This article is based on material supplied by Scientific Learning Corporation.

Scientific Learning Corporation, a new company founded by two prominent research scientists, has introduced a research-based and field-tested training program for language-learning impaired children. The program is called Fast ForWord. Professionals who work with children with language learning disabilities can take certification courses to administer this revolutionary software-based program.

Fast ForWord is based on 20 years of neuroscience research. It has been field tested with 500 children at 35 different sites and has yielded scientifically measurable, objective results. The program is uniquely adaptive and automatically adjusts to each child's improving level of competence.

Dr. Mike Merzenich of the University of California at San Francisco and Dr. Paula Tallal of Rutgers University are the creative minds behind Fast ForWord. With as little as six to eight weeks of this special training, most impaired children advance in or well into the average or normal performance range. Substantial results have been shown in many children regardless of the degree of impairment.

"Fast ForWord, which I think of as 'aerobics for the brain,' is the culmination of years of scientific effort and discovery," says Tallal. "We know this scientific foundation will help us make a positive difference in the lives of the millions of children who suffer with language learning impairments."

While normal children distinguish the rapidly changing sound elements and sequences of ongoing speech, language learning-impaired children process too slowly. The research behind Fast ForWord demonstrates that speech sounds can be acoustically altered to make them more readily distinguishable for language learning impaired children. Through progressive computer-based training, these children learn to understand speech in faster, more natural forms.

As the children become more efficient at recognizing sounds, Fast ForWord adapts to each child's performance by continually speeding up sounds and provides visual rewards every time the child progresses.

Theory behind success

This unique training is based on two scientific principles: brain plasticity and the recognition that children with language learning delays confuse the rapidly successive sound pieces of speech. "The brain's plasticity, or the ability to continue learning throughout life, makes it possible for children to acquire these language skills," says Merzenich.

Compliance is critical to success with this therapy. Fast ForWord works only when a child performs the exercises on a daily intensive schedule: one hour and forty minute each day, five days a week, for six weeks. The exercises are fun and animated to sustain the child's interest.

Rapid acoustic processing is only the first of many skills that children must acquire in order to become competent language users. Under the supervision of a certified professional, Fast ForWord teaches this skills and several other speech and langauge skills, including phoniogy, morphology, syntax and grammar. Fast ForWord uses adaptive learning techniques combined with fun and exciting reward systems to accelarate and enhance the skill building process. The program is appropriate for any child between the ages of four and twelve. The children who improve most quickly are those who practice each day following the recommended protocol. Children who follow this rigorous schedule show improvement in as early as two weeks.

Program benefits

Researchers have seen the following results in children who use the program:

• Children improve significantly in their ability to discriminate sounds in words.
• More than 90% of trained children improve in their ability to follow verbal instructions.
• Children's performances at many language skills improve.
• The ability to accurately remember aurally received speech improves.
• Children with a variety of learning difficulties show improvement.
• Language Quotients of children move from below normal to within the normal range.

The Center for Speech and Language Disorders in Elmhurst, Illinois has begun administering Fast ForWord, and the new therapy was the focus of the Fall 1997 Conference on the Language Disordered Child sponsored by the Center. Several children with hyperlexia have participated in the program, and the results in these children have been consistent with results in other language-impaired children.