Word Finding for Kids.com

Remember those neuroscience courses in which we learned that we form short-term memories first, and later they convert to long-term memory?  Perhaps we were wrong!  New research published in Science last week suggests that our brain simultaneously makes TWO copies of our memories: one in the hippocampus and one in the cortex. Using a new research tool called optogenetics, researchers in Japan implanted a tiny fiber-optic cable in genetically engineered mice, which allowed them to turn specific neurons on and off.  Therefore, they could better understand the function of those neurons.

Both the cortex and the hippocampus lit up simultaneously when new memories were recorded. The scientists found that for the first few days, the neurons in the hippocampus were the only ones that fired during retrieval of memories.  The neurons in the cortex matured later, and at that point they lit up when a memory was recalled.

I’m always intrigued by neuroscience.  This new research may help us understand how retrieval works in the brain.  The more we understand, the more specific and efficient we can be in our language therapy.

Here’s the PBS article that cited the Science study: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/our-brains-instantly-make-two-copies-of-each-memory/

A new article in Business Insider  cites a study about the psychological reasons we use filler words, such as “um, uh, er.”   It was a good reminder that we ALL use filler words, not just individuals with word finding difficulties.   Dr. Michael Handford, professor of applied linguistics and English language at Cardiff University in the UK, explained that people often use fillers to be polite.  Linguists have suggested that speakers who use more fillers are probably being more conscious of who they are talking to and what they are saying.

“As speakers we are often aware [that] if we speak too complexly the listener might not understand,” Handford told The Independent. “We use these items, pretty unconsciously, to help the person process what we are saying.”  Fillers are also used to buy time when we know what we want to say, but our brain hasn’t yet caught up.

Fillers can also signal deception. A retired FBI Special Agent and professor at Western Illinois University, Dr. John R. Schafer, was cited in a blog post in Psychology Today :   https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/let-their-words-do-the-talking/201512/um-little-words-can-signal-big-lies-you-know  He said tag words such as “you know,” “I mean,” and “right” may be used to seek confirmation in the listener, or convince them of the truthfulness of  a message.

So does that mean using fillers means you are lying?  By no means.  Filler words can simply be a habit.  So how do we as SLPs interpret those interjections and delays? 

Do the fillers interfere with conversation?  Are they typical for this individual?  Consider the context; consider the speaker.  We all experience word finding difficulties at times.  We have a more difficult time retrieving the words we need when stressed or fatigued.  We may resort to fillers to let ourselves (or our listeners) catch up.  The article reminded me that we shouldn’t look at one language sample on one day and diagnose word finding problems.  We need to assess if there is a pattern.  We need to assess if communication is really impaired.

The Business Insider article may be found at:  http://www.businessinsider.com/psychological-reasons-we-use-filler-words-2017-4?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

Let me know what you think!

I just returned from short trip to Arizona.  There’s nothing like seeing a different part of the country to remind you that retrieval is all about frequency of use and recency of use.  For the last  four months, I have been using words like snow, sleet, wind-chill, and blizzard.  Suddenly I was using words like Sonoran, saguaro, and …oh, my, what are those ugly pig-looking animals called??  Javelinas!  (Actually, I think the plural is javelina)  It was a good reminder that when vocabulary words haven’t been used in a while, they are difficult to retrieve.  I would not expect my midwest kids to be rapid retrievers of the same words that kids in the southwest use regularly.  We need to choose words that are functional to help our word finders!

Please remember Dr. Diane German’s recommendations for mnemonic cues.  A detailed description is found here: https://www.wordfindingforkids.com/an-endorsement-from-the-word-finding-guru/

As a quick review:

1. Select a word that is difficult for the  learner to retrieve.
2. Divide the target word into syllables, and reinforce each syllable of multi-syllable words.
3. Associate similar-sounding, easy-to-retrieve words with “evasive” syllables.
4. Say the target word aloud 5 times.
5. Make up a meaningful sentence using the word.

Please remember to think of the cue as you practice saying the target word out loud.

So how did I remember javelina?  I pictured a javelina wearing a pink tutu — javelina ballerina!  Ridiculous?  Yes, but certainly an image I am not likely to forget!

Last week, I talked about the worthwhile workshop I attended on the topic of math and language.  There is so much more to share!  Thank you again to Karen Tzanetopoulos, M.S., CCC-SLP, for sharing her expertise.  Here is the link to last week’s post: https://www.wordfindingforkids.com/math-and-word-finding-an-unlikely-combination/

More on the important language basis of math…

Think of how many ways we say “approximate” – about, around, approximately, almost, roughly, close to, nearly, barely, maybe, just about, just over, more or less, not more than, -ish.  And how does a student know when it is appropriate to choose one term instead of another?  Yet learning to approximate is an important communication skill.  Not only does it help us make predictions and solve problems more quickly, but it also helps us know if our answers make sense.

Our American measurement system is not the logical, predictable metric system used by most of the world.  Inch, foot, yard, and mile are totally arbitrary. How about ounce, pound, and ton?  Children in the U.S. have a huge disadvantage in learning to measure when compared to their peers in other countries.

Words used in a math context have very different meanings than words used outside of math.  Negative numbers, fractions, remainders, proper numbers, mixed numbers, point, and reduce are just a few of the terms that mean something very different outside of the math room.  And even within math class – does “eighth” mean eighth in line, or does it mean one-eighth of a whole?

Karen’s solution is to use concrete manipulatives and a physical number line.  She has a great list of resources and materials, which you can ask her about at karentzan@gmail.com.   Sadly, the toys with which kids learn these concepts are disappearing from preschool and early elementary classrooms.  Remember when young kids could play in the grocery store and “buy” a dozen eggs or piece together a wooden pie or a pizza divided into sixths or eighths?  Our attempts to push kids ahead in math have resulted in many children who can’t conceptualize the meaning of numbers and formulas that are written on a page.

