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Does Cognitive testing and training work?

Daylight

Critical Thinker
Daylight
Joined
Nov 6, 2004
Messages
499
My son has been struggling in school. We thought he might have ADD since his older stepbrother does have ADD. The testing showed he was not an ADD candidate.

The Doctor recommended we get additional testing here

http://www.learningrx.com/default.htm

which we did and the results were detailed and interesting showing both good and bad areas.

My question to those knowledgeable about education, is this valid? Or is this just woo land?

I'm skeptical because logically wouldn't it make sense to give a Cognitive test to each kid at the beginning of the school year and then put the visual learning kids with a visual teacher and auditory learning kids with an auditory teacher and so on?

Also is there any reason not to put your kid in a 504 program at school?
 
Did you do the "Learning Disability Assessment" on their web page or something involving actually assessing your son's skills?
They talk a good line, but for all their reference to "research shows...". no research is ever cited.
As to Dr. Ken Gibson, I can find references to his talks and "Einstein" book, but no c. v. or real publications in the area. They are really pushing this franchise, though.
 
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Jeff Corey said:
Did you do the "Learning Disability Assessment" on their web page or something involving actually assessing your son's skills?
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We went in for a 2 hour test. There was no hard sell we were expecting.

Jeff Corey said:
They talk a good line, but for all their reference to "research shows...". no research is ever cited.
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That's got my attention which is why I asked here for other opinnions/knowledge.

Jeff Corey said:
As to Dr. Ken Gibson, I can find references to his talks and "Einstein" book, but no c. v. or real publications in the area. They are really pushing this franchise, though.
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I noticed that too. But so far it hasn't cost us anything. The original doctor who recommended them is well respected in the ADD world.

We stated the 504 process with the school.
 
What is the 504 process? I smell a rodent when people without any apparent credentials start claiming "Braining like Einstein" and making up things like that process.
Do they offer any evidence this works, beyond the usual anecdotes on their web site. No.
 
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504 is not special education but for students between special education and the normal mainstream. Students with ADD for example.

As I understand it the teacher and parents all meet together and come up with a plan to help the student still partisapte in mainstream education, but accomadate the students learning disability. For example allow extra time for the student to take a test. Or change the way homework is done.

A better explaination of 504 can be found here

http://newhorizons.org/spneeds/inclusion/law/hayes3.htm

I'm learning that cognitive testing and analysis is being used more and more and is used to get kids into a 504 program. But hunting the research and fact is hard to find.
 
I'm no expert on DD, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd be skeptical that the visual versus auditory learning styles is anything but feel-goodness-- like the idea of multiple intelligences that the educational system has sucked up.

The positive manifold-- as well replicated as anything in psych-- would predict here that within person differences in learning ability would be much larger than between person visual versus auditory learning style effects.

Doesn't mean the idea has zero merit, but I'd like to see data showing over and above improvement because of learning style.

In the 20 years or so since I've been interested in cognition and intelligence, I've yet to see a study showing that cognition can be trained in the sense that's claimed here.

Sure practice will make one better, but I suspect it does little to change one's ability rank, relative to his/her peers.

If they do cite research, please share it here!

Also, I suspect that trying this couldn't hurt (unless it's expensive), so you might have little to lose by trying it.
 
I'm no expert in developmental disabilities, either, but the visual vs auditory training reminded me of the Train Your Right Brain To Become More Creative crap.
I would still like to see some research rather than testimonials before rendering an opinion.
 
bpesta22 said:
Sure practice will make one better, but I suspect it does little to change one's ability rank, relative to his/her peers.
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And we all know that "one's ability rank" will remain fixed the same way class society is only nature's way of expressing itself. Thus practice will actually make you better (it even improves your so-called 'IQ' if you have any interest in that), but it is merely a way of cheating your superior "peers" instead of letting nature run its course of creating the natural ability rank of natural inferiors and superiors ...
Come on, Bpesta!
 
