Research has shown over and over again that while people may have a preference for learning modality (visual, auditory, kinestetic), there is no such thing as a learning style that teaches you best. If you teach an "auditory learner" with visual techniques they will learn just as well as a "visual learner." There is no aptitude by treatment interaction for learning preference and teaching style. Learning styles is one of those myths perpetuated by people that want everyone to be good at something.
Look up studies on ability tracking. It has shown that when students are grouped into classrooms based on ability everyone does worse. Lower ability children benefit from exposure to those with higher abilities and higher ability children benefit from exposure to higher performing peers. If you ability track you reduce the lower track's exposure to good vocabulary and social skills. Often it clusters children with behavior problems which has been shown to increase behavior problems over time (kids learn bad behaviors from each other). Additionally, you have the effect of teacher expectations. Tell them they have the low group and non of the children will be exceeding that teacher's expectations for that year.
Now flexible groups based on learning a specific skill for a lesson are different, but we've known since at least the 80s that ability tracking is harmful.
This is just a variation of what is used in many schools in the USA. Kids have an account that their parents put money in. Then, in the cafeteria, kids type in their account number to pay for lunch. This new system eliminates kids having to learn and remember their account number.
I'm not sure where you heard this but we're not yet at the point where we can diagnose with brain scans. In research there may be differences that are found between ADHD and non ADHD groups. However, that is a lot different for putting a person in and MRI and correctly classifying them. If you have any sort of reference that shows correct classification, as opposed to just finding differences, then please share the citation.
Also, most parents report improvement when their children are on restrictive diets due to confirmation biases and how our minds work. When something is difficult to do we usually will notice and remember the evidence that it worked. Keeping children on a restrictive diet is hard to do. In order to not feel bad about putting in all of this hard work for no result, parents tend to "see" the improvements even though empirical evidence has shown that special diets do not affect ASD symptoms.
You are correct, people with ASD have many more comorbid psychiatric conditions than most people realize. In fact adolescents with ASD tend to see the symptoms differently than their parents. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21683603.2013.845737 The article is paywalled right now, but psychiatric conditions are a very real problem for many people with ASD.
Obviously you do not know what you are talking about. This is not about "popular" rejection of Freud. Professionals in the field no longer use it. And what would you say about the research linking genetics and autism. You may not be able to understand how genetic and nurturing effects on children can be separated, but I assure you that there are plenty of professionals who spend their time doing just that. It is easy to blame parents. Some are bad and some are wonderful. Until you spend some time working with these families maybe you should reserve your opinion since it seems to lack a factual basis.
You are correct. Intensive ABA therapy which is one of the most costly treatments (and best empirically supported, there are lots of meta-analyses) costs around $40,000 a year. The cost is basically just paying a full time aid to do the treatment. And that isn't even a lifetime cost since it is an early intervention. Even if you were to say that you needed a full time aid for the entire life that is only about $40,000 a year with adjustments for inflation.
I wonder if using chat and email instead of meetings will lead to more issues when companies are sued. It is a lot easier to deny knowing about some product defect if it is just talked about in a meeting. However, if there are chat or email records then the company is more likely to get into trouble. It depends on what sort of logs they keep and how often everything is erased.
I wonder how all of these virtual interfaces work ergonomically. I could see how it would be really good because you could individually adjust components. However, I could also see how there could be complications from only working with hard surfaces and having no physical interface to support your hands.
I don't have references but studies we read in my child interventions class demonstrated that extrinsic motivators don't always extinguish internal motivation. The cases where this did happen is when people were rewarded for mindless busywork (pushing buttons), and those studies didn't match up to what people do in the real world at all. Other studies have found that if external rewards are used for interesting and challenging work (that is not impossible to complete) then internal motivation is actually increased.
Being paid to read books, for example, could qualify as an interesting task. Perhaps the child would also find that as their reading skills improve they enjoy reading and their internal motivation to do it would be increased.
A bribe is usually defined as receiving money (or other rewards) for doing something illegal or immoral. Learning and doing well in school is neither of these. If what this study is doing is a bribe, then every adult is "bribed" every day to go to work.
As adults we also usually don't do things unless we are rewarded or to avoid punishment. Rewards can come in many forms including money, feeling good, being satisfied, ect. Some children are motivated by achieving and it makes them feel good to do well. That is their reward and motivation. Others may try to please their parents, which makes them happy or avoids punishment. However, some kids don't care if they achieve and don't have any other motivation. For them money could be an effective alternative. Schools don't have many means of effective punishment, so it is all about what can be found that the children are willing to work for. In some cases money may be the only thing.
Here in Utah one of the state congressmen proposed having only three years of high school to save money because he felt the fourth year was wasted. This brought up the problem that most colleges have a standard set of classes that they expect high school graduates to have. Adding a year may not cause the same problems. However, before anything is done that changes what colleges expect they are getting, the people implementing changes need to make sure that they aren't screwing over their best students for college admissions.