Fractions and decimals bring their own set of challenges.  What does “point” mean?  And why do the numbers to the right of the decimal point have different values and different names than the numbers to the left?  Instead of multiplying fractions, kids first need to experiment with concrete objects and understand what the numbers represent.

We compound the difficulty when we get to word problems.  The syntax of word problems can be very confusing! Here’s an example from Karen’s presentation:

Jose took the 26 baseball cards he no longer wanted and gave them to Brian.

Now Jose has 71 baseball cards left.  How many baseball cards did Jose have

to begin with?

If we use the common strategy of encouraging a student to look for the key words “how many are left?,” the child will immediately assume it is a subtraction problem.  But in this case, he needs to add!  And what about that imbedded clause, “he no longer wanted”?  A child with syntax difficulties is likely to miss a problem like this because of his language deficit, not because he can’t do the math. If he is further asked to “explain his answer,” he will probably put his head on his desk in frustration and give up.

I googled “first grade word problems” and came up with the following example common core problem:

Jen has 7 apples. Pat has 10 apples. How many fewer apples does Jen have than Pat?  

First grade!  So a child is just learning to read, and he has to figure out “how many fewer than…?”  But if I give him a basket of apples, one with 7 apples and one with 10 apples, he can play with them, feel them, and count them.  He is much more likely to figure out that lucky Pat has 3 more apples than Jen.

I have proposed more problems than solutions with my synopsis of Karen’s presentation.  She brought blocks, physical number lines, and other manipulatives to demonstrate many ways to support our language-disordered students as they tackle the complex language of math.  She proposed schema that help students organize and understand their information. By providing accommodations and scaffolding complex information, we can help them be successful in all levels of their math education.

Math can be a real challenge! Let’s do our part to parse out the language that is compounding our kids’ difficulties.

I almost skipped a continuing education opportunity on Saturday morning.  Between the chance to sleep in on a Saturday and the time change to daylight savings time overnight into Sunday, I relished the extra couple of hours of sleep I might grab.  I’m so very glad I attended my North Suburban Speech and Language Association workshop instead!  I spent a very worthwhile three hours learning about the important role we speech-language pathologists can play supporting our students in math.  Math?  Yes, math!

I have used word finding cues occasionally with some of the multi-syllable words like isosceles, perpendicular, and circumference.  But I didn’t pay much attention to the huge language foundation that underlies mathematics, and the scaffolding we can provide to ensure that our language-impaired students aren’t penalized because of their disability.

Karen Tzanetopoulos, M.S., CCC-SLP, presented on the topic, “The Abstract Language of Math and How the SLP Can Help.”  Karen is an SLP in the Chicago area who is in private practice.   In the course of her research, she met with over 130 teachers, math specialists, and administrators around the country and found a crying need  for help in teaching math to children with dyslexia and language learning differences. Her passion for this topic led her to pursue (and receive!) National Science Foundation grants.

One of Karen’s primary points was that although math exists without language, in order to communicate about math, we must use language.  English, in particular, is full of homophones and complex, abstract terms that can be particularly confusing: One, won, to, too, two, for, four, fore are just a start.  Even the names we have for numbers are phonologically complex (three, six, seven). Whereas children in China learn numbers whose sound has a correlation with its meaning, we have words like “eleven” and “thirteen” which don’t correspond to base 10.  Think of how difficult it is for a child with auditory discrimination or processing difficulties to understand that “fourth” is different from “four”, and “four” has nothing to do with “for”  or “fore.”

Karen stressed the value of developing a mental number line so one can develop a number sense.   In her words, every child should have “extensive experience with physical number lines and practice counting and performing calculations on real number lines.” She starts with concrete, physical number lines, then moves on to paper.  Only later can a child develop a mental number line.  Without number sense, kids have no clue when their answers make no sense.  So what does this have to do with word finding?

Just like rapid, automatic naming is a strong indicator of reading success, early accuracy and speed of number naming and counting fluency are strongly correlated with math success.  We need to work on counting with preschoolers. Count, count, count:  count on fingers, slow it down, make it meaningful.  Make it concrete and visual.  Counting needs to become automatic.  Then we can move on to those tricky position and quantity words.  Think about how confusing “follows” is.  If you follow someone, you are behind that person, right?  But in math, if I ask for “the number that follows 7″ I am asking for the one that comes after it, but “ahead” of it in the left-to-right demands of reading.  The language of math is very complex!   And take a look at these numbers:

                      3

8

Which number is larger?

Then we get to math facts, which have a heavy phonological burden and require quick word retrieval.  Karen stressed remembering a hierarchy from concrete to representational to abstract teaching.  Start with concrete  teaching of numbers and number facts.  Use manipulatives; let kids experiment and discover how numbers are related.  Help them find the patterns.  Remember that we use many words to say the same thing.   For example, in addition, we might say plus, add, all together, altogether, total, both, sum, and in all, increased by, combined, added to, or additional.  In subtraction, we might say minus, subtract, take away, less than, remain, left, lost, reduce, how much more, how much less, or nearer.  Yikes! No wonder kids get confused.

We haven’t even begun to talk about multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals. This is only a start.  Karen had so much great information to share!  Hopefully I have given you food for thought (oooh, boy, another idiom)  and a starting point to think about the important role you play in supporting math for kids with language difficulties.

Please send me your comments or questions.  You can also reach out to Karen directly via her email:  karentzan@gmail.com.  She would be happy to hear from you!   I hope to follow up with some of your questions and her responses in future posts.