One especially interesting consequence of increased ritalin use was a large reported increase in unhappiness, especially among girls.  The study authors hypothesized that increased Ritalin use, while decreasing adverse behaviors, also decreased attention these students received from teachers.  They surmised that use of these medications may be a substitute for more beneficial learning interventions.

A study summary from The Atlantic can be found here:  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/06/study-ritalin-doesnt-help-academics/276894/

A link to the full study can be found here:  http://www.nber.org/papers/w19105.pdf

Some of the changes:  Initial diagnoses of what was Asperger’s Syndrome will now be made under the larger umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Note that this will only apply to people being evaluated for the first time.  Also, it does not mean that Asperger’s as a descriptor will necessarily go away; it will only be eliminated as a DSM-V diagnostic category.

There will be a new diagnostic category, called Social Communication Disorder.  Dr. Amy Weatherby is the first speech-language pathologist to serve on the DSM-5 board and helped to craft the language of this newly defined category. It highlights those with social communication/social pragmatic challenges who do not exhibit the more “restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities” which has been one of the diagnostic hallmarks of ASD.  Here’s the official criteria:

A. Social Communication Disorder (SCD) is an impairment of pragmatics and is diagnosed based on difficulty in the social uses of verbal and nonverbal communication in naturalistic contexts, which affects the development of social relationships and discourse comprehension and cannot be explained by low abilities in the domains of word structure and grammar or general cognitive ability.

B. The low social communication abilities result in functional limitations in effective communication, social participation, academic achievement, or occupational performance, alone or in any combination.

C. Rule out Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Autism Spectrum Disorder by definition encompasses pragmatic communication problems, but also includes restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities as part of the autism spectrum. Therefore, ASD needs to be ruled out for SCD to be diagnosed.

D. Symptoms must be present in early childhood (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities).

My initial reaction is that the criteria seems extremely subjective.  I can see many, many children who are socially awkward, or have behavior issues being diagnosed with this.  If a diagnostician can’t go into the home for a meaningful period of time (and they can’t), how does one effectively differentiate between social language issues which are the result of some interpersonal family issues, and an actual disorder?  How does one effectively determine that social issues are the result of what a child can’t do, versus what a child doesn’t want to do?  And even if a child isn’t able to effectively use social language, is it always because of a disorder, or is there an environmental component as well?

Study Probes Connection Between Texting and Language Impairment -  This study, from these people, at the University of Manchester, finds that teens with language impairment (or SLI, to be specific), don’t use texting technology as much as their typically developing peers.  The study authors surmised that this relative lack of texting is caused more by societal factors, such as shyness, and lack of friendship networks, rather than lack of ability.

Doctors and Sreenings – Good; Doctors and Referrals – Not so Good – A report spearheaded by John Hopkins Children’s Center shows that while pediatricians may be doing a good job of screening kids, referrals for further assessment often go unheeded.  The study recommended that instead of placing referrals in the hands of parents, these referrals should be directly placed to specialists.  My information comes from this this link from Science Daily.

Study Challenges Current Thinking on Language Evolution – Again from Science Daily:  According to a statistical analysis of more than 2,000 of the world’s languages, they may evolve more like biological organisms, and less from more random forces, as previously thought.  The bullet synopsis is that the more people speak a language, the simpler the language becomes.  The researchers called this the “Linguistic Niche Hypothesis.”  One possible explanation for this is that simplicity holds an evolutionary advantage over complexity, particularly when children learn languages.  It should be noted that simpler languages are not necessarily inferior languages.  They just do not have aspects which aren’t as necessary, such as elaborate gender marking, for example.  Pschologists from the Universities of Pennsylvania and Memphis conducted this analysis.  More info can be found at this Penn site.

Children Make up Their Own Rules To Help Them Learn Language – This study used computer analysis to theorize that early language development follows formulas that children generate on their own, rather than specific rules governing such things as nouns and verbs, as linguists have traditionally thought.  Or as I’ve simply put it, in language development, Form Follows Function.  Leading this work was Colin Bannard, at the University of Texas, and Elena Lieven and Michael Tomasello, two colleagues working at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.  The more in-depth article can be found at the University of Texas site.

Despite its prevalence, cognitive referencing is wrong on many levels.

