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    Joined: Aug 2012
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    suevv Offline OP
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    Hi all,

    Lots of our kiddos have very low processing speeds relative to VCI/PRI. DS7 is one - he has a 94 point difference between VCI and PSI.

    I wonder if any of you could offer good words/analogies to explain the struggles this can cause? I'm having a meeting tomorrow where I may offer some info about DS's assessment results. But I'm struggling to put this impact into words. Any ideas?

    Thanks,
    Sue

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    This would be wonderful... My son has very low processing relative to VCI/PRI and I do think I need to be more educated about how it manifests as well as his educators...

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    I thought this was a good article and shared it with the schools. Whether they read it or not is another question, but maybe you could take out key points to summarize.

    http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10782.aspx

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    I have one son with slow processing....sometimes the time given for everyone is plenty of time for him. Sometimes it just isn't quite enough time. From middle school on, I have had teachers say that they are more than willing to give him that extra bit of time because what they get in quality is ten times his age/grade and they looked forward to the end product more than worrying about if he got an extra day.

    In running and swimming, coaches will talk about fast twitch muscles and slow twitch muscles. Sprinters are fast twitch and long distance are slow twitch. You can't discount the slow twitch distance athletes as not as awesome as fast twitch. But Jesse Owens was a terrific track sprinter and Katie ladecky distance swimmer are both awesome in their own way.

    Hope this helped.

    Last edited by Cookie; 10/06/15 12:25 PM.
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    suevv Offline OP
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    With great hesitation - I'll offer what I've come up with so far. Please keep in mind that for DS7 - the biggest struggle is still social interaction. He hasn't hit that "increased demand" point that others have described at third grade, or middle school, etc.

    Here it is:

    Imagine you are designing the Google self-driving car. You begin with 5 basic sets of sensors, and processors to handle the data from each. The result - a car that drives itself without crashing into things. Your car works great on a test track with two obstacles and a top speed of 10 miles per hour.

    But it crashes when more obstacles are added or speed is increased. So you upgrade all your sensors. Then to be safe, you upgrade them a couple more times. So now your car is taking in 1,000 times more data - all the data it needs to go fast while avoiding many obstacles.

    Unfortunately, you forget to upgrade your processors, too.

    Imagine what will happen to your ride when that 1,000 times more data hits those non-upgraded processors. Best case scenario is all stop. Worst case - better call 911.

    Please poke holes, comment, etc. I don't want to look like an idiot if I try to make this analogy.

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    I actually tend to describe processing speed in terms of the conditions that will generate the highest quality response, instead of attempting to develop analogies for the underlying learning profile:

    If you give this child x % additional time (standard accommodations are +50, +100, or unlimited), the quality and depth of his/her response will skyrocket, and you will get to see the child who scores in the top 1 out of 100 (or whatever their level is) in problem-solving ability. If you restrict them to normal time limits, you will miss out on that child, and will instead see only their much lower (bottom 1 out of 100 or whatever it actually is) speed. Most teachers are motivated by seeing children perform well and demonstrate skills and knowledge. While extra time benefits most students, the magnitude of the benefit is not remotely comparable for a child with slow processing speed. Rarely do I have a teacher who does not get on board once this is explained to them.

    This explanation also has the advantage of applying to all underlying causes of slow processing speed on a pragmatic level, without having to get into complicated explanations of the exact neuropsychological or motor processes involved. Which, for some teachers, is a bit eye-glazing.


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    suevv Offline OP
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    Aeh - could you talk about how you'd apply that sort of discussion in the context of behavioral/social interaction difficulties? DS does not yet have trouble keeping up with work tempo. But he has all sorts of troubles when it comes to functioning in an overwhelming environment. He didn't assess as SPD, ADHD or ASD, but has many of the social/emotional challenges that come with those LDs, and our neuropsych emphasized the PSI as a significant source of struggle. But I just don't see how to explain this.

    Thanks all for the thoughts,
    Sue Who Needs to Look Up from her Little View of the World
    P.S. Whhaaaat?? There are people who don't think about computers and processors all day? How could this be? wink

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    In the behavioral/social context:

    In an average social/classroom situation, social cues and signals are whizzing by fast and furious. Remarkably, most children are able to catch, process, and respond to them accurately. For a child with slow processing speed, by the time they have caught, processed, and responded to the beginning of the social interaction, three or four (or more) additional signals may have gone by. Or, just as often, by the time they have caught the fact that a social interaction of significance is beginning, they are only able to catch, process, and respond to a cue many steps into the interaction, without knowing what the beginning was, which makes it, naturally, rather challenging to determine the appropriate response at that point. This is overwhelming and discouraging, which is why such children often give up, get frustrated, or respond in an odd or disproportionate way to what appears to us to be ordinary social situations. Social interactions are a form of mixed verbal and nonverbal conversation, for which slow processors are able to absorb only bits and pieces.

    Just as with academic situations, if we give them additional time and space (often in a quiet one-to-one setting) to process social situations a little bit at a time, they often demonstrate much better social comprehension than it might at first appear. They also benefit from explicit instruction in many of the skills that NT children absorb unconsciously from their environments, because the flood of interactions going by is too quick and confused for them to make the cause-and-effect connections that teach those skills in NT children. The better the knowledge and skill base in social-emotional functioning that we can give them through instruction at their processing pace, the more able they will be to infer the patterns of social situations (and the adaptive responses to them) from the bits and pieces that they are able to glean at full speed.

    If you think about social reasoning and cause-and-effect thinking as A + B + C = D (simplistic, yes), and slow processing speed as causing children to miss one of ABCD, then you can see how they have difficulty learning social calculus. Especially if one misses a different letter or more every time, so that sometimes one sees A + B = D, or A + C = D, or B = D, or A + B + C = ?


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    suevv Offline OP
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    Beautiful aeh. Thank you. Ready for my meeting now.

    Sue

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    The doctor who did dd10's testing explained to me that dd's slow processing speed makes her a careful, deep thinker. He encouraged me to nurture that, to let her think slowly, that the world needs more careful thinkers. <3

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