On Vacation

PsychoEd @ TheDatabase.org will be on vacation for a few weeks as I am off to Europe! Updates will begin again upon my return.

Workshop: ONBIDA Toronto 2007

A little late notice on this one, but it looks like sessions are still open. The Ontario Branch of the International Dyslexia Association always produces a great conference focused on reading disabilities. Sessions are targeted towards Psych, SLP, SERTS, and also have the occasional parent based session (already full for that one unfortunately).

You can view the conference by CLICKING HERE.

Here's a break down:

Conference: IDA Ontario, 3rd Annual Conference
Date: Saturday, May 26, 2007
Location: Toronto

Keynote: Written Expression: From Sounds through Sentences

• Speaker: Dr. Pamela Hook
• Description: The missing link for many students who struggle with writing is automaticity and fluency of writing at the word and sentence levels. This session will focus on processes involved in spelling and sentence level writing as important factors in written expression. The relationship of these skills to underlying spoken language abilities will be highlighted. Error analysis will be used to demonstrate areas of difficulty, and strategies and techniques for enhancing skills in these areas will be presented.

Title: Using Assistive Technology to Improve Written Expression

• Speaker: Kendra Grant
• Description: This workshop will provide an overview of assistive technology and an exploration of the pros and cons of each one (cost, prerequisite skills, availability, ease of use, suitability, etc.) Through demonstration, participants will learn how the various software programmes bypass roadblocks to written expression: Word prediction software; Voice recognition software; Screen reader software; Visual digital organizer software

Title: Strategies for Boosting Adolescent Writing at the Paragraph and Multi-Paragraph Level

• Speaker: Dr. Charles Haynes
• Description: Students with deficits in retrieving and manipulating speech information typically struggle to express themselves in writing. These same adolescents are at risk for failing socially and academically. Through lecture, discussion, and hands-on activities, participants will learn practical strategies and techniques for supporting, or ‘scaffolding’, students’ development of oral and written expression. Examples of theme-centred skills instruction at the paragraph and essay levels will be explored, and special attention will be given to techniques for developing self-monitoring, elaboration and flexibility. Examples from seventh through twelfth grades will be provided. This session will be of particular interest to regular education teachers, speech-language pathologists, reading-writing specialists, English as a Second Language instructors, advocates, and others who want to learn research-based ideas for spoken-written language intervention. Comprehensive handouts will be provided.

Title: Early Intervention – Reading, Writing, Phonemic Awareness

• Speaker: Dr. Pamela Hook
• Description: The importance of individualizing instruction as early as possible in areas related to reading and writing has become increasingly evident. This session will highlight issues related to phonemic awareness and reading acquisition for the beginning and struggling reader. Specific techniques will be addressed for 1) assessing skills related to phonemic awareness and reading/writing; 2) identifying salient patterns of strengths and weaknesses: and 3) implementing generic techniques for developing these skills. Implications of the three-tiered model and response to intervention will also be discussed.

ADHD Medication & Real World Distractions

The University of Virginia has an interesting ongoing study in the works that will examine the effects of ADHD medications on real world distractions. The concern of the authors is that current clinical studies on the inhibition of distractibility with ADHD medications are based on highly controlled settings, and thus may not translate well to the real world.

Given the high rate of auto accidents within the young adult ADHD population the current study uses car mounted cameras to examine the effectiveness of stimulant usage. One interesting previous study they note found that manual shift cars actually decreased the incidents for students compared to automatics. My guess is that the act of having to shift requires the subject to frequently be reengaged into the driving process. An interesting result.

If you would like to follow the study you can find some information HERE and HERE.

Questions ...

Nothing interesting in a post today .. just some random thoughts.

I was reading an amazingly uninteresting article on item order effecting subtest outcomes (nothings more interesting then the writings of statisticians!) that was suggesting that the order of items (difficulty gradients, potential for success/failure, etc.) can effect testing results beyond simple predefined test ceilings due to children reaching discontinue rules. Basically students reactions to test items can effect performance on future items. It makes sense how this can occur since previous items obviously effect future frames attitude and many other factors.

You could see this with children with low frustration tolerance and poor nonverbal skills who do poorly on WISC-IV's block design and get frustrated right from the start of the testing session (on a side note: to avoid this setting a trend that testing will be a negative experience I would suggest using a supplemental measure or another brief test). It can take a bit to get them back on board.

What this had me wondering about is how this same problem may also occur on non-ceiling or power (speed) tests that children may face in school. I remember one ADHD college student I came across who needed a lot of priming to reach optimal attention levels. As a result this student absolutely had to start with the hardest questions on a test. This would cue the student in and bring his/her a level of focus that would transfer backwards to easier items. If the student started with the easiest items he/she would quickly lose all focus and perform quite poorly.

Cognitive Models in Educational Measurement

I came across an interesting article in the journal Educational Measurement: Issues in Practice (Summer 2007) regarding the use of varied cognitive models in educational based assessment. Coverage goes from large scale group type assessments (like Stanford Achievement's) all the way to individual domain specific diagnostic assessments (like progressive matrices).

The article suggests that there is three primary trends in cognitive evaluation (they use the term cognitive and behavioural pretty loosely):

1. Cognitive Model of Test Specific - Academic oriented evaluations of foundational and applied achievement skill sets. Interestingly they refer to it as "curriculum" free though it very clearly is material learned in academic contexts. Test design is based on expectations of what test takers should be able to do regardless of where they attended school. This is essentially the beginning and ending of foundational hypotheses for this model. They use college based entrance exams as an example.
2. Cognitive Model of Domain Mastery - Tapping similar domains as above but is essentially the hallmark of curriculum based assessment. District specific and adaptable measures like DEBELS and AIMSWeb would be examples of this.
3. Cognitive Model of Task Performance - This is more in line with our ability/cognitive batteries in that they evaluate theoretically driven models of thinking as opposed to the resulting output of that organized thought (achievement). The article states that this is the most theoretically sound type of evaluation but that it is limited in the range of skills it covers.

The main purpose of the article was to note the limitations of each of these domains and that administrators need to be aware of them when devising measurement strategies. I found the article interesting in that it validated to me that a thorough psychoeducational assessment clearly falls within each of these domains to some degree. But are awareness of the degree in which this is true is helpful. While, achievement testing clearly involves parts of both test specific and domain mastery it is further loaded towards a norm validated test specific model. This explains to some degree the variation that we see between the results of standardized achievement testing and teacher reported and CBM results.

The article is a worthwhile read and is available online (for a fee) at THIS LINK.

Literacy: Orthographics and Handwriting in Composition Quality

A new issue of the Blackwell journal Literacy is out and there is at least one article that caught my eye. The journal is typically much more teacher oriented, but certainly has a couple of gems here or there that can be of significant use to literacy assessment. In this case the article is supportive of the inclusion of writing/automaticity within literacy/reading assessments. A model I have become very familiar with over the past few years with the Process Assessment of the Learner (PAL) and the work of Virginia Berninger. I have included the abstract that interested myself down below:

Journal: Literacy (UK)
Issue: April 2007 - Vol. 41 Issue 1

Title: Handwriting: what do we know and what do we need to know?
Authors: Jane Medwell and David Wray

Abstract: Handwriting has a low status and profile in literacy education in England and in recent years has attracted little attention from teachers, policy-makers or researchers into mainstream educational processes. This article identifies a substantial programme of research into handwriting, including studies located in the domains of special needs education and psychology, suggesting that it is time to re-evaluate the importance of handwriting in the teaching of literacy. Explorations of the way handwriting affects composing have opened up new avenues for research, screening and intervention, which have the potential to make a significant contribution to children's progress in learning to write. In particular, the role of orthographic motor integration and automaticity in handwriting is now seen as of key importance in composing. Evidence from existing studies suggests that handwriting intervention programmes may have a real impact on the composing skills of young writers. In particular, they could positively affect the progress of the many boys who struggle with writing throughout the primary school years.

