On 'Fast ForWord'
Program is helping children overcome learning disabilities
Archived article from Dec 4, 1998
Children with dyslexia and other language-based learning problems are finally getting the help they need through a training program developed by Rutgers Professors Paula Tallal and Steve Miller and colleagues Michael Merzenich and William Jenkins at the University of California-San Francisco.
The technology behind this innovative program has just been awarded U.S. patent 5,813,862. The patent was issued to Rutgers-Newark, where Tallal is co-director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, and to the University of California-San Francisco, where her partners are based.
The patented technology is licensed to Scientific Learning Corporation, which uses it as an integral part of its Fast ForWord and Fast ForWord Two training programs. Nearly 10,000 people have completed these programs, most of them children ages 4 to 13 who have language and reading problems. After working with Fast ForWord an hour and 40 minutes per day, five days per week, for four to eight weeks, 90 percent of the children made substantial gains on standardized language tests--an average of 1.5 to 2 years of progress.
"Rutgers is extremely proud to be producing this kind of groundbreaking research and application," said University Vice President for Academic Affairs Joseph J. Seneca. "This is a premier example of transferring the results of scientific investigation into a powerful and positive difference in people's lives."
Tallal likens the new training method to aerobics for the brain because its goal is to retrain neurons to function more effectively.
"When we're born," Tallal explained, "we have to create our own brains, in a sense. We have to give the brain experience to make it function." But, Tallal discovered, because of a timing problem in the brain, some individuals find it difficult to distinguish among similar sounds. The special exercises she and her colleagues developed can help them speed up the brain's proficiency, thus improving their ability to process and produce the very rapidly changing acoustics of speech.
"People with these difficulties process auditory input more slowly, which interferes with the ability to process speech sounds, which are comprised of rapid acoustic changes," she said. "If the word 'play,' for example, contains sounds that come at you too fast, or you don't hear them correctly, or you're not quite sure what you heard, then you can't break the word down, hear or say it accurately, or match its letters to the sounds."
The Fast ForWord programs include interactive computer games. Users wear headphones and hear problem sounds that have been computer modified to slow down and make louder their most rapidly changing acoustic components. The brain is thus trained to make distinctions among such similar sounds as "ba," "da" or "ta" and to use these sounds in words and sentences.
The program is meant to be challenging, not frustrating, Tallal said. "These are children who are always failing, so the program is set to an 80 percent success rate," meaning the program automatically adjusts the level of difficulty if a user gets bogged down.
Research by the two scientists from the University of California indicate that, once trained, the brain retains its enhanced processing abilities. Scientists have shown that neuroplasticity lasts a lifetime. Therefore, studies are under way to determine whether Fast ForWord may be effective for adults as well.
Complete information on the Fast ForWord programs is available from Scientific Learning Corporation at (888) 665-9707 or on the Web at www.scientificlearning.com.
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