EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES ACROSS ALL LANGUAGE DOMAINS: RESULTS AND EXTENSIONS FROM THE DYNAMIC TRICKY MIX MODEL

Abstract

"This paper demonstrates how Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) can generate powerful educational interventions. Our multiple well-controlled studies include typically-developing children between 2 and 8 years of age as well as children with variations of language disorders and with ages between 4 and 12 years. Despite the wide variation in participant characteristics, we argue that our results demonstrate again and again a core conclusion: Rapid progress in language, literacy, and narrative skills only occurs when there is a favorable dynamic convergence of cognitive readiness, scaffolding partner strategies, positive emotional engagement by child and by partner, high attention, and freedom from distraction or anxiety. We term such favorable dynamic convergences Dynamic Tricky Mixes. Under such Dynamic Tricky Mix conditions children displayed significant advances in literacy, oral language, narrative, and sign language. Other labs have shown similar advances for second language learning. Moreover, and quite surprising, under rigorous equation of Learning Condition Mixes during intervention, children with prior histories of very poor learning learned at rates matching that of children with no prior learning disabilities. This result held for deaf, autistic, dyslexic, and language-delayed children. These excellent learning rates by the children with severe learning disabilities will aid in planning more ambitious reforms in the language-and literacy-facilitating procedures of educators, special educators, and speech language pathologists. In addition, across all educational domains Dynamic Tricky Mix strategies are powerful catalysts for moving any child from a ""stuck"" position toward truly rapid learning. We draw further implications from our rapid vocabulary acquisition intervention work with ordinary 4-year-olds. In this case we demonstrated that with twice-weekly sessions vocabulary growth across 5 months leaped forward compared with matched control children. Many children learned at the astonishing rate of 20 new lexical items per hour. By the use of pretest/posttest comparison data on cognitive processes we further demonstrate that the experimentally-caused leap in vocabulary had cascading effects on improved memory and related cognitive skills. Thus, rapid gains by the intervention children dynamically fed into their becoming better prepared for further rapid gains in language acquisition. In turn, this set of findings enriches accounts at the theoretical level of how so much language learning usually can be achieved in the preschool years. Likewise, in evolutionary terms these kinds of mutual enhancements between language progress and cognitive processing power may help elucidate periods when there are explosive rates of changes in Hominin cultures and in brain size and capacity."