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Well, you know, Claus, it's kind of like me and the Olympics: The guy who wins the gold medal there probably only does so because he has been training a lot, and, sure, "practice will make one better, but I suspect it does little to change one's ability rank, relative to his/her peers", one of his peers being me, of course. I may have been at home on the couch all day long eating chips, so I'm not exactly long-winded and probably would not stand a chance against the Olympic guy (in any discipline), but my ability rank is an entirely different matter: You see, from the point of view of the ability rank it is rather obvious that the Olympic guy would only win because he has been training all this time which may may have improved his performance but never, ever his ability rank, which is determined by nature.
So as far as natural ability is concerned, I actually outrank him, even though he may run/swim/row/sail much faster than me in real life! I could if I would, but I won't so I can't.

Now replace "ability rank" with g (= general intelligence) and the actual performance with your score in an actual IQ test. Practice will improve your performance in these tests considerably, but since IQ is supposed to be nothing but an expression of your natural 'thinking' ability (= g), the g theory forbids it to change "relative to his/her peers".

That is the awful truth about the democratic racism of IQ theory.
 
Nobody believes in g anymore except the people doing research in the area. Skim through any recent issue of Intelligence. g is alive and well and remains the most powerful variable in social science.

Ability rank would be your place in the line where people are ordered based on IQ score. IQ scores change t/o the lifespan, but rank is stable.

That's the point I was making to the OP, though I qualified it by saying I'm no expert on special populations. So, it's possible there are qualitative differences in his situation that make the general IQ literature less relevant.

Here's a cite on what I was talking about:

exposing subjects to extended training on an ECT (e.g., 2,500 trials over 9 hours) does little to diminish either individual differences on these tasks, or their correlation with intelligence (Neubauer & Freudenthaler, 1994).

Neubauer, A., & Freudenthaler, H. (1994). Reaction time in a sentence-picture verification test and intelligence: Individual strategies and effects of extended practice. Intelligence, 19, 193-218.
 
CFLarsen said:
How so?
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I think you'd get consensus on this:

Fluid intelligence (raw mental processing power) increases from birth to maturity; peaks in the 20s and declines steadily thereafter.

Crystallized intelligence (our knowledge base; vocab) increases from birth to maturity, and keeps rising. Although whether it peaks in middle age or rises less steeply from middle age to old age is debatable.

So, if as a teen, you're in the 90% on some measure of fluid IQ, you likely will still be high up there %-wise in old age (relative to your now older peers) but your score will have fallen considerably.

Independent of what people think IQ tests measure, the above is pretty much empirical fact: Scores on IQ tests (whatever they measure) change across time, but your rank relative to your peers changes less so.

Some view Gf and Gc as two separate but equal aspects of intelligence. I see Gf as causing Gc. I think Gc is a good index of intelligence, but it's indirect (smart people know things, so assessing what someone knows is a reasonable indicator of how smart they are). Gf to me is some global index of how efficient a person's brain is. Brain efficiency causes scores on fluid IQ tests which then causes people to learn lots or little.
 
CFLarsen said:
No.

Show me the evidence.
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Gladly though it's readily searchable and is likely even in intro to psych texts now.

Before I bother, what types of evidence would make you stop asking two word questions?
 
From the handbook of aging and cognition, edited by FIM Craik and Tim Salthouse-- Craik is likely one of the top 100 psychologists of the century (a paper he had in the 70s was cited as the most influential paper in psych for that decade); Salthouse was the editor of psych and aging and is very famous in the field for his work on general slowing and age. I've met both of them, though they wouldn't know me from adam.

They don't do psychometric IQ research per se; they are cognitive psychologists. Their handbook is an authoritative summary of the state of the art in cognitive aging.

page 502-503

there is substantial evidence that tests that are termed verbal and are assumed to reflect crystallized intelligence show relatively modest age-related changes from early to late adulthood. Such results have been documented using the WAIS, the Army Alpha and the PMA battery. Tests subsumed under these rubrics (e.g., vocabulary and comphrension) assess world knowledge in a broad sense, draw on prior experience and have rather limited speed demands.


These findings contrast from results in performance tests in intelligence batteries that are thought to reflect the fluid aspects of intelligence. Such tests (e.g., Digit Symbol and Block Design) involve relatively unfamiliar material and require fast and efficient solutions to novel problems. Age-related declines in fluid intelligence and robust and gradual across the adult lifespan...
...whereas the former exhibit relative stability across the lifespan the onset of age-related deterioration occurs early in life for the latter.
 
B P,
Have you heard or read anything about the LearningRx system linked in the OP?
 
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