It must be different in different parts of the country. Areas where I have lived and worked, almost all of the additional school staff (counselors, school psychologists, and speech/language pathologists) get paid on the teachers salary schedule, which definitely isn't $70-90k+. According to NEA average teacher salary in the best paying states is around $60k.
That is true false positives are a problem, and it could add to the worry of some of the hypochondriacs out there. However, there are a significant number of people who don't go to regular doctors visits for a variety of reasons. So it is possible having something in the home that could get people out for a full examination if a risk factor is found might be good and outweigh the false positive risk.
I am in a school psychology graduate program and the issue of cultural biases on tests is discussed often. In the field of psychometrics, bias means that the test predicts performance on some criterion differently for one group than for another. If this happens then a test is statistically biased. All of the modern common cognitive tests currently in use are not statistically biased [Brown, R.T., Reynolds, C.R. and Whitaker, J.S. (1999). Bias in mental testing since Bias in mental testing. School psychology quarterly, 14(3), 208-238.]
While tests are not biased many of them are unfair in that they contain culturally loaded questions. Even with the unfairness they do not show statistical bias. It is a distinction that seems to be only semantics for those outside psychology, but they are really two different things. It is good that bias has been removed, but the current question is how to remove culturally loaded questions while still measuring the desired construct.
Actually, IDEA and a right to a free and appropriate public education only apply to students who qualify for special education. Regular kids who don't have any disability that qualified them for special ed have no protection. I just had a special ed law class this summer, where this point was specifically brought up.
Different states have various laws about what schools can ask parents to provide for their child at school. Some let schools ask for each child to bring basic school supplies, while others aren't allowed to ask for anything. Therefore, for regular education kids the "freeness" of the education may vary, but there is no requirement for it to be appropriate.
As for the parent's experience with school districts, it all depends on where you live. There are some general federal laws that are attached to money and apply to all states, but each state has their own interpretation and different laws. Each district has their own interpretation and policies, and each school principal may enforce the policies differently. In short, there is a lot of variation even within a single city. This is one of the problems with America's school system. We don't give local control of medical care or the practice of law to the general public. They are regulated at least at a state level with people who are supposed to be knowledgeable about the profession.
Slashdot Mirror
Research has shown over and over again that while people may have a preference for learning modality (visual, auditory, kinestetic), there is no such thing as a learning style that teaches you best. If you teach an "auditory learner" with visual techniques they will learn just as well as a "visual learner." There is no aptitude by treatment interaction for learning preference and teaching style. Learning styles is one of those myths perpetuated by people that want everyone to be good at something.
Look up studies on ability tracking. It has shown that when students are grouped into classrooms based on ability everyone does worse. Lower ability children benefit from exposure to those with higher abilities and higher ability children benefit from exposure to higher performing peers. If you ability track you reduce the lower track's exposure to good vocabulary and social skills. Often it clusters children with behavior problems which has been shown to increase behavior problems over time (kids learn bad behaviors from each other). Additionally, you have the effect of teacher expectations. Tell them they have the low group and non of the children will be exceeding that teacher's expectations for that year. Now flexible groups based on learning a specific skill for a lesson are different, but we've known since at least the 80s that ability tracking is harmful.
This is just a variation of what is used in many schools in the USA. Kids have an account that their parents put money in. Then, in the cafeteria, kids type in their account number to pay for lunch. This new system eliminates kids having to learn and remember their account number.
I'm not sure where you heard this but we're not yet at the point where we can diagnose with brain scans. In research there may be differences that are found between ADHD and non ADHD groups. However, that is a lot different for putting a person in and MRI and correctly classifying them. If you have any sort of reference that shows correct classification, as opposed to just finding differences, then please share the citation.
Also, most parents report improvement when their children are on restrictive diets due to confirmation biases and how our minds work. When something is difficult to do we usually will notice and remember the evidence that it worked. Keeping children on a restrictive diet is hard to do. In order to not feel bad about putting in all of this hard work for no result, parents tend to "see" the improvements even though empirical evidence has shown that special diets do not affect ASD symptoms.
You are correct, people with ASD have many more comorbid psychiatric conditions than most people realize. In fact adolescents with ASD tend to see the symptoms differently than their parents. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21683603.2013.845737 The article is paywalled right now, but psychiatric conditions are a very real problem for many people with ASD.
^This. If only I had mod points.
Obviously you do not know what you are talking about. This is not about "popular" rejection of Freud. Professionals in the field no longer use it. And what would you say about the research linking genetics and autism. You may not be able to understand how genetic and nurturing effects on children can be separated, but I assure you that there are plenty of professionals who spend their time doing just that. It is easy to blame parents. Some are bad and some are wonderful. Until you spend some time working with these families maybe you should reserve your opinion since it seems to lack a factual basis.