The journals table of contents can be found by CLICKING HERE.

News Clippings

A batch of short posts to make up for my absenteeism this week (it was for a good cause I was relaying knowledge!).

Omega-3 Supplements and ADHD

An article came out this month suggesting that significant symptom reduction for ADHD children can occur with the use of regular doses of Omega-3 nutritional supplements. The news of this has been flying all over the internet (especially in naturopath circles) and it took me a little while to track down the source. But surprise it was actually a reputable one! You can find the abstract, published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Developmental & Behavioural Pediatrics, by CLICKING HERE. Further details are available in their press release by CLICKING HERE.

Working Memory & Teaching Modifications

Hopefully by now you've learned to just add Dr. Eide's blog right to your reading list. But if not, there is a great little post about modifying the teaching environment for those who struggle with working memory demands. It is worth a read, and may adjust some of your future recommendations/modifications as a result. CLICK HERE to read the post.

ADHD Medication Underprescribed?


I just thought this was interesting. A government funded study from the east coast of Canada actually found that the use of ADHD medications was actually less then expected. Given the massive amounts of press the overuse and abuse of ADHD medications have been getting of late this is a nice change of pace. Perhaps it's all the Atlantic salmon driving up Omega-3 levels instead.

And Now A Message From A High School Newspaper

The quality of high school press has certainly improved since I was the movie reviewer at my school back in the day. I was quite impressed by an editorial piece I read today on faking LD's. It would of been nice if they included an explanation of the difficulties in faking if an assessment is thorough and the examiner aware of malingering risks, but none the less well done! If you want to feel bad about the quality of your writing certainly CLICK HERE and give yourself time and a half to read it. Unless you finally figured out your copy of Kurzweil!

Latest Issue: Journal of Research in Reading

The prepublication version of the latest edition of the Journal of Research in Reading is up. And for the moment the articles again seem to be free. I would take a look and grab any articles of interesting.

The issue looks very interesting and is clearly a key journal for those interested in the assessment and remediation of reading deficits.

You can see the full table of contents and obtain PDF's of the articles by CLICKING HERE.

Table of Contents: 10-Apr-2007

• Young children at risk of literacy difficulties: factors predicting recovery from risk following phonologically based intervention
• Does exposure to orthography affect children's spelling accuracy?
• Stress sensitivity and reading performance in Spanish: A study with children
• Long-term outcomes of early reading intervention
• Computerised screening for visual stress in reading
• Prosodic reading, reading comprehension and morphological skills in Hebrew-speaking fourth graders
• Correlates of orthographic learning in third-grade children's silent reading
• Deriving word meanings from context: does explanation facilitate contextual analysis?
• Orthographic analysis of words during fluency training promotes reading of new similar words
• Rhythm and reading development in school-age children: a longitudinal study
• Development and data for UK versions of an author and title recognition test for adults
• Comprehension monitoring and reading comprehension in bilingual students
• The quality of systematic reviews of effectiveness in literacy learning in English: a 'tertiary' review

Journal Updates: April 11, 2007

The April issue of the British Journal of Learning Disabilities is up and online, and as a nice gift to us the articles are all free this month! Unfortunately it is heavily therapy based so there is not much assessment wise there or even academically remediation based. However, you may want to take a look and snag any articles you want before they decide to stop the free offer. You can CLICK HERE to see the table of contents.

The table of contents for the new Learning Disabilities Research & Practice is also up online (CLICK HERE). The articles are not free in this case, but there is some interesting looking articles on math remediation.

Review: mySchoolog beta 0.95

When I first heard about mySchoolog (read as my school log) I was very excited about the potential uses of this currently free virtual backpack for elementary and secondary school students with and without disabilities.

mySchoolog describes itself as "an online web-based application with which students can organize their school life easily."

It is an all-in-one system that provides the ability to enter class notes, attach files like pictures and charts, develop to-do lists, and keep a schedule. The main bonus is that these areas can be linked. You can enter notes and link it to a scheduled class, assign a few to-do's (like homework), and then attach the related files.

The to do list and schedule can even be linked to an alert system that will send reminders to your email or phone (by SMS).

The idea behind mySchoolog is promising and the feature set is a great start. Unfortunately the linking system and even each feature themselves is not very user friendly and somewhat counterintuitive. The good news is that mySchoolog appears to be a work in progress. Hopefully they will work the kinks out and make this great idea a bit more user friendly. I would love to see the linking and input process become a mindless task. If they can sort this out, mySchoolog could be an amazing tool for students with difficulties with organization and time management (executive functioning deficits, etc.).

Take a look at mySchoolog by CLICKING HERE.

Tidbits: April 3rd, 2007

Neurolinguistic Programming and other Nonsense

I have very little knowledge of Neurolinguistic Programing (NLP) other than the fact that over the past 4 years I've attended about 10 conferences a year (Psych, SLP, OT, Spec-Ed) and each of them have about 3-4 exhibitors touting NLP books and products. It certainly as its fans and they are a VERY vocal group. It also has its detractors. The Neurologica Blog has a post related to the latter. It is worth a read and can be found by CLICKING HERE.

School Achievement, Perceptions Of Ability And Interest Change As Children Age

An interesting little study that likely verifies what most of us would of expected in that "[c]hildren in early grades may like a subject in which they don't feel very competent, or they may feel competent in a subject in spite of poor grades. But by the end of high school, children generally feel most interested in subjects in which they feel they are the strongest."

I think most of us would of expected that and we certainly see avoidance of certain courses and topic areas once a child has experienced repeated failure. The cases I find interesting though are those where the child (or adult even) do not appear to have a good awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses despite repeatedly poor performance. I recall one case I had with a college/university level student who was in an engineering style program that was particularly mathematics heavy (4 of his 6 classes were essentially one form or another of math). His responses to the Academic Competency Evaluation Scales (ACES) suggested that he felt he was at or above grade level for mathematics, but that it was not an essential skill area for his program. His WIAT-II results displayed a math composite of below the 10th percentile and in the mid-range of elementary grade equivalence. Clearly some perception, self-monitoring, and achievement discrepancies there.

CLICK HERE for a more complete article summary. The original article can be found in: Child Development, Vol. 78, Issue 2, I like to do it, I'm able and I know I am: Longitudinal Couplings between Domain-Specific Achievement, Self-Concept, and Interest

Executive Functioning and Early Achievement

I will certainly have to pick up the aforementioned Child Development journal as another press release has popped out from it that I am particularly interested in. The article looks at self-regulation and it's role, beyond intelligence, to predict performance on early achievement measures. What is of key interest is that the sample group was three to five year olds. More and more research these days is pointing out the early childhood and pre-school aspects of executive functioning ability development. Less than a decade ago, many EF theorists felt we could not even consider executive skills prior to age 8 or even as early as high school. New and stronger tools are becoming available to evaluate this domain and will certainly bring with it new research and methodologies for working within these populations.

You can read an in-depth summary of the article by CLICKING HERE.

I will certainly be snagging a copy of this article in the next week and will post a more in-depth review.


