Word: tallal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...inability to detect clear sounds, as Scientific Learning maintains. The company's own studies have "never been done with proper controls" to test its theories, argues psychologist Michael Studdert-Kennedy, chairman of Haskins Laboratories, a leading center for the study of speech and language at Yale University. Replies Paula Tallal, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University's Newark, N.J., campus and a co-founder of Scientific Learning: "What matters in the end is, does it work? Not, do we agree on theory...
...problem, Tallal believes, is all in the timing. Vowel-rich sounds resonate for 100 milliseconds, sometimes longer, and are thus easier to make out than hard consonants, which fly by in normal conversation at speeds of 40 milliseconds or less. Language-impaired children, Tallal has demonstrated, can more reliably identify fast consonants when the sounds are slowed to half their normal speed...
...analysis is correct, then the possibilities for intervening early in a child's life multiply. "Wouldn't it be wonderful," asks Merzenich, in a burst of enthusiasm, "if we could treat dyslexia before a child started trying to read?" Or better still, before a child started trying to talk. Tallal and Merzenich go so far as to suggest that some forms of language impairment could turn out to be more correctable than poor hearing or poor eyesight. They point out that the earphones that transmit the exaggerated speech sounds to children's ears in the lab are only temporary aids...
Perhaps. But, until Tallal and Merzenich know for certain, they may be giving more hope than is justified. Ever since the Science articles appeared in early January, thousands of desperate parents have flooded the Rutgers and University of California switchboards with calls, asking when the new therapy will be offered by local schools. To handle the overload, the researchers have set up an 800 number...
...results from a very small research project. Whether the same approach will prove valuable, or even marginally useful, for the estimated 10 million dyslexic children in the U.S. remains an open question, and parents would be unwise to harbor unrealistic hopes. About one thing, however, there is no doubt. Tallal and Merzenich have made a difference in the lives of at least a few children. Keillan, the girl who hated kindergarten, is now 6 years old. She adores first grade. She runs to school smiling. And, with just a little difficulty, she is learning to read...