A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
You are correct. Intensive ABA therapy which is one of the most costly treatments (and best empirically supported, there are lots of meta-analyses) costs around $40,000 a year. The cost is basically just paying a full time aid to do the treatment. And that isn't even a lifetime cost since it is an early intervention. Even if you were to say that you needed a full time aid for the entire life that is only about $40,000 a year with adjustments for inflation.
You realize private schools can kick out low performing or behavior problem students right. Public schools don't have that luxury.
clicked wrong mod so have to undo.
There is another book http://www.amazon.com/Pandoras-Genes-Kathryn-Lance/dp/0445200049/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0 about a the Earth after a similar situation. I think this plot has already been thought out by SciFi writers.
I wonder if using chat and email instead of meetings will lead to more issues when companies are sued. It is a lot easier to deny knowing about some product defect if it is just talked about in a meeting. However, if there are chat or email records then the company is more likely to get into trouble. It depends on what sort of logs they keep and how often everything is erased.
I wonder how all of these virtual interfaces work ergonomically. I could see how it would be really good because you could individually adjust components. However, I could also see how there could be complications from only working with hard surfaces and having no physical interface to support your hands.
I don't have references but studies we read in my child interventions class demonstrated that extrinsic motivators don't always extinguish internal motivation. The cases where this did happen is when people were rewarded for mindless busywork (pushing buttons), and those studies didn't match up to what people do in the real world at all. Other studies have found that if external rewards are used for interesting and challenging work (that is not impossible to complete) then internal motivation is actually increased. Being paid to read books, for example, could qualify as an interesting task. Perhaps the child would also find that as their reading skills improve they enjoy reading and their internal motivation to do it would be increased.
A bribe is usually defined as receiving money (or other rewards) for doing something illegal or immoral. Learning and doing well in school is neither of these. If what this study is doing is a bribe, then every adult is "bribed" every day to go to work. As adults we also usually don't do things unless we are rewarded or to avoid punishment. Rewards can come in many forms including money, feeling good, being satisfied, ect. Some children are motivated by achieving and it makes them feel good to do well. That is their reward and motivation. Others may try to please their parents, which makes them happy or avoids punishment. However, some kids don't care if they achieve and don't have any other motivation. For them money could be an effective alternative. Schools don't have many means of effective punishment, so it is all about what can be found that the children are willing to work for. In some cases money may be the only thing.
Here in Utah one of the state congressmen proposed having only three years of high school to save money because he felt the fourth year was wasted. This brought up the problem that most colleges have a standard set of classes that they expect high school graduates to have. Adding a year may not cause the same problems. However, before anything is done that changes what colleges expect they are getting, the people implementing changes need to make sure that they aren't screwing over their best students for college admissions.
It must be different in different parts of the country. Areas where I have lived and worked, almost all of the additional school staff (counselors, school psychologists, and speech/language pathologists) get paid on the teachers salary schedule, which definitely isn't $70-90k+. According to NEA average teacher salary in the best paying states is around $60k.
That is true false positives are a problem, and it could add to the worry of some of the hypochondriacs out there. However, there are a significant number of people who don't go to regular doctors visits for a variety of reasons. So it is possible having something in the home that could get people out for a full examination if a risk factor is found might be good and outweigh the false positive risk.
Nice way to turn a decent post into a troll. If only I had mod points. Signatures that condone murder are nice and classy.
Jonagolds can be quite juice and tasty as well.
I am in a school psychology graduate program and the issue of cultural biases on tests is discussed often. In the field of psychometrics, bias means that the test predicts performance on some criterion differently for one group than for another. If this happens then a test is statistically biased. All of the modern common cognitive tests currently in use are not statistically biased [Brown, R.T., Reynolds, C.R. and Whitaker, J.S. (1999). Bias in mental testing since Bias in mental testing. School psychology quarterly, 14(3), 208-238.]
While tests are not biased many of them are unfair in that they contain culturally loaded questions. Even with the unfairness they do not show statistical bias. It is a distinction that seems to be only semantics for those outside psychology, but they are really two different things. It is good that bias has been removed, but the current question is how to remove culturally loaded questions while still measuring the desired construct.
Actually, IDEA and a right to a free and appropriate public education only apply to students who qualify for special education. Regular kids who don't have any disability that qualified them for special ed have no protection. I just had a special ed law class this summer, where this point was specifically brought up.
Different states have various laws about what schools can ask parents to provide for their child at school. Some let schools ask for each child to bring basic school supplies, while others aren't allowed to ask for anything. Therefore, for regular education kids the "freeness" of the education may vary, but there is no requirement for it to be appropriate.
As for the parent's experience with school districts, it all depends on where you live. There are some general federal laws that are attached to money and apply to all states, but each state has their own interpretation and different laws. Each district has their own interpretation and policies, and each school principal may enforce the policies differently. In short, there is a lot of variation even within a single city. This is one of the problems with America's school system. We don't give local control of medical care or the practice of law to the general public. They are regulated at least at a state level with people who are supposed to be knowledgeable about the profession.