Brain Training for Dyslexia
BRAIN TRAINING FOR DYSLEXIA
RaiseYourIQ has developed a version of our flagship SMART brain training especially for kids and anyone with verbal sequencing, or letter discrimination issues and visual processing speed difficulties which are often associated with dyslexic readers. The SMART training for Dyslexia teaches fluency in word discrimination and basic sentence grammar principles at the same time.
In addition to these developments, new research in my own field is attempting to find the best ways to hone the basic skills a person requires to excel at any type of verbal and mathematical task. We are not too concerned about how the brain works, rather how and what to teach people in order for these tasks to become easier.
Using a concept called relational frame theory, many researchers believe they have identified the basic building block skills of verbal and mathematical abilities. These skills are called relational framing skills and they involve the comprehension of some basic relational concepts: sameness, difference, oppositeness, more and less, along with a few others.
Building blocks for children
Crucially, research appears to show that relational skills are acquired before the intellectual skills with which they are associated — and therefore may well underlie them. Many of these basic building block skills have been used to establish foundational reading and reasoning skills in children across a wide variety of studies.
But now researchers have begun to show that they can also increase general intelligence using brain training-style software that targets our level of relational skill. For example, a child might be taught to answer a question such as: if A is opposite to B, and B is opposite to C, is A the same as or opposite to C?
When exposed to large amount of such training, across a sufficiently large and varied range of examples, improvements are seen in every part of the WISC IQ test, even though the IQ test items look nothing like the items contained in the relational skills training.
Boost to IQ
In one small study of this new method in which I was involved, 12 children were exposed to a fully computerized relational skills-training course in once to twice-weekly sessions across several months. The WISC IQ test was administered before and after the completion of the training.
Before training began, four normally developing children in the sample had an average IQ of 105, but this was raised above 130 following three to four months of training. These kids moved from the normal to the “high functioning” range in a period of a few months as assessed by an IQ test that looked nothing like the relational skills training provided.
Eight further children with intellectual difficulties started the training with an average IQ of 82, well below the average IQ score of 100. Following training in basic relational skills that are foundational to verbal and numerical ability, these IQs were moved to an average of 96, well within the normal range. It is of course early days yet, but these kinds of findings are surely very exciting.
A healthy dose of skepticism is most certainly required when listening to the pseudo-scientific spin of brain training developers. But let’s also be mindful that many great breakthroughs in science were preceded by periods of unease and suspicion before the weight of the evidence finally tipped the balance of opinion.
The SMART for dyslexia training works to reduce the cognitive symptoms of dyslexia that result from cognitive impairment. Research and academic studies show that dyslexia is a condition that makes learning to read and write difficult for millions of people around the world. By reducing the symptoms of dyslexia, our users can improve their daily activities whether at school, in work or in their everyday personal lives.
SMART brain training for dyslexia is founded in research and scientific validation by independent entities.
Note: SMART does not treat dyslexia but works to improve cognitive skills affected by this disorder.