• It uses a single IQ score, ignoring standard deviation.  A kid that scores 80, may actually have a “true” IQ of something like 85 or 90, but could have performed poorly on that one day, for various reasons.  Tough luck for that kid.  An IQ score of 80 usually means that your academic or language scores have to be 58 or lower, an extremely difficult thing to do.
• By even using IQ at all, the assumption is that this is as good as a kid can get.  That was the initial rational for the discrepancy model way back before we knew better.  Now we know that IQ can go up (or down) in relationship to environmental factors.  (When IQ scores of large groups of children are studied, IQ scores do tend to remain stable, especially in older children.  However, this skews the fact that a smaller percentage of children do show substantial IQ fluctuations over time.  For more on this interesting topic, see Sigelman and Rider, 2008.)
• IQ and language are correlated.  Vocabulary and IQ especially correlate well.  This means that children with low language scores tend to have comparably low IQ scores.  It is virtually impossible to obtain a low IQ score and say that language difficulties didn’t have something to do with that score.
• Kids with certain scores are especially difficult to qualify for special education under this model.  Whenever a child scores in the 70s or low 80s, especially, you can just pretty much rest assured that the kid will not qualify, and you will be testing that kid again, and perversely hoping that the academic and/or language scores have fallen enough to qualify the next time.  Generally kids must score 22 points below their IQ in a specific area, and it is very difficult for a non-mentally retarded person to have scores in the 60s or below in academics or language (until, we’ve given them sufficient time to fail in these areas, of course.)  In effect a child is punished for having an IQ in that certain range.
• IQ scores can set artificially low levels of expectation for kids, teachers, and parents.  IQs describe obstacles, not limits.  It may be harder for someone with a lower IQ to learn, but it is never impossible.  Only comatose or dead people can’t learn, and IQ scores too often allow somebody to say, “Well he’s achieving close to his level.”  IQs can provide a stimulus to somebody with a high IQ who is not motivated to learn, and can provide a bit of insight into why a particular student may be having trouble learning, but to withhold helping a child because of a lower then average IQ is at the least dishonest, and borders on unethical.

So how can this horrible practice persist?  For starters, no states have been forced to abandon cognitive referencing.  It is almost amazing that so many have, considering the financial implications of having to provide more help to kids.  That nobody has come up with anything better seems to be the main excuse given for continuing the discrepancy model.  I don’t really understand why this practice hasn’t been challenged in court.  Perhaps someday, somebody such as these special ed lawyers with a great web site, will.

That cognitive referencing can continue to exist is a symptom of a larger problem in our society.  We attempt to find labels and categories to justify providing (a good thing) or withholding (not so good) help to kids that could really benefit from extra help.  In my opinion the most ethical method of providing special education services would be to establish a bare minimum of expected competence in various areas, and at least offer to help any child achieve the next step toward reaching that bare minimum.  If this were to happen those of us in special education might then be able to spend more effort looking for ways to help, and less time looking for excuses not to.

American RadioWorks , by the American Public Media, has many great podcast documentaries.  Among those related to language and learning are:

• Financing the Real World – “American RadioWorks goes to Holy Family Cristo Rey, a school that makes preparation for the work-world part of the curriculum.”
• Education and Motivation – “American RadioWorks Executive Editor Stephen Smith talks with education reporter Emily Hanford on President Obama’s recent address to the country’s students.”
• Put to the Test – “No Child Left Behind has had a dramatic effect on American schools. Producers spent two years in one high school documenting how high-stakes testing has reshaped teaching and learning.”
• Rewiring the Brain; Early Deprivation and Child Development – “After the fall of communism in Romania, the world was shocked to discover a vast system of orphanages where unwanted children languished in cribs with little attention from caregivers. Sixteen years later… scientists are measuring how children recover from early neglect and discovering what early damage might be irreversible.”

The Psych Files podcasts – Michael Britt has done an inspiring with these terrific podcasts.  Among those related to language/learning are:

• Episode 90: The Learning Styles Myth: An Interview with Daniel Willingham – “Guess what? There’s no such thing as learning style (the theory that each of us has a preferred way to learn new ideas. There are many supposed kinds of learning styles, such as a visual learning style, an auditory style, kinesthetic, etc.). Don’t believe it? Neither did I at first. I was sure for a long time that I personally had a visual learning style. Now I’m not so sure anymore. Listen to this interview with professor and author Daniel Willingham as he and I discuss the topic of learning styles.”
• Episode 53: Mindful Learning, NCLB, and the True Foundations of Success – “Tired of rote memorization? Tired of NCLB? Try mindful learning. In this episode I explore psychologist Ellen Langer’s concept of mindful learning. What does it mean to teach and learn in a mindful way?”
• Episode 29: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic vs. the Motivation To Learn – “You’ve probably heard about the battle between intrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Well, here’s a new and powerful way to motivate students: the Motivation to Learn.”

Also try:

The ASCD’s Whole Child Podcasts are topical, monthly, and archived on their site.  Some interesting past topics include:  Understanding the Education Stimulus Package, Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners,and Beyond the Test Bubble:  Accountability, Expectations, and Planning.

UNC Charlotte’s Center for Teaching and Learning has some great podcasts under the title:  Teaching and Learning Matters.  Topics include: Creating Interesting Assignments, What is Cooperative Learning, and Respecting Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning.

