Reading reflex assessment - ready to start phonographix!

If the cue is spoken, it is an auditory task. If the cue is a symbol that represents a sound (aka a letter), the task is auditory/visual combination. A person can also know individual sounds but not be able to sequence them. Segmenting and blending are two different tasks. Segmenting and blending from auditory and visual cues are four different tasks.

When we read, we task what we know about the visual cue (i.e. what sound it makes and when) and transfer that to the language area to produce a string of sounds that (hopefully) make meaning.

Pure phonological processing is an exclusively auditory task. When letters are used to represent sounds and the person is looking at the letters, it is a phonics task.

Hope this helps you figure out where is the deficiency.

It gets me thinking again about the visual piece because the reading reflex assessment was purely auditory. Not that all of those pieces are intact, but they didn’t seem as bad as you’d expect if you heard him read aloud. Sounds like there’s a visual piece here… I have to think some more. Thanks as always Susan. : )

If a person has no knowledge of what the letter combination should say (i.e. “ea” says /ee/ often) then they have nothing to visually process to the language center. Where we want to test visual processing is just on visual stuff—like the coding score on the WISC: pure visual.

I contend that he may not have been taught the vowel team patterns to automaticity *or* he is unable to verbalize a 3-4 letter initial or final blend. (Your O-G tutor should ferret this out in a hurry, though…)

If you’ve given unlimited time to visually process—don’t rush him at all—then you should see what he knows about what letter combinations “say.”

His coding score was a “1” . But I thought this could also be a graphomotor issue, and that anxiety could depress this one. Other visual tests he scored average or above on (ie symbol search). I just don’t understand all these visually related skills - so I apologize for asking you the same questions over and over. I should do some research.

Visual motor, visual perception, visual discrimination - Can anyone explain in laywoman’s terms what the difference is? maybe then I’ll know where to look for help. And what does the Bender measure?

(side note: on the stanford binet he took at age 3.5, he scored in the very superior range on short term visual memory. )

Thanks in advance!

..

My apologies. I was multi-tasking—no wonder you’re confused when people give you crazy answers.

Symbol Search (SS) has a little bit of motor—not much. More on coding. SS is more visual discrimination.

Visual perceptual - cognitive processing of what one sees. This is different than visual acuity—the ability to actually use the eyes to see.

Visual motor - writing in response to what one sees & thinks about.

Visual discrimination - telling the differences in one visual image from another. This is figure-ground stuff.

Spatial-perceptual - Ability to perceive shapes and space.

I’ll let the OT’s tell you about the Bender. I don’t give that one.

Karen,

Perhaps your son has a mix of deficits. It is often to difficult pin point exactly where the problem is. I really believe that phonographix borders on therapy for remediating auditory processing difficulties. Some kids need more but this is an excellent start for most kids.

Linda

I think he does a mix of deficits, and I’ll use PG for those areas he tested poorly in in particular. It couldn’t hurt. He’ll be getting OG type of remediation from his tutor, and then whatever they do at his school. I think maybe multiple approaches might be beneficial for him since his deficits are hard to pin down, but he clearly needs the repetition to build automaticity.

What do you think would work on any visual processing deficits though? Is that a vision therapy kind of thing?

Visual processing is so tough because it seems to encompass numerous deficits under this broad label.
I really liked the exercises in Rosner’s book for my son. I think they dealt with one specific area that he was having a problem with. My son could not read graphs or use a numbers chart before doing those exercises and now he can.He also is able to draw better. It is not a cure for all visual processing issues it just gives one piece. It definitely improved his visual spatial abilities also Interactive Metronome helped.

We will be doing visualizing and verbalizing lindamod bell to improve his symbol imagery. I have also seen this referred to as visual-visual integration. (Sounds strange but this is correct.) This is another piece he is missing. I don’t think he is very good at creating pictures in his head. I think this skill is especially important for writing. I was told that the author of VV is working on a program called drawing with language. They have it now but it is only done in California. I think this would be good for him.

I am trying to improve his attention to detail. That is the big hurdle he has right now. I hope that if he can visualize symbols he can attend to them with less effort.

Do you happen to know if improving symbol imagery might help those with letter/word reversal difficulties?

Check out this site www.lindamoodbell.com. They address different problems using case studies and exlpain what the underlying problems are and how these techniques help.You may want to talk to one of their experts. The phone number is on the site.

Thanks Linda,
I had looked into LMB in the past, but thought PG would be sufficient. For my son, he seems to need more intensive and repetitive intervention on the symbol imagery level (although PG did help a lot —so Karen do start off with PG. You may not need anything else — good luck!).

When I called LMB they told me that Seeing Stars would be the best program for my son. I’ve heard it’s a lot like PG, but I have to guess it’s more intensive(???).