Kickboxing Causes Brain-Damage

From the "No Duh" file (aging myself with that term aren't I). This one is a little more neuro oriented than psychoed but I thought it was amusing that this was actually the first time that being kicked in the head has been proven to lead to some problems. CLICK HERE for more.

Emotional Intelligence: Conference & Bar-On Training

MHS appears to be busy putting together some upcoming Emotional Intelligence and Bar-On related conferences and workshops.

I recently received a mailing for the International Conference on Emotional Intelligence which is in London, England this year on June 11th and 12th. They've described the workshop as targeted users of the EI in all domains, but the currently announced speakers clearly have an HR push. Either way, who needs an excuse to write off a trip to England as a business trip!

You can read more on the conference at MHS's site by CLICKING HERE.

Also of note is the upcoming Emotional Intelligence and Higher Education: The EQ-i Certification Workshop Series 2007 which has a Canadian stop this year in Kingston from June 6th to 8th. There is some details up on MHS's website (CLICK HERE)

If you have not taken a look at the Bar-On EQ-i before it is certainly worth a look. It can offer a lot to a psychoeducational assessment, especially those that do not fit a clear learning disabled profile but continue to have academic difficulties. It is kind of like adding a personality profiler to the assessment, but utilizes traits that are more related to the learning process than you would get from a tool that is more oriented towards hiring or Axis-1/2 diagnostics.

There is some really interesting work going on in the domain of EI for college and academics. At the forefront of this research is Dr. James D.A. Parker at Trent University who I had the pleasure of sitting beside at a luncheon last November. He is doing some interesting work and showed me some EI scales he has been developing that really peaked my interest on their relationship between EI and personality developments parallels with potential executive deficits. You can view his labs website by CLICKING HERE.

Free Journal Issue: British Journal of Learning Disabilities

While adding some journals to my automated alert system (in order to provide article reviews for future postings of this blog) I noticed that the newest issue (March) of the British Journal of Learning Disabilities is available online in its entirety for free.

You can find the issue by CLICKING HERE. I would suggest reviewing it now as there is no way to tell how long this will be free.

I scanned around some back issues of other journals from this publisher and also found a free back issue from last years edition of Learning Disability Research & Practice (which I believe has been since discontinued). You can retrieve that issue by CLICKING HERE.

Interesting Autism Theory: Mating Polarization

Dr. Eide's Neurolearning blog has an interesting set of links and a overview of an interesting Autism/PPD theory that essentially says that the increased rate of PDD type behaviours in individuals in fields like math, engineering, and physics may lead to a group of systemizers who seek out a similar group in spouses. And when you mate those two groups together you increase the selection of genes that target those behaviours, and potentially increase the likelihood of extreme expression of those traits such as Autism.

Here is a excerpt of an excerpt putting that into a narrative:

"assortative mating," as he calls it, would have served to concentrate the critical genes, increasing the chance that such a couple will give birth to the most extreme systemizers of all those with autism.

Now this is not just philosophically driven theory alone. They did actually do some research. And they found that the incidence of Autism in the families of the Math/Engeineer/Physics students was 6 times higher than it was in English or French Literature students families.

That is a pretty large difference. Interestingly the Literature students families were twice as prone to bipolar disorder.

Now the result is interesting, but we have to first determine if there is other distinctions within these two "family groups" that could lead to increased rates of diagnosis. Are arts families more prone to seek out mental health treatment and assessment, while hard science families more likely to seek out psychoeducational assessment? Do families who are more logically driven have increased difficulty handling a child that seems on the surface to be acting without logic and therefore more likely to seek assistance which leads to increased PDD diagnosis? Is parenting style have anything to do with it? Let's hope not on that last one, because that started a lot of blaming in the past with this disorder.

You can read more about this at Dr. Eide's blog and the many great resources he linked too by CLICKING HERE.

Note: And for those who may have been at first confused as I was ... Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen is not Borat/Ali-G that is Sasha Baron-Cohen :) Though I am curious of what Borat's theory is on this as well. Most likely has something to do with the mother being dropped during mate abduction.

Possible Neuro Roots of Dyscalculia Identified

Medical News Today has an interesting little article on a research study that is claiming to have discovered the roots of Dyscalculia. By artificially stimulating right parietal lobe dysfunction in a normal population they were able to replicate the testing results of clients with the disorder.

Now I would not assume that this means it can be 100% confirmed that this is the causal area of the disorder. I can blindfold a person and replicate the results of being born blind but that does not mean putting things in front of your eyes is the cause of blindness. However, it is a promising result none the less and could lead to some positive results.

They article notes that it could lead to neural tissue based diagnostic procedures. I assume they mean things like MRI's. I think it is highly unlikely we could afford to use such high end equipment to diagnose Dyscalculia, but this same type of brain study research is what has lead to advanced psychometric measures for identifying executive functioning (great frontal lobe tools like Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System) and earlier identification of potential Alzheimer's (unique lobe specific tests like the Alzheimer's Quick Test).

You can read the news report by CLICKING HERE. The full press release (including contact information from the study authors) can be found by CLICKING HERE.

The article can be found in the following journal:

“Virtual Dyscalculia Induced by Parietal-Lobe TMS Impairs Automatic Magnitude Processing” in Current Biology on 17 April 2007

Quick Picks: News & Blogosphere

Short on time tonight and a very early morning tomorrow so I am going to be brief with tonights recommended readings.

Undiagnosed LD's Costly in Later Life

A recent Vancouver Sun article on the implications in young adulthood and beyond of an undiagnosed learning disability was not news to me, but is a good reminder of the reasons why we need to promote early identification and more accurate diagnostic methodologies in the face of intervention until we mask it models that are becoming increasingly focused upon. Unemployment and educational implications are obvious, but I think it is important to look at the anxiety and depression elements in particular. While I currently work with the full age range, historically my background is in adult assessment. During psychoeducational evaluations the frequency of at least mildly severe mood disorders was striking. Not surprising when you think of the hopelessness, repeated failures, and social-emotional stress that comes along with significant learning difficulties. You can read the article by CLICKING HERE.

LDAC Releases 3-Year Study on Learning Disabilities

The meat of the aforementioned article comes from the results of the large scale LD study released yesterday by the Learning Disability Association of Canada. I have not had an opportunity to browse all of the information that has been released (they created an entire website for it) but it will certainly be on my ASAP reading list. You can see the LDAC press release by CLICKING HERE or even better view the results of the study at the studies website Putting A Canadian Face on Learning Disabilities (PACFOLD).

An Interesting Rant on Learning Disabilities

I do not know who Lydia Joyce is. From her website I can tell that she is a recently published author. I was not surprised by her profession given her LD related rant was so well written. Ms. Joyce speaks of the challenges of being disabled and how it should not be used as an excuse to avoid those areas where difficulty is by bypassing them all together, but rather to use training toward automaticity and strategy usage to alleviate the effects of the disability. It is a great and quick read and reveals a non-clinicians perspective. CLICK HERE to have a read.

Heavy Metal Music: Gifted Brain Food?

Maybe, maybe not. I thought finally I had justification for my loud musical tastes with this article that claims that Heavy Metal music may very well be the therapist of choice for the gifted set.

Interestingly, the articles support facts do seem to suggest otherwise. Here's a breakdown:

• "There is a perception of gifted and talented students as being into classical music and spending a lot of time reading. I think that is an inaccurate stereotype.

• Asked for their favorite type of music, 39 per cent said rock, 18 per cent R&B and 14 per cent pop. Six per cent said heavy metal and a third rated it in their top five genres.

