It is important that parents, educators, psychologist, psychiatrist and medical doctors begin to understand that a child’s neurological profile is much more complex than we are currently conceptualizing. Today, we often analyze a child’s success or failure in school by trying to understand their current levels of reading, writing and math ability. Is that child a grade 2 reader? Is that child who is in Grade 5 able to do Grade 5 math, or is that child at a Grade 2 level. This information is of course valuable to know, as we don’t want to teach at a level above that current child’s achievement levels. But, is this really giving us an insight into how to best deal with this child’s weak achievement skills?
Let’s take mathematics for example. We will create a fictitious child named, Trevor. Let’s say Trevor is in Grade 6. He has good attention abilities, has a happy family life and loves participating and watching sports. Unfortunately, Trevor is struggling with math and often struggles to understand peer relationships. The parents are worried, the teacher is worried. The school recommends an assessment or psycho-educational assessment. This will help the teachers and parents understand what is going on with Trevor. The school psychologist performs the assessment several months later and discovers that indeed Trevor is below grade level in math, and from interviewing Trevor and his teachers, is struggling with peer relationships. A meeting takes place where the psychologist reports these findings and emphasizes that indeed Trevor has a learning disability in Math. This is due to Trevor having average intelligence, but performing well below grade level in math. The psychologist notes that math is difficult, because Trevor is struggling with math concepts and makes careless mistakes when he performs calculations on paper. The psychologist is not sure why Trevor is struggling socially, but recommends counseling and help from the teacher to form friendships. The teacher is grateful for the assessment as now Trevor can get Learning Assistance for math, and she does not have to worry as much about his struggles in this subject. She will also do her best to help Trevor socially, but she knows she has tried over the last 3 months of school. The parents are happy to get learning assistance help, as is thankful to the school for helping out and caring about Trevor. Success!
Here is the problem with this approach to assessment and remediation. First, we still do not understand neurologically why Trevor struggles with math. We know he is below grade level, but why? Was it bad teaching? Was Trevor not trying? What is going on? Second, Trevor struggles with math and will get small group help in Learning Assistance, but will this end his problems in mathematics? Will Trevor not continue to struggle with math for the rest of his life? Will he need Learning Assistance for the rest of his education for mathematics? Finally, how are we going to help Trevor with social skills. The teacher noted that she has tried to help him, but it doesn’t work. Trevor is actually becoming anxious about this problem, and struggles to fall asleep at night. In fact, it is causing him to loose focus in class due to the his lack of sleep and nervousness. His struggles with social perception may in fact be more serious than his math problems.
This is where an understanding of neurodevelopment makes a huge difference in understanding the complexity of learning differences and also in how we might remediation these cognitive weaknesses. Mathematics requires good conceptual thinking abilities. As well, the brain needs to be capable of manipulating and sequencing numerical information quickly. If the child struggles with understanding cause and effect or seeing patterns in concepts, one can almost guarantee that math problem solving will be weak. In fact, even reading comprehension can become problematic – as this achievement ability requires cause and effect thinking. With this understanding we can then target cognitive remediation for these areas of the brain. For example, Barbara Young created a cognitive exercise that builds the brains ability to form and relate concepts to each other. This exercise, within the Arrowsmith Program, is called Symbolic Relations or Clocks. The child might spend one to three years working on this cognitive exercise slowly building this capacity in the brain. After moving this area of neurological functioning to the average range the child begins to find math problem solving and reading comprehension less problematic. As well, Barbara Young created a cognitive exercise that helps a child build mental math sequencing abilities. This again, can take one to three years to complete based on the child’s initial level of neurological weakness.
As a result of this intervention, over a period of one to three years, mathematics becomes easy to grasp. Trevor would not require Learning Assistance, instead he will get the concepts taught in class and be capable of doing his own homework without tutoring.
In terms of social perception, we are also realizing that the brain can improve this area of functioning. Instead of just hoping the child can deal with his peers, and trying to avoid possible social conflicts, we can now directly remediate this region of the brain. Again, the Arrowsmith Program can provide cognitive exercises that get children to study social situations and begin to analyze them effectively. As well, the child can begin to build object recognition abilities, that can interfer with accurate perceptions of social scenes. In short, the child develops the area of the brain involved with social perception. Over a period of years Trevor could begin to grasp the social world around him with more accuracy and thus reducing his own anxiety, likely improving his sleep patterns.
Trevor would normally be diagnosed with a Math Learning Disability. What is actually accurate is that Trevor has significant neurodevelopmental weaknesses with conceptual thinking, numerical sequencing, social perception and object recognition. These are real neurological functions in the brain. If we just give the label and then try to help Trevor bypass his problems (i.e., with a calculator, and extra tutoring) we are not directly resolving the brain dysfunctions. Thus, in our current model of understanding, assessing and remediating Learning Disabilities, Trevor would continue struggling for the rest of his life with mathematics. By assessing neurological profiles and matching that with cognitive remediation Trevor would be able to handle mathematics independently and even seek careers that require mathmatical understanding. In addition, by understanding that social perception accuracy is also a neurological function, we can develop these areas of the brain to function normally.
The key to this neurological change is the understanding of brain neuroplasticity. That is, that the brain can change and is not fixed. There is an ever increasing amount of research highlight just how neuroplastic our brain is.
