Overt and covert behavior

The term "behavior" has been misrepresented and misinterpreted by many in the school psychology field, including proponents as well as opponents of behavior analysis. Proponents have used the term too loosely, while opponents have used a bit of a warped definition to attack the field.

Furthermore, school psychologists as well as behavior analysts have also taken a very narrow view of the definition of behavior.

According to Cooper, Heron, and Heward (2007), in order for a phenomenon to be considered a behavior, we need to have several conditions:

1. there must be a part of the organism which is moving.
2. there must be a change in the environment as a result of this movement.

With this, it is easy to see that throwing a desk or completion of homework are behaviors. However, some individuals in the field develop behavior plans based on the lack of a behavior, such as "not doing homework" and "not throwing a desk as targets or goals of behavior plans.

That is not going to work.

You need to target behaviors constantly. You may want to reduce certain behaviors or increase other ones, but you want to target behaviors or to set behaviors as goals - not non-behaviors.

Let's look at reading, something that is often not considered to be a behavior. While reading, there is movement of the lips, tongue, and vocal chords. After the behavior is done, there is a transformation of the sound waves in the environment, which informs us that we have had a behavior occur.

Ahh, someone would say - that only counts if the person is reading out loud. What if the person is reading silently.

Yes, it is sticky, but not unmanageable. If one is reading silently, thinking, feeling mad, or examining a beautiful painting, there are neurotransmitters which are being released and activating neurons. After the neurosynaptic reaction the brain is different than what it was prior to starting the behavior. Therefore, these activities qualify as a behavior.

Overt behaviors are those that anyone can observe, while covert behaviors are those that only the organism can examine.

More on this after a bit....

Puerto Rico's students not reading or performing math at grade level

A press release from the Dept. of Education indicates that students in Puerto Rico are not at grade level.

This is an interesting press release as it is not simply patting the Dept.'s back, but giving itself a good self- analysis and self-criticism.

http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/03/03292007a.html

Phonics is good, no matter what you say...

There was an article which cam out yesterday (3/9/07) in the New York Times (click the title for the link) highlighting the phonics-whole language debates.


I think that this is silly.


Children taught with a phonics approach are at an advantage when they are asked to perform tasks sch as fluency and comprehension. Additionally, phonics instruction also benefits comprehension as shown by the Comprehensive Leadership Program







As can be seen, there significant comprehension benefits to phonics instruction.

As I have made my point previously when discussing evidence based interventions for children with autism, not providing children with evidence based interventions amounts to educational neglect and some of the worst violations of social justice.

People in the article cited improvements using techniques that are not evidence based - however, their data are based on one district's one-year improvement - even after they changed their method of assessment (they changed their test).

Click here for the National Reading Panel's video entitled Teaching Children to Read. Although one may purchase it, it is available for free as a streaming download - just scroll down.

What is a school psychologist?

Sorry all for my departure - I was quite sick for some time and I had some problems installing Windows Vista on one of my computers.

I wanted to start to begin to answer the question in my title - what is a school psychologist. It is a particularly difficult profession to define - even its members are currently engaged in a debate as to what a school psychologist is.

Historically, the first school psychologists were teachers who were re-trained in psychology. These school psychologists were to consult with teachers regarding difficult learning and behavioral issues.

As the testing craze hit its phase, school psychologists because primarily evaluators.

Currently, this is how I would define the term. A school psychologist is:

1. An applied educational psychologist
2. A professional who is versed in child pathology so that s/he may prevent problems in the school setting.
3. A consultant to teachers, administrators and professionals for learning and behavior problems.

One of the things which strikes me is how professionals may not be willing to consult with school psychologists as they assume that they do not know the current research on evidence based practice in educational settings. Hopefully this will change.

For more information please consult the NASP Website page: Who are School Psychologists?

Brain Images Show LD Children Respond To Spelling Treatment

One of the interesting things about reading disorders is that children with a positive diagnosis tend to show different patterns of brain activity that non-identified children. This is a brief summary of reserach (too brief in my opinion - I would have liked to have seen more of it) in which a treatment showed positive results as shown through pre- and post- fMRI patterns. Specifically, the LD groups post fMRI patterns more closely resembled the non-LD children's fMRI patterns.

Interesting stuff - check it out

Technorati tags: fMRI learning disability psychologyspelling
reading brain

Joseph Claeys, new school psychology blogger on the block

Joseph is a great contributor to the school psychology listservs and his blog should be hailed as monumental to the world of online school psychology. I think that his breakdown of phonological processing is a fantastic primer, and one which my students should access, download, read and study.

I'm including a link to his blog on the lower right hand corner of the blog - I anticipate great things from him.

National Reading Panel report

In 1997, Congress asked the “Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to convene a national panel to assess the status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read.”

This panel was charged with providing a report that “should present the panel’s conclusions, an indication of the readiness for application in the classroom of the results of this research, and, if appropriate, a strategy for rapidly disseminating this information to facilitate effective reading instruction in the schools. If found warranted, the panel should also recommend a plan for additional research regarding early reading development and instruction.”


http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/intro.htm