Now based on that statement Heavy Metal is not the top Genre. It is actually the 4th on the list. Considering what genre's are left are we surprised that hard rock ranked higher than jazz, blues, and country (these are British students as well). And if a third ranked it in their top five genres that means that one of those actually beat it out with most students.

So, from this we can so far conclude that a portion of gifted kids listen to heavy metal.

And not only is it only a small group. It appears they may not be the well adjusted ones.

From the article:

• The heavy metal fans in the study had lower self-esteem and more difficulties in family relationships and friendships.

So from the information presented we can conclude that a small portion (6 percent) of gifted students prefer heavy metal music over other genres. In my best guess I would say there is less then 10 genres students routinely listen to so this is not even proportional percentage wise. I guess this shows you certainly have to read past the headline and introductory paragraph.

Dyslexia Misdiagnosis

*NOTE* Something went funky the first time I posted this (had a few blogger is unavailable warnings). As a result it seems that there was some paragraph formatting errors, as well as the loss of the end of one paragraph, and the complete deletion of another. Which made my post both confusing and actually contradicted itself by deleting my counterarguments :) I have reposted it with the changes italicized. *ENDNOTE*


The great posts over at Dr. Eide's Nuerolearning Blog continue. Yesterday brought us a post on the mis-diagnosis of dyslexia. I've certainly seen enough evidence of this in the past. However, I also feel that it is worthwhile discussing the overuse of the term Dyslexia for any academically evaluated reading problem that may be the result of other conditions.

Dyslexia is one of those disorders that lead to a lot of pseudo-specialized clinics popping up that rely on reading and decoding tasks to "diagnose" the condition. Unfortunately, like many of the education based disorders it is one that is typically defined by the resulting symptoms as opposed to the underlying causal criteria.

A quick look at definitions of Dyslexia online come up with such gems as:

"a reading disorder characterized by reading ability below the expected level given a child's age, school grade, and intelligence."

"An impairment of the ability to read."

Well there is a heck of a lot of things that can cause those symptoms. Actually last time I checked every diagnosable learning condition caused those.

The EIDE blog points to potential differential diagnosis:

• Carelessness / Motivation
• ADD/ADHD
• Pervasive Developmental Disorders
• Depression / ODD
• ID/MR

While the Eide blog posting describes these as conditions that are often misdiagnosed when students are actually experiencing something more inline with specific Dyslexia, I would argue that this is certainly a two way street with a number of individuals with these conditions being quickly given a dyslexic label by those who assess for the presence of dyslexia alone.

In the end we are probably looking at cases where people are being overly influenced by the type of conditions they are looking for as opposed to evaluating with a blank slate type of mentality. It very likely goes in both directions, and I strongly suggest glancing at the Eide posting.

It's brief but worth a read. CLICK HERE to take a look. Make sure you go all the way to the bottom to see a great reading list and suggested links.

News Updates: About Me!

It may of not made it into any formal news but I do have an announcement to make. I have formally resigned from my full-time position at PsychC0rp Canada effective the end of March. My role as a clinical measurement consultant was very exciting and brought with it many lessons, an opportunity to meet (and often eat) with many of the juggernauts in our field, and brought me all the way from Vancouver to Newfoundland to Mexico. It was an amazing opportunity to learn all there is to know about the assessment measures that are out there and has really allowed me to grow to new levels as a clinician. Unfortunately, as is with any learning experience there is a time to move on and go to the next step in a life long learning process.

I am now returning to private assessment on a full time basis and will be working between Hamilton, Toronto, and the Kawartha Lakes region for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of my work will continue in the realm of psychoeducational assessment but will likely also include some side work in clinical psychodiagnostics. I look forward to my next adventure and backwards to an excellent experience!

I will be continuing to update this psychoed blog (likely even more often), attending conferences, and reviewing tests. I look forward to sharing all of that with each of you! You may not be a chatty bunch but I do see the amazingly large number of visitors I get from all around the world and thank you for coming back to this blog time and time again!

Michael

News Updates: Friday March 23rd

Just a few news links I felt were worthwhile to share.

LDAQ Workshop Pushes for Earlier Diagnosis

It's not news to anyone that LD assessments and diagnosis typically do not happen in most boards until around the third grade or beyond. There has been a push for earlier identification in Ontario but this has more to do with skill set evaluations as opposed to formal LD type diagnosis. It is not surprising to me that identification has been pushed out of the earliest years of education. This is of course a problem as the longer it takes for a child's educational and learning style to be profiled the more likely they will have fallen behind, and the further they will have fallen. When these children are directed towards slower paced programming it is certainly going to lead to life long problems if they are already three to five years behind.

An address at the Learning Disability Association of Quebec's annual conference (a much more assessment oriented conference than you'll find at LDAO) this week suggested that we need to move identification to the pre-school level. The time may really have come for this in Canada. I suspect that a great deal of the influence towards a later identification model of LD had to do with the somewhat archaic ability-achievement discrepancy approach. The sensitivity of these discrepancies are muddy a bit if there is very little academic experience and expectations in place to have a discrepant weakness in. As we move to a more inclusive and appropriate model of learning disabilities, including information processing deficits, phonological processing, and executive functioning we can certainly expect a better ability to appropriately and accurately identify at an earlier age (since many of these constructs are more stable outside of academic exposure). What do you think? Time to dust off your WPPSI-III and DAS!

CLICK HERE to read a very brief note from the Montreal Gazette on this.

Assessment & Treatment of Children From Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds

Psychiatric Times posted an entire article online this week exploring this issue in the United States. The article is from 2003 (not sure why it was listed as breaking news) but is an interesting read discussing cultural variations in the presentation of conduct disorder, ADHD, and bipolar disorder in children. Some symptom variations were present, but interestingly this seems to be due in part to reporting. They noted that some negative behaviours were not reported upon in minority youth as they were seen as more normal. They also noted that the minority youth were far less likely to be treated through medication. This may be due socio-economic status or other factors. In the end it is worth skimming through. CLICK HERE to view the full article.

Kurzweil Reading Recovery Software

Earlier today I presented to a group in New Brunswick on Reading/Writing assessment and intervention in a developmental framework (as opposed to standardized achievement batteries). During I had discussed with some attendees about the Kurzweil reading recovery software program. Since several of the attendees were given this website in their information I thought I would provide the details here.

You can take a look at the Kurzweil program by CLICKING HERE.

And by clicking here you will find the primary Canadian distributor that I have crossed paths with over the years.

At its most basic level Kurzweil is a computer based text reader that will allow a child to listen to scanned or digital texts while following along on screen. At a more complex level it is a very strong piece of software that allows students to overcome reading deficits, increase fluency by utilizing a choral or silent read along strategy, as well as increase vocabulary. A similar (and last time I checked cheaper) software that does similar things is called Text Help. But most people agree that Kurzweil is the gold standard.

Other useful software remediation and training tools that can be really helpful are Naturally Speaking (speech-to-text), Inspiration (Visual thinking and learning pattern tool), and iPod friendly books on tape from services like Audible.com.

Advocacy in the news

Two unfortunate but interesting cases in the news about LD/ADHD advocacy.

LD leads to death?

The first is a group out of the UK that has released a report about the deaths of Learning Disabled individuals in hospital care. Here is a quote:

"An independent inquiry is being launched into the deaths of six people with learning disabilities ... the deaths were avoidable and pointed to "widespread ignorance" within the health service."

