tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post8979029926030087900..comments2023-10-24T16:16:29.095+01:00Comments on Club 166: My Kind of ResearchClub 166http://www.blogger.com/profile/01816977079856902634noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post-81370028691014788022007-03-20T17:47:00.000+00:002007-03-20T17:47:00.000+00:00I certainly know what you mean about how lacking i...I certainly know what you mean about how lacking in meaning a lot of arbitrarily chosen measures can be. Our SLP recently said that the problem is that testers decide in advance what skills they are going to be tested and, no matter what happens during the test, they keep testing those skills. But neurologically diverse kids often have very narrow areas where they are very strong and use those areas to compensate for other areas where they are weak. If the test misses that area of strength, not only will it not accurately represent what the kid is capable of in the overall, you also miss out on incredibly valuable data in terms of designing an educational program. She believes in interactive testing in which, when a tester finds a strength and a weakness, they switch to a subtest that focuses on the strength. In traditional testing, you just stop when you find the weakness. That results in very flat results. Interactive testing apparently results in spikier results, which means more data to work with.<BR/><BR/>I also think it would be useful if testers asked parents and teachers, "What can this kids do?" and then set about trying to find out what the kid is using to do it. An evaluation that explains why a kid can do what they can in fact do is much more useful than an evaluation that only accounts for what they cannot do.<BR/><BR/>As parents, I guess we can look at these crude black and white results as process of elimination data. If our kids aren't doing what they do because of X, Y and Z processing capacities which are what NT kids rely on, then it must be something else. There are, thanks to the testing, that many less trees to be barked up. <BR/><BR/>And it may not even be that our kids are doing well because of some particular splinter competence. It can also be a sum-is-greater-than-the-parts thing, as you mention. My understanding is that, in ASD kids, integration of competences is more likely to be a weakness than a strength. So if integration is, in fact, working as a strength, we would definitely want to find out how that came about and how we can encourage development of more of the same.<BR/><BR/>You are right to feel that, while there are some pictures that can be drawn perfectly well in back and white, there are others than can only be represented in shades of gray.VABhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06652301858477760996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post-41021817239116100782007-03-20T03:19:00.000+00:002007-03-20T03:19:00.000+00:00That fairy would be rather busy then.....That fairy would be rather busy then.....kristinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01104388229716638534noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post-82869465413398502342007-03-20T02:14:00.000+00:002007-03-20T02:14:00.000+00:00It's always cool when you come across something th...It's always cool when you come across something that's really useful.<BR/><BR/>I also hope that the "bad karma fairy" visits all of those that prey on desparate parents just looking for some help.Club 166https://www.blogger.com/profile/01816977079856902634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post-60678717571327604642007-03-19T15:58:00.000+00:002007-03-19T15:58:00.000+00:00We have been finding some of the recent research t...We have been finding some of the recent research to be of practical use, too. At an autism conference that my husband attended last fall, they presented a couple of papers that changed how we're doing things with Brendan. One showed that even the keyboard interface is not optimum for some kids with AS, which we've been finding true for Brendan, & are getting ready for him to start to use voice-recognition software instead. Another paper looked at how kids with AS visually track when in a classroom setting & discovered that the more gesturing the teacher makes, the less info they take in. We made his teacher aware of this, & she has experimanted with where his desk is placed in the room to optimise his ability to concentrate. Pretty cool stuff...The Jedi Family of Blogshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00318743997892332537noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post-27016448332946183972007-03-19T10:41:00.000+00:002007-03-19T10:41:00.000+00:00There's many of us out here trying to do something...There's many of us out here trying to do something useful (I posted about my own research in a comfortable Yahoo group recently, and someone was amazed that the result of it was something beneficial to the person being studied).<BR/><BR/>That 'cure' thing is very scary...David N. Andrews M. Ed., C. P. S. E.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10361832306977383560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821799658844915805.post-16123590652151352842007-03-19T04:28:00.000+00:002007-03-19T04:28:00.000+00:00Oh my goodness, someone is out there doing somethi...Oh my goodness, someone is out there doing something USEFUL? <BR/><BR/>We just came back from looking at another hippie place today. It is stunning how many folks want $3000-$5000 dollars to "cure" a kid. Flat fee, just get out the checkbook and it will be all better. Scary how many folks must do it, too.Joeymomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08254601805621175842noreply@blogger.com