Monthly Archive for September, 2005

Mel Levine’s publications about Learning Disabilities—”learning differences” in his parlance—are immensely popular, his campaigns are well financed, and his view is seductively appealing. But, his approach has not gained support among the academics with whom I associate. Why? What’s the matter with it?

Daniel Willingham, about whose work I’ve commented admiringly in previous posts, has turned his laser-sharp analysis on Dr. Levine’s theory and practical recommendations. Professor Willingham does not mince words.

Levine’s broad-strokes account of the mind agrees with that of most researchers (and for that matter, with the observant layman): there is a memory system, an attention system, and so on. But it’s the detailed structure Levine claims to see within each of those systems that really drives his proposed treatments for disabled children, and on those details Levine is often wrong. The second question one should ask is, Does the evidence indicate that his proposed treatments help? The answer is that there is no evidence, positive or negative, as to whether or not the program helps kids. Given the inaccurate description of the mind on which it is based, however, it seems unlikely that it will prove particularly effective.

In my view, Willingham’s analysis is quite strong. I’ll talk with him about my reservations, but I have no reservation about recommending his review of Dr. Levine’s recommendations. Teachers of students with LD, please read it. Parents, please read it and don’t be taken in by this balogna. Professors, have your students read it. Spread the word.

Here’s a link to Professor Willingham’s analysis. Alternatively, one can download a PDF of the article.

Anne Sperling and colleagues reported that children with dyslexia differ from their non-dyslexic peers when performing

We evaluated signal-noise discrimination in children with and without dyslexia, using magnocellular and parvocellular visual stimuli presented either with or without high noise. Dyslexic children had elevated contrast thresholds when stimuli of either type were presented in high noise, but performed as well as non-dyslexic children when either type was displayed without noise. Our findings suggest that deficits in noise exclusion, not magnocellular processing, contribute to the etiology of dyslexia.

Please don’t think that this story contridicts other stories about problems experienced by individuals with LD. Perceptual deficits as described here are not about reversals.

Link.

As documented in earlier posts here, here, here and here, I’ve been campaigning to correct the misunderstanding about the relationship between reversals and Learning Disabilities. I’ve put a comment on the TeachingLD.org site asking for suggestions about how professionals in LD can help others to understand the non-relationship. You’re welcome to leave comments there and here.

In a series of pages that provide clearly written information about dyslexia for parents, the Mayo Clinic perpetuates at least three myths about that Learning Disability. The pages report that reversals are a symptom of dyslexia, that an underlying brain malfunction is immutable, and that multi-sensory instruction is required. Let’s take them one at at time.

Reversals of letters (b for d) and a reversal of words (saw for was) are typical among children who have dyslexia. Reversals are common for children age 6 and younger who don’t have dyslexia. But with dyslexia, the reversals persist.

This is a topic that we’ve long ago and only recently addressed, and almost certainly one we shall have to address again. Here’s the problem: Reversals are not an indicator of reading problems. They are a red herring. It is true that children with reading problems make numerically more reversal errors than do their normal reading counterparts, but they do not make proportionally more reversal errors.

2. Now for the brain malfunction argument:

There’s no known way to correct the underlying brain malfunction that causes dyslexia. Treatment is by remedial education.

Although imaging research shows that, when performing reading tasks, the areas of activation in the brains of individuals with reading disabilities are different from the areas of activation in the brains of individuals who read normally, contemporary studies show that effective remedial reading instruction causes the areas of activation in the brains of individuals with reading disabilities to change. After successful remediation, scans show activity in the same areas of the brain for both those who had reading problems and those who read normally. The “underlying brain malfunction” is changed by effective instruction.

3. Now, for the remediation misconception:

Teachers may use techniques involving hearing, vision and touch to improve reading skills. Helping a child use several senses to learn ? for example, by listening to a taped lesson and tracing with a finger the shape of the words spoken ? can help him or her process the information. The most important teaching approach may be frequent instruction by a reading specialist who uses these multisensory methods of teaching.

This is the ever-popular multi-sensory myth. How can one teach reading in a uni-sensory way? Research has revealed very clearly how to teach decoding effectively. Instruction based on that research is what we need to tout for these kids. At least the writer used the weasel word “may.”

It’s terribly disappointing to see a prestigious organization misrepresenting Learning Disabilities. Now we need to see whether the developers of this site will correct the errors. Please write to them. They use a Web form for correspondence and it’s linked here.

Link to the first of the series of Web pages about dyslexia. Link to our recent post about reversals, to an earlier post about reversals, and to a page explaining more about that myth.