Now here is a break down of three cases presented as examples:

• 43-year-old Martin, went without food for 26 days while in hospital following a stroke. That left him too weak to undergo surgery and he died on December 21 2005.
• Cancer patient, Emma, 26, was told by doctors in 2004 she had a 50/50 chance of survival but they did not treat her as they believed she would not co-operate with treatment
• Mark, 30, died eight weeks after being admitted to hospital with a broken leg.

Clearly unfortunate cases. I have to admit though that I really wonder what they are referring to when they mention Learning Disability. I have never evaluated a person (or worked with) a person with an LD who would of died of these incidents (maybe the first one if the stroke was severe enough. I have certainly seen hospitals starve people before). Perhaps these could happen in very severe cases of MR, but LD? How the heck did they allow someone to die of a broken leg. Thankfully there is an inquiry. Read more by CLICKING HERE.

ADD Student Denied LSAT Accommodations

A really interesting case out of the states was reported on today about an ADD student that was denied extra time on the LSAT (law school entrance) exams after a court reviewed his case. In a nutshell they acknowledged that students with learning disabilities do often qualify for extra time and accommodations on high stakes exams but that this particular gentleman did not because his IQ of 110 (75th percentile) was not significantly discrepant from his previous LSAT results (unaccommodated) of 46th percentile. They noted that he scored about where you would expect an average student to score. An interesting statement and thought but there is some HUGE errors in that statement and makes me really wonder about the lawyers and psychologists involved:

1. Just eyeballing it that is pretty darn close to a significant discrepancy
2. There was a comment that his processing speed was significantly lower than his other abilities and was the reason for the need for extra time. This means his FSIQ was probably an underestimate of his actual comprehension and reasoning abilities. Had they used his VCI/POI score (or whichever if they used something other than WAIS) they probably would of found he was well above Average (since he technically already is High Average)
3. I've seen the LSAT and it is extremely heavy in reading content and is multiple choice. An ADHD-Inattentive subtype is clearly at a disadvantage
4. The old adage that you cannot achieve higher scores then your ability score is clearly been thrown out the window. Students who implement appropriate strategies and skilled /directed problem solving techniques can clearly preform higher then expected.

I do wonder about one thing. They say he fell at the 46th percentile nationally. Is that compared to a norm group representing the entire population or just college students who took the LSAT. If that is the case he is probably way above the 46th percentile when compared to a random peer group and therefor operating no where near a discrepancy. You can read the full article by CLICKING HERE

What should we do?

So how do we resolve this? We get rid of these stupid LSAT, GRE, MCAT and other large scale entrance exams that have been continually proven not to do anything but otherwise thin the herd. They have been routinely shown not to correlate to grad school success and one study even showed them being negatively correlated.

They should at the least get rid of power tests of these domains and move towards content tests that are based on criteria that identify individuals who would be good for identifying specific traits related to success in a field.

A question on accommodations with high stake testing

I must admit that I am actually torn on the idea of accommodations of high stake testing. On licensing exams where individuals may be placed in environments in which they need to make high speed decisions on medications (dosage) or procedures do we want to bypass this high speed element for individuals who may face these types of challenges?

I'm going to say yes they should. Some of the most talented, knowledgeable, and qualified individuals I have met in Psychology, nursing, and in other fields have been those who have specific learning difficulties like working memory. They are also individuals who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and put strategies in place to compensate for them. Maybe these individuals are even better prepared because they are aware of the challenges and put steps in place to avoid them. I have certainly heard of cases of individuals without these problems performing medical errors or cutting off the wrong limbs.

I also think that the concerns were influenced by the large array of low functioning individuals we come across in our lives. In reality they are never going to make it into these types of environments in the first place if they are not able to accommodate their daily life challenges. So is this really an issue at all?

LD and Criminal Justice

There is an interesting news editorial/article that can be found by CLICKING HERE that explore the increased ratio of learning disabled individuals in US prisons and the systems failure to deal with this group effectively.

The article and the comments posted seem to get overly influenced by IQ scores themselves and push towards a if you have an IQ below 70 you are not bright enough to do anything else than commit crimes kind of mindset. There is a lot wrong with this of course as we know low FSIQ's is reflective of MR/ID/MID not LD. But if we ignore all that, the article in itself is of interest in that it really does force us to think about cognitive deficits outside of the education system.

It is pretty easy to suppose that individuals with executive functioning based LD's would be more likely to end up in prison than their peers. Difficulties with generalizing rules and effective problem solving strategies, impulsive patterns of responding, ineffective strategies to make decisions between effective vs. non-effective responses, inability to set shift away from emotionally charged responses. These are really a blueprint to poor responses to life stresses.

I wonder if there is a role for the psychoeducational consultant in the criminal justice system or if this is the place for forensic psychology. Competency to stand trial is certainly in the forensics realm, but I think this is something different. It also would have to do with training. We know that typically LD based individuals have difficulty generalizing learned strategies. My guess is that the success of prison based remediations is dramatically lower in LD groups than controls. There could very likely be a socially and individually based benefit of having LD specialists (both assessment and strategy) in prisons.

Webcast: Reading Assessment

My guess is that many assessors start and finish their reading assessments with tools like WIAT-II, WJ-III, or KTEA-II. Maybe your adding a CTOPP or an extra subtest here or there. However, as phonological processing expands its role in LD definitions and goes beyond the simple reading discrepancies we've used in the past, we really need to look a step beyond the basics. I've recently (and very happily) added Pro-Ed's TOWRE to my testing along with the current decile-based version of the PAL (and I am very excited in a geeky psychoed fashion about a standard score based PAL-II this year).

To beef up on your reading acquisition knowledge there is a decent resource called Reading Rockets which is a collaboration of many groups and seems (at least at my glance) to not be a company driven $$$ site. There are also advertising an upcoming reading workshop Webcast on April 4th. You can find further information by CLICKING HERE.

Why so slow? Processing speed, Cognitive Flexibility? No sorry just big changes coming soon!

For the few dedicated readers out there you might wonder why it has gone over a week without updates. I have been just swamped over the last week as some big things have changed for me in the Psych world that required my full attention. Some of you have already heard the news but I will formally announce on here shortly.

Workshop: Sternberg

The man of a million intelligences himself Dr. Robert J. Sternberg is going to be presenting in just under two months at a public workshop put on by Peel District School Board in Mississauga. The Peel series in the past has been somewhat teacher/parent driven so I'm not 100% sure specific or detailed it will be but this is one of the few chances to see one of our fields legends in the GTA.

Here are some details:

NINETEENTH ANNUAL SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE
“SUCCESSFUL INTELLIGENCE IN THE CLASSROOM: Practical Applications for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment” – Robert J. Sternberg, Ph.D, Thursday, May 3.

Registration Fees:
Diane Evans, Psychology Department, Peel District School Board
HJA Brown Education Centre
5650 Hurontario Street, Mississauga
Ontario L5R 1C6

For more information: Telephone: 905-890-1010 ext. 3177; Email: psychconference@hotmail.com

Conference to be held at the Living Arts Centre, 4141 Living Arts Centre Drive, Mississauga, Ontario.

Asperger's Classroom Strategies

One of the SERT teacher blogs that I follow had two brief posts this week on strategies to be utilized with Asperger's identified students in classrooms. The recommendations do not have a lot of detail but they certainly do add some insight into some recommendations that you may want to consider in reports and future IEP designs.