We’re also probably going to try vision therapy, our follow-up appointment is tomorrow (finally! I can’t believe how busy that office is!!! It took me months to get a follow-up appointment).

If symbol imagery is a strength for that child, using symbol imagery to help w/letter reversals may assist the student in overcoming that difficulty. If student can’t image (or has difficulty), we are compounding the weakness.

We have four main ways to input information: visual, auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, and olfactory (not useful in school much, but real useful in the real world).
Some channels are stronger—faster wired—than others. If we use these learning channels to help with overcoming other learning deficits, the chances of success are much higher. Ex: Auditory processing weakness—bodily/kinesthetic strength. Use tracing and/or air writing to overcome reversals when appropriate for the child’s developmental age.

I have you the LIPs and the Seeing Stars programs with students as old as 15 that were reversing all the time. It has cleared up within about 2 months with little or no mention of it. The proactice so much with the tiles, sky writing etc. it just seems to imprint. I have had great sucess with both.

I have used PG for the past five years and every student that I have tested has the same problem. They lack phoneme awareness of the advanced code. That is they don’t understand that more than one symbol can represent a sound and that the same dipthong and digraph can represent more than one sound in different words, the overlap. I don’t find this to be visual or auditory memory, just not understanding the concept. They also have no idea on how to decode MS words. I have found that the PG tests are very accurate. One thing you have to remember about the the code knowledge test. When you test the advanced code, and the student gets to the ‘ow’, and says sound /o-e/, he is right but I ask him is he is sounding out the first symbol, the ‘o’. This is necessary because he still doesn’t get the concept. Many kids have trouble with the letter names as well. If, when he is giving you the sounds for the basic code and he says the letter names instead of the sounds first and you have to remind him, this tells you that when he tries to decode, he mixes the letter names with the sounds for the letters.

Phonics involves being able to blend the segmented sounds into words. Obviously your son has problems doing this and therefore has problems decoding words. Both of these problems, code knowledge and blending are affecting his reading and can be remediated by using PG. If you want help, please email me your phone number and a time in which I can call you. I will be very happy to help you.

Laura,

Let us know how that goes.

Thanks

Linda

I’ll email you directly, but I am notoriously difficult to reach by phone. (If I’m home chances are the kids are too - not the best time to chat!) I wonder if you could post your approach so we can all benefit?

Fortunately my son is beyond the point of naming the letters, and he knows his sounds very well until we hit the vowel pairs. (He knew /sh/ /ch/ etc) I think a big part of his reading problems are a lack of automaticity even with the stuff he knows. Also, when giving the test the one he got wrong in the segmenting section happened because he wasn’t paying attention, and not because he couldn’t do it. (indicative of other issues perhaps….) SO I would say I should focus on the blending and advanced code if I want to remediate his specific weaknesses. Does that sound right?

He needs to be able to blend the basic code words first before he is to blend the advanced code. Of course, this shouldn’t take you very long, just so that he has the idea of blending and then, go onto the advanced code and do the same thing.

Karen,

I would get the blending and segmenting down cold before going on to advanced code. My son tests perfect now on both blending and segmenting, after lots of work. (Reading Reflex tests as well as diagnostic tests given by tutor). In my experience, practice really does it.

And you need to know how to blend and segment no matter what reading approach you use!!! It will make any approach faster.

Beth

First, thanks for all of your advice about all of these topics. I think I’m ready to start PG with him. I actually started with my non-LD daughter and I can see how much sense it made for her.

Now the good news. Yesterday he brought home a 4 page, single spaced (but with big typeface) story that he had to read for homework. Even if the actual words weren’t difficult I figured with the length and density of text on the page I’d end up doing all the reading. He sat down and proceeded to read it. I had to help him segment some of the more difficult words and remind him from time to time to take another look at some words he didn’t read correctly. But with this intervention he was able to decode it . His reading was so much better than anything I’d ever seen that I can’t believe it. Why, I don’t know. But it showed me what is possible.

Days like these give us hope!!! Perhaps some of things you have been doing are starting to click.

Beth

By working with him to go over the rough spots, he’s gotten to “hear” how it should sound and knows he *is* able to comprehend that kind of thing much better with a bit of help. So many of my guys think that their attempt at figuring out 5 pages of things and stuff is reading… and that the reaosn they don’t “get it” is just because they are stupid. Often what they’re really lacking is all the practice they could have been getting with Mom helping out a little :) You go !!!

Hi Karen,
That’s wonderful news! Keep up the momentum!!!! Maybe IM and Great Leaps helped a little?

I think you’re probably going to see some great progress with PG too! Let us all know how it goes! :-)

I also thought of IM. I also tried to figure out what he ate that day, was he wearing lucky underwear - hey I’ll try anything to get a repeat performance. : )