Latest Posts
TEENAGE WEIRDNESS. One of our favorite writers on the brain, Alison Gopnik, recently had a piece in the Wall Street Journal called "What's Wrong with the Teenage Mind?" She notes that early puberty and late adulthood can lead to "a good deal of teenage weirdness." In the article, she highlights two neural systems that may account for some of the weirdness: one dealing with emotion and motivation and one dealing with control. She also offers suggestions for dealing with the overall causes of teen weirdness. Find the article. WEBINAR ON RTI FOR GIFTED/2e STUDENTS. On March 28th NAGC will present a webinar titled "What Parents and Educators Should Know about RTI." From the blurb: "Because twice-exceptional students are increasingly missed by RTI identification criteria and gifted students may elude detection solely through classroom achievement measures, RTI approaches need to be adapted for gifted children and supplemented." Find more information. (A week later is a webinar on the same topic -- RTI for the 2e students -- from a different point of view. Information is on that same NAGC page.) ATTENTION RESEARCH UPDATE. David Rabiner has posted the February edition of his newsletter, titled, "Does Coaching Help College Students with AD/HD." Rabiner describes how the method of coaching used in the study led college students to feel that the coaching was helpful, even if it didn't make a difference in GPA. Find the review. HOW MANY STUDENTS WITH 504's? Education Week reports on U.S. Department of Education data gathering that indicates that 433,980 students in the U.S. have 504 plans. Got a kid with a 504? You're not alone. Read more. GARDNER INTELLIGENCES ILLUSTRATED. In an edition of a magazine from a Pennsylvania cyber charter school, an article profiles eight of its students as fitting the various types of Gardner intelligences -- spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, etc. Find an article about the article with a synopsis of the profiles... or look on the school's website to find the Link magazine containing the original 11-page article.
NEW BLOG ABOUT 2e LEARNERS. Pat Sciortino, educational director at the Quad Manhattan, has started a blog called "Out of the 2e Classroom." Her first posting is about developing social thinking in 2e learners by using improvisational play. Check out the blog. MIND INSTITUTE LECTURE. The UC Davis Mind Institute is offering a free lecture about AD/HD on March 14, 4:30-6pm, in Sacramento, California. Titled "AD/HD Causes and Mechanisms," the lecture, part of the Institute's Distinguished Lecturer Series, will be presented by Joel. T. Nigg, of the Oregon Health and Sciences University. From an announcement of the event: "Over the past decade, the view of ADHD as the outcome of a single dysfunction shared by everyone who has the diagnosis is migrating to a new perspective that highlights a wide variety of causes -- a theory known as causal heterogeneity -- and recognizes diverse symptom clusters. The implications and challenges of this change in thinking are potentially profound, and this presentation will consider evidence in support of the importance of the heterogeneity problem in ADHD while also considering the potential role of genetic factors." Find out more. (The lecture will later be available online, as previous lectures are.) GIFTED AT 3? A blogger at Education Week reacted to the Maryland State Board of Education's adoption of regulations to implement differentiated services to gifted students as young as pre-K. Anti-labeling groups oppose the measures. Read more. OVEREXCITABILITIES. NAGC's Parenting for High Potential has published a chat summary on the topic of overexcitabilities and positive disintegration highlighted by Kazimierz Dabrowski. The summary includes a table characterizing the five kinds of overexcitabilities. Find out more. AD/HD RESOURCE. David Rabiner pointed us to a free report on alternative treatment options for AD/HD from Additude Magazine. The options include behavior therapy, neurofeedback, exercise, green time, and brain-building computer games. Get a copy. Separately, a study reported by HealthDay indicates that boys and girls born in December are 30 to 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed with AD/HD than kids born in January. Read about the study. SLEEP-DISORDERED BREATHING in children may lead to behavior problems such as hyperactivity and aggressiveness, according to a new study. Sleep disorders include snoring, mouth breathing, and apnea. Read more. AND FINALLY, THIS. It's Sleep Awareness Week in the U.S. Not by coincidence, daylight savings time begins this coming Sunday. Sleep specialists at the University of Loyola Health System are offering tips on making the transition in an article titled "Daylight Savings Can Be Hazardous to Your Health." Find out what you can do to make it easier on you and your kids.
ON AD/HD "BACKLASH." A Scientific American blogger responded to recent "backlash" against AD/HD -- questions about its reality, the drugs to treat it, and even those who have it. The blogger notes studies showing that the disorder is not over-diagnosed and studies showing that medication does help. Read the blog. RITALIN AND ERROR MONITORING. A study from Australia showed that even one dose of Ritalin can help the brain monitor its own performance, recognizing performance errors that include "failures of impulse control." Being aware of one's mistakes is an important component of the ability to correct behavior, point out the researchers. Read more. DER SPIEGEL, a German news magazine, profiled a Danish company founded to help place people with Asperger's in appropriate jobs. The company, Specialisterne ("the specialists"), places people mainly with information technology companies. It was founded by a man whose son has Asperger's. Among the employees is a particle physicist who used to work at CERN. Read more. LD IN COLLEGE. Notre Dame College in South Euclid, Ohio, is one of 60 colleges and universities in the country offering a fee-based program to help students with LDs succeed, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The article profiles two students in the program and quotes the college president as saying, "These students are bright, they just need to find a learning style. They persist and graduate at a higher rate than other students." Find the article. IN CALIFORNIA? Summit View School offers a college fair for students with learning differences on March 17 from 10am to 1pm. Get more information from collegefair@summitview.org. 2e CONFERENCE IN HONG KONG. July 28 to August 1 are the dates for the "First Conference on Twice Exceptional Children," with the theme of "meeting the needs of gifted children with learning disabilities." Find more information here or here. NEW AD/HD SCHOLARSHIP. The Attention Deficit Disorder Association is offering a new scholarship beginning in 2012, the Moulton-Farnsworth Scholarship. Find out more. TRACKING EYES IN ASD KIDS. A study using eye-tracking measured differences in the ways ASD children attended to social situations as opposed to typically-developing peers, and also examined differences within the ASD group in the says kids steered their gazes when viewing scenes of social situations. Of the latter research, one researcher said, "These results help us tease apart some of the vast heterogeneity of the autism spectrum. For some children, atypical looking patterns may be serving as a compensatory strategy; but for others, these patterns are clearly associated with maladaptive behaviors." Read more.