They are brief and worth bookmarking or making note of some areas you might have not been covering:

CLICK HERE for Part 1

CLICK HERE for Part 2

Sensory Processing Disorder: A Parent's Perspective

I actually do find time to read outside of the psychoed literature but unfortunately psychoed seems to track me down no matter where I try to escape. Wired is a technology magazine that I frequent and is pretty holistic in its coverage and this time has added an interesting little article looking at a child's sensory processing disorder through his tech oriented father's perspective. It is well written, brief, and worth a moment of your time. CLICK HERE to have a read.

Web Resource Updates

Dr. Eide's Neurolearning blog had a great week of blog entries related to domains we frequently test in our standard psychoeducational batteries.

Reading Between the Lines & Working Memory

A great little post that looks at how Working Memory demands and deficits can negatively effect performance on a students ability to work with inferences. The post provides some compelling evidence that could effect interpretation of things like Reading Comprehension (WIAT-II), etc. (CLICK HERE).

Normal Developmental Increases in Visual Spatial Memory

Just a brief overview of an article (see the bottom of the Eide post for the original article from UofT) discussing normal developmental curves for visual spatial development and the ability to overcome deficits using verbal strategies. The results will certainly help support your CMS, WRAML-2, and Beery interpretations. (CLICKING HERE).

Fluent Reading

Another interesting post, this time on neural relationships with reading fluency. Noting earth shattering but an interesting read and overview none the less. (CLICK HERE).

ADHD Best Practice Guidelines

Last week the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) released guidebooks and pocket cards for the assessment (their definition of assessment) and treatment (medical) of ADHD. The etiology, assessment, and non-medical treatment side of things on their data sheets are pretty limited but the medical treatment side of things (surprise!) is very thorough.

As a result it is a great resource for psychoed professionals actually as our medical knowledge is where our weakness usually is on this disorder.

You can download their full document by CLICKING HERE (recommended) or their summary pocket card by CLICKING HERE.

ADHD News Clips

Two interesting ADHD tidbits from this morning that I thought I would share.

There is an interesting information piece on Girls & ADHD (CLICK HERE to view) up at Scholastic's website (from their Instructor Magazine) which discusses the warning signs of ADHD in girls that are often missed due to the decreased presentation of the typical ADHD-profile that we see in boys at this age. For my education and non-psychology readers this is a nice and useful little write up. It's a good reminder of the variations between these two profiles for you diagnosticians as well.

Shire has received FDA approval in the US for a new ADHD drug called Vyvanse. This has been all over the news for the last few days but this is the first professionally oriented news clipping I have found about it. The drug is reported to have a decreased likelihood of abuse. Which is very good news, as an increasing number of alarming articles about stimulant abuse have been popping up over the last few years. The review can be found by CLICKING HERE.

Workshop: Langley, BC

This one is more for parents and educators. There is a free workshop next week in Langley, BC @ Alex Hope Elementary (21150 85 Ave.) titled Supporting a Struggling Student.

It "will help people understand how to identify early signs, and share practical suggestions to address concerns" and is put on in part by LDA-BC.

News Updates - Week of February 26th

A bit of an absence of posts do to a hectic assessment, workshop, and conference schedule but I am back with some news updates for everyone.

Israel: Standardized Diagnostic Test For Learning Disabilities

A bizarre updates about the great invention of standardized tests in Israel. This assessment discovery might be a surprise to you since we have been using these tests for almost a hundred years. It sounds like the state of the field is a real problem there with the article reporting that 50% of students are entering school with identified learning disabilities. It is an interesting look at our field elsewhere. CLICK HERE to take a look.

Children's Books Help Overcome Stigma of Mental Illness and Learning Problems


Helping children overcome the stigma of mental illness, behavioural issues, and learning difficulties can be difficult and can have a life long influence on self concept. A Canadian author has created a series of books to introduce these concepts to children and help them overcome some of the emotional based issues that go along with these challenges. The Toronto Star recently featured part of the series, which can be found by CLICK HERE.

OPA had a couple of relevant psychoed workshops (nonverbal assessment, PDD, OPA Psychoed Funding Projects) that were interesting and very well attended. I will post some summaries shortly.

Teen Prescription Drug Use Up

The good news is non-prescription drug use appears to be down. According to PsycPORT (the APA news service) incidence of prescription drug use is on the rise in the US:

"While their use of marijuana declined from 30.1 percent to 25.8 percent from 2002 to 2005, use of OxyContin, a painkiller, increased from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent over the same period. Use of Vicodin, another painkiller, increased slightly from 6 percent to 6.3 percent.

Teens are also abusing stimulants like Adderall and anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax because they are readily available and perceived as safer than street drugs, Walters said."

I'm not surprised at all by the stimulant use increase. I've certainly heard of this abuse, particularly at college and university where individuals come across roommates with prescriptions. The article notes that some of the pain killer abuse is linked to online pharmacies which may not be as big an issue in Canada. But medication is more readily available here with low costs so who knows. CLICK HERE to read the release.

From "g" to Zzz

Certainly not a post to read before bedtime (as I tried). An online article on Horizontal 'g' appeared online this week. If you want to do some theory driven reading take a look by CLICKING HERE.

Cultural Variations: Brain or Learning Style?

Another great post on the blog of Dr. Eide, this time covering math skill variations between Anglophones and Chinese speaking students. Essentially they are seeing strong math performance and unique neural activation with the Chinese students. There is a pretty good explanation of why this is along with suggestions of how we could alter math teaching to maximize this highly conceptual and automatized style of mathematics.

The post is certainly worth a read CLICK HERE

Accomodation & Technology Guide: Dyslexia

Just a quick blog link. Special Education Teacher in Washington DC is a frequently updated blog that appears to have something to do with a project for this particular SERT's NCLD certification. It usually has more to do with classroom realities (not a big surprise) than assessment but it does provide some insight into that world. Today there was a post that will be of use to remediation, accommodation, and technology based recommendations for psychoeducational reports. I have been thinking a lot lately about that often "cut and paste" part of our report which we may often speed through yet it is likely the most important part of the report to the classroom and research teachers. It is certainly worth a read.

PostSecret

PostSecret is an interesting art project website that has led to the publication of two great books that really provide an interesting insight into the mind of others. Essentially individuals send in anonymous home made post cards that reveal a secret they would like to get off thier chest. The site is worth reading as our the books which sit nicely on my shelf and generate a lot of interest. A recent posting was related to LD and I thought it was worth sharing. You can find the PostSecret website by CLICKING HERE. Valentines Day is coming up so it is a bit more depressing than usual :)

Sleep Disorders in Children

Sleep disorder rates in children have been back in the press (and research domain) again has me thinking about these difficulties a bit more. Like I assume everyone else is doing I always ask about sleeping difficulties with individuals I assess and have yet to have anyone really report any problems. But I wonder how often children may perceive that their sleep patterns are normal even if they are not. Their own perception may appear to them to be reflection of reality. My wife just returned from a trip to China and jet lag combined with about 30 hours of travel in total showed me exactly what can happen to your executive skills after sleep deprivation.

Here is a list of articles that may be worth reading:

Kids' attention problems may be linked to sleep disorder
Parasomnias Are Common And Frequent In Children, Study Finds
Sleep disorders linked to school work
Sleep Problems Common in Kids
New Study In The Journal Sleep Finds That Parasomnias Are Common And Frequent In Children
Helping Teens Make Peace with Sleep

I am only familiar with one assessment for this area, the Sleep Disorders Inventory for Students (SDIS) by Marsha Luginbuehl, Ph.D., NCSP. A Children’s Form (SDIS-C) Ages 2 to 10 years and the Adolescent Form (SDIS-A) Ages 11 to 18 years.