• Testing takes too much time.                                     
• There is too much pressure to teach to the test.
• Tests measure limited aspects of a student.
• Ignores standard error of measurement.
• Increases anxiety and stress

I don’t think I even have to write an introductory sentence for this post – if I did, it would be something like, “The way group testing is done now creates a lot of problems.”  It’s become almost cliche to say that No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on testing has created a lot of headaches and hassles.  The testing emphasis and the accompanying problems have been shared by other countries.  Research has been mounting in support of the overwhelming mountain of testimonies from educators, and even the general media at large has joined the bandwagon.  (For example:  CBS news story; Boston Globe article; UK Daily Telegraph study story)   Everyone agrees that accountability is a good thing, and there’s only one way to measure how our children are learning.  Well, actually, there’s something wrong with that last part… There is another way.  Individual testing.

I’ll go ahead and get my bias out of the way, because I am a diagnostician.  I test students for speech and language competency in order to decide special education eligibility, and to help provide planning for appropriate speech and language therapy.  I work with a team of other diagnosticians serving 13 school districts.  Most students that we test receive IQ and educational testing, and probably two-thirds get speech and language testing.  I am not exaggerating when I say that when we finish testing a child parents, teachers, and the students themselves know the tested child like never before.  We can tell exactly what’s wrong, and exactly how to fix it.  Individual testing trumps group testing in so many ways.  Individual testing specifically…

• takes less time with greater accuracy.
• is impossible to teach to the test.
• We can measure any educationally relevant aspect of the student that we want.
• takes special circumstances into account.
• has less anxiety.

Additionally, individual testing …

• specifically measures progress (or lack of) in very specific areas.

That’s the only bullet there, but its important enough to merit its own list.  Put another way, this means that when we are able to test kids this way, we can determine exactly what a student knows, and what a student should know, but doesn’t.  We can also tell what’s developmentally appropriate for each student to learn next.

So why don’t we just test each kid individually then?  Well, it would require a lot of change – change sparked and implemented by bureaucrats in an educational system who would only do so in response to mandates from politicians in a government who would only mandate in response to political pressure which would require much greater media attention.  As the ongoing attempt to overhaul health care has demonstrated, real change in our country is often extremely difficult.  Especially systematic change.  And even when the need for change is obvious.

Talking helps language development more than reading alone – Although the conclusion of this UCLA study seems almost blatantly obvious, there is a significant implication, which is that the importance of talking to children has been obscured by the recent emphasis on reading with children.  The study found that back-and-forth conversation was strongly associated with future improvements in the child’s language score.  Conversely, adult monologueing, such as monologic reading, was more weakly associated with language development.  TV viewing had no effect on language development, positive or negative.  The study’s lead author, Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman noted, “What’s new here is the finding that the effect of adult-child conversations was roughly six times as potent at fostering good language development as adult speech input alone.”

Inattentive behaviors in young children with autism predict lower later language development – The authors of this study, from the University of British Columbia, looked at autism from a different perspective than most previous research.  Rather than focusing on social and linguistic aspects of autism, the authors looked at five types of inappropriate behaviors and how these behaviors predicted later language development.  The study looked at some behaviors that parents and teachers frequently focus on, such as acting out, resistance to change, and socially unresponsive behavior, but the one that best predicted later language difficulties was inattentiveness.   This is strikingly significant for autism intervention.  Why is inattentiveness such a large problem?  Creating a desire to change is critical with these children.  Often, current intervention practices target making autistic children communicate (such as in ABA therapy), instead of trying to convince these kids to want to communicate.

Gene found to be associated with language, speech, and reading disorders – The gene in question is found on Chromosome 6.  The significance is that variability in the gene was associated with both language and reading disorders, but not other disorders, such as autism or hearing impairment.  Mabel Rice, from the University of Kansas, Shelley Smith, from the University of Nebraska, and Javier Gayán of Neocodex, Seville, Spain led a team of researchers that is part of a 20 year research program that is being funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Achievement oriented instruction is when a teacher provides a goal that requires the student to use a targeted skill to accomplish something.  This is not quite functional teaching, and its almost the opposite of drill.  The goal itself provides the motivation, and for this reason the choice of the goal is critical.  It is perhaps as or more important than any teaching method that may be used.  And this is how achievement oriented instruction most differs from traditional teaching. 

Here are some examples that may best serve to illustrate my overall point:

As you can see, the achievement based teaching column contains more possibilities, and an “etc.”  The only limit to one can go in the final column is the teacher’s imagination.  The more creative and varied the activities, the more salient is the learning.  This should not in any way disparage traditional teaching, however.  Another way to put it is that traditional teaching relies on expectations.  In achievement based teaching the learning is elicited.  The student constructs his own expectations, and uses specific targets to achieve these expectations.  Expectations and elicitations are both critical when teaching.

So when an administrator comes in and sees you playing a game with your kids, if you did this kind of teaching, you could say:  “You caught me on my ABT day.  Some days I do drill, some days I do direct instruction, some days worksheets, and about half of the days I do activities specifically designed to elicit my students’ target skills.  It just so happens that fun motivates.”