A Positive Story: Dyslexic Teen Creates $10,000,000 business

A great positive little story about a dyslexic student came across my media wire this morning. A teenage Landmark School student was profiled today regarding overcoming his disability and developing (at the age of 15!) an online business that is now worth an estimated ten million dollars! Every time I read these stories I like to file them away so that I can share them with clients. They also do a very good job of making me feel very unproductive :)

CLICK HERE to read the report.

Executive Functioning & Metacognition

Dr. Brock Eide has a worthwhile little post over on the Eide Neurolearning Blog regarding executive functioning strategies for students with executive deficits that is a worthwhile read for strategy development and report recommendations. At the bottom of the post you will also see several links to other executive topics that are all worth taking a look at. CLICK HERE to have a read.

Autism ... it's an illusory epidemic .. wait no it's worse than ever.. wait no it's a myth.. wait no sorry it's on the rise.. what the heck?

I've been busy writing reports and have fallen a few days behind on updating this site but am up to date and back with some more news and resources for you!

Autism has been in the press like crazy lately. What is humorous about it is that about a week ago there was a rash of articles discussing Autism as being an over-diagnosed disorder and to some degree an "illusory epidemic" and then the week ended with a large release of articles about how Autism is at new epidemic proportions, that it should be declared an epidemic, and that we have reached the highest rate of diagnosis of all time. In reality it is probably some where in the middle. There is certainly people who are over diagnosing this and other disorders as well. But there is also certainly kids who are being termed "behavioural" that are clearly somewhere on the Autistic spectrum. The best way is to make up your own mind:

For Autism Epidemic Is Illusory CLICK HERE

Is the Autism Epidemic a Myth? CLICK HERE

Autism, hyperactivity and Tourette's syndrome on the increase in children. CLICK HERE

Autism May Not Be The Only Childhood Psychiatric Disorder On The Rise CLICK HERE

U.S. health officials say autism rate about 1 in 150 CLICK HERE

Online Presentation: Dr. Raven on Flynn & Raven's Progressive Matrices

A few weeks ago the University of Minnesota had Dr. John Raven (son of the test author) provide an online lecture on the Raven's Progressive Matrices and the Flynn effect. The webcast has been archived is available in full. It is quite upper level and test design driven as opposed to utility based. The start has a bit of a history of the test that was fairly interesting. You can CLICK HERE to view the 90 minute lecture (complete with an archive of the slides and the chat).

It appears that this presentation may have been born out of an educational debate that is ongoing between Flynn and Raven. You can read a bit of the Raven's side of the debate at THIS WEBSITE. I have not had a chance to read over either of their sides so I cannot comment on either sides at this time.

Free Workshops: ONBIDA

The Ontario Branch of the International Dyslexia Association has a couple of upcoming workshops in Toronto that may be of interest to some of you. The sessions are free and online registration is available. ONBIDA continues to surprise me, one would expect such a specific disability based association to not offer much of a unique service but they regularly have great workshops and a fantastic little conference. I've already signed up for the February session. You can view the descriptions below or on their website (where you can also register) by CLICKING HERE.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
How to Navigate the Emotional, Social and Behavioural Struggles Associated with Learning Disabilities
Presented by: Barbara Muskat, M.S.W., R.S.W.
Director, Community Consultation and Co-Acting Executive Director, Integra

Did you know that learning disabilities are the second most prevalent childhood health condition? Affected individuals are also at risk of facing a lifetime of emotional, social and behavioural struggles such as anxiety, depression, conduct problems, social isolation and poor self esteem. In this presentation you will learn:

* How psychosocial behaviours develop in individuals with learning disabilities and their impact on childhood, adolescence and adulthood
* What societal misunderstandings and stigmas are faced by individuals with learning disabilities
* How an ecologically-based approach can enhance coping and resilience

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Strategies to Help Your Struggling Writer

Presented by: Charles W. Haynes, Ed.D., CCC-SLP
Associate Professor and Clinical Supervisor,
Graduate Program in Communication Sciences and Disorders
Do you know a student who struggles to express what he wants to say? Teachers often observe that students with dyslexia struggle to express themselves in their writing. These same children and adolescents are at risk for failing socially and academically. Through lecture, discussion and hands-on activities, participants will learn practical strategies and techniques for supporting, or "scaffolding," students’ development of oral and written expression. Examples of theme-centred skills instruction at the word and sentence levels will be explored and their relevance to paragraph-level writing will be illustrated. Examples from lower, middle and upper grades will be displayed and comprehensive handouts will be provided. This session is specifically designed for:

* Classroom Teachers
* Speech-Language Pathologists
* Reading-Writing Specialists
* English as a Second Language Instructors
* Parents and advocates who want to learn research-based ideas for spoken-written language intervention

Resource: Test Item Disclosure

Disclaimer: This post is NOT to be taken as legal advice. I am not a lawyer or a recognized expert on this topic. This is simply a collection of publicly available information in order to help guide you in the understanding of test disclosure guidelines. All resources are sourced for your information as well as the provision of contact information to verify the sources.

Now that that's out of the way. I occasionally get asked questions about whether or not test materials (record forms; response booklets) are to be disclosed upon parental request in psychoeducational cases in Ontario/Canada. I am actually hosting a brief discussion on the topic tomorrow and have put together a resource that I thought might be useful for everyone in our shoes.

The document I have put together includes an examination of three of major Canadian test publishers disclosure agreements, CPA's opinion on the topic, the colleges reported thoughts (from their website's search system), as well as a look at PIPEDA and Ontario based legislation. It would seem pretty clear that record forms are NOT to be disclosed unless the scores themselves can be separated from the item content.

I have posted a PDF (HERE) that summarizes the details from each of these sources. The original source is provided for each item as well so that you can check it all out yourself.

*EDIT* Just a note that a slight modification of this document was made on Friday January 26th at 10pm eastern as a result of a personal communication with a CPO member discussing their current stance on test disclosure guidelines *END EDIT*

I also suggest you review the full test disclosure recommendation form at CPA by CLICKING HERE and the Psynopsis article written by an actual legal consultant by CLICKING HERE.

An interesting discussion point would be whether we must include this on our future consent forms. We could likely assume that our clients are not aware of these privacy stipulations.

Z is to T as StS is to ScS and all are to %ile is to ACK!

No matter how many assessments I do I seem to have a total memory block for what T score, standard score, scaled score, goes with which percentile, which is what in the end I report.

Every manual should have a good table for this, but they are hard to track down if it is in there at all. It is assumed that we all have these memorized, but my brain apparently can only take so much :)

Add to this the addition of T-Scores to a lot of recent cognitive tests (WNV, DAS-II) and my head just exploded.

With my scoring assistant on one computer and my report on another I decided to track down an online table and found a pretty decent one. This table does full conversions for T-Scores, Z-Scores, Standard Scores, Scaled Scores, Percentiles, and descriptive categories. Be cautious with the categories as these same to change with time, tests, and political correctness but you should use a consistent one in your reports anyways. CLICK HERE to see/use the tables.

Newsbits: Tuesday January 23rd

Not a lot to report of late but I found a few interesting resources for everyone.

Language Immersion - Not all good

Earlier today I was visiting a regional board for a top secret meeting (not really top secret but it makes it seem more exciting that way) and came across a pamphlet promoting the French immersion schools available within the board. I have long regretted my lack of multilingualism and have wondered if I would send any future offspring of mine to a French immersion program when that time comes. Literature has been mixed on whether such a program is a good idea. It is hard to really discover the truth with all of this as the vast majority of measures used on these kids was designed either to measure Anglophone's or Francophone's specifically and was not normed in an immersion environment (the FIAT is an exception but is so old who knows if it's accurate any more). Add one more study to the confusion, it now appears that learning a new language can actually lead to decreased fluency with your mother tongue. It appears that this is not due to forgetting, but rather is due to an active inhibition of ones primary language that cause distraction while integrating a new language. This may in fact be an adaptive strategy to aid in the more efficient acquisition of a second language. If this is accurate it would be interesting to see if this effect occurs with those second language learners with executive impairments. You can read the research review by clicking here


Save Some Paper - Hire a Chiropractor

Who would of thought we would of been wasting so much time teaching emerging academic schools and focusing on remediation and intervention designs. An unusual study out of Europe has performed a meta-analysis of previous studies, finding that chiropractic services show significant cognitive benefits for children with learning disabilities and Dyslexia. So drop those remediation guides, read the article by clicking here, and pull on an arm!

Intelligence Blogging

I wanted to post some blogs that are worth reading on topics similar to mine.

IQ's Corner by Dr. Kevin McGrew (a WJ-III author) is a very useful and daily updated blog. Of special interest is a handful of articles on a range of School Psych topics which might be worth snagging before the publisher ask for them to be pulled (hopefully they have permission to post them as Dr. McGrew is a guru of tracking down great articles).

Dr. McGrew also has a very interesting cognitive psych blog that is a bit more experimentally oriented but is certainly worth a read for those of you who are thinking at that level it can be found by clicking here.

Developing Intelligence is another upper level cognitive psych blog that I read daily.

EIDE Neurolearning is a fairly new blog to my reading list. Its focus is on remediation design at a neuro level.

As with any source I encourage everyone to be skeptical with blogs (mine included) as they are typically opinion pieces and as an opinionated person I can tell you we are the type who blog! Fortunately the aforementioned sites routinely present their sources which should always be read before solidifying your own opinions.

Bullying Can Be Reduced But Most Common Approaches Ineffective

The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine have an interesting metaanalysis article available this month regarding the success of School-Based bullying interventions. The analysis found that the vast majority of anti-bullying programming was ineffective including classroom discussions, role playing, or detention.

There were positive results found when a more holistic model was involved that utilized a whole school approach with involvement from administration, teachers, and social workers (or counseling staff). Unfortunately such a large scale targeted model is expensive and may suggest the need for the utilization of a more appropriate and accurate method of identifying bullying incidents. I've used the Reynolds Bully Victimization Scales for Schools (Reynold's of APS, RADS & RASI fame) a few times. The tool is useful for both externalized and internalized aspects of bullying (but victimization and bullying behaviour) and could be a useful solution for targetting more accurately.

CLICK HERE to read a review of the Article

CLICK HERE to read the journal abstract


CLICK HERE for a link to Reynolds bio

Bilingualism protections against dementia and attention/cognitive problems

Some very interesting research coming out of Baycrest in Toronto in the February issue of Neuropsychologia. Essentially they examined the age of Dementia onset between monolingual and bilingual clients, finding that the bilingual group had a significantly later onset of the disorder. Mini-Mental (MMSE) and demographic characteristics (gender, age, education level) were not significantly different between the two groups.

This is one of several bilingualism studies that have been carried out at Baycrest of late including one that found decreased attention and cognitive difficulties in bilingual children and adults (note: I have not had a chance to review the cognitive/attention research but will post a review shortly).

Interestingly the results were based on an essentially eastern European language sample (25 languages with the highest prevalence of Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian). I would be interested myself in seeing a anglophone / francophone / bilingual comparison.

You can CLICK HERE to read a review of the article.

The long and the short of it is that myself as a monolingual anglophone appears to be doomed! :)

Aging and Memory Functioning

A bit out of the age range we typically assess in schools, but an interesting article was published this weak in Research on Aging in regards to the relationships between education, cognitive score, and the rate of decline in cognitive function in individuals beyond 70 years of age.

The article replicated previous results that showed positive correlations between level of education and cognition, as well as a tendency for a decreased rate of cognitive decline. However, they found that education level did not lower the rate of decline in working memory. In fact higher educaiton levels were associated with a faster cognitive decline on verbal memory measures.

It is likely a reflection of the more ability you have the more you have to lose but the results are worth a look at.

You can find the original abstract by clicking here or read a thorough review by clicking here.

The article wins my quote of the week with:

"Study director Eileen Crimmins of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology says she wouldn't recommend halting any schooling based on the results."

Thursday Newsbytes

Slow newsday today but I came across a couple of interesting tidbits.


US Standoff Between School Staff and "No Child Left Behind" Literacy Testing

Interesting challenge in the US to the No Child Left Behind act which has now mandated that literacy testing be done in the native tongue of ESL/ELL students. While the NCLB act is not a Canadian concern it is worth a read given our heavy ESL population in Canadian schools. I work for a major assessment company and I would not even know where to start to find native language literacy tests for half the students I have assessed. CLICK HERE to read the full article. It is certainly worth a look at another example of mandates coming from individuals who do not understand the process.

Insomnia and Children

I do think about sleep patterns a bit when I assess and always ask about a students sleep patterns, but have not historically thought a lot about causal factors of sleep problems. I came across a pediatric blog while researching the Sleep Disorder Inventory for Students (SDIS) that may be a worthwhile read (CLICK HERE) for some of you. The differential diagnosis issues (including ADHD) were particularly interesting for me.

Zero Tolerence Policies

When this APA press release first came out last August I missed it (as I suspect a lot of summer vacation staff would of as well) but it is worth a look for those involved in policy making. Seems the zero tolerence approaches towards school behaviour and drug issues actually make things worse. CLICK HERE to have a read.

School Psychologists: One of 2007's Best Careers!

Apparently even with all this RTI fuss in the United States there is still high demand for School Psychologists. In fact USNews.com has reported that in '07 school psychology is one of the top careers of the year. Apparently retirement levels are about to reach a peak and demand for services is up.

The article also listed median salaries for a number of major US cities. The main lesson of the story is do not move to Texas unless you want to live in a tent. Instead head to California for sun, sand, bags of cash, and a few earthquakes! I am actually surprised by the median. Given the wages of some people I know, there is some people who are very underpaid!

CLICK HERE to read the brief report.

35 Years of Giftedness: Longitudinal Study

The monster of gifted longitudinal studies was published this month in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. The article examined predictive factors of success in those at the upper limits of the gifted range (exceptional giftedness) in a "Developing Our Brightest Minds" framework.

I have had a bit of difficulty tracking down the original article but have gathered some details from several reviews and abstracts. Basically they found four key factors:

• Cognitive Abilities
• Educational Opportunities
• Investigative Interests
• Old-fashioned Hard Work
  

My guess is the results are not going to be surprising to anyone. Certainly appears to support the use of gifted programs (educational opportunities) as well as the inclusion of some form of checklist that explores motivation (i.e. the Gifted Rating Scales [GRS]).

The most comprehensive review of the article can be found by CLICKING HERE.

I found it interesting (a bit funny and a bit bizarre) that no where in the article does it link its recommendation of the importance of providing appropriate educational opportunities for gifted children with positive outcomes and benefits for gifted children. Rather it seems to be all about the benefit of society:

“These findings come at a time when our nation is gathering its diverse resources to ensure that we are positioned to compete in a flat, technology-driven world ... Supporting and cultivating our most intellectually gifted students is critical to maintaining our economic competitiveness globally. This research will help educators identify those students who have the most potential to become exceptional professionals and leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”