Episode #14 - The Truth Behind Neuropsychological Testing with Dr. Kimberly Berens

Be prepared for Dr. Kimberly Berens’ extraordinarily important message regarding learning disabilities! 

In the US, 20% of kids are considered to have a learning disability of some kind. Dr. Berens explains in Episode 14 of the podcast that only a tiny fraction of children—less than 1%—have a real neurological impairment. This suggests that more kids are being labeled with learning disabilities that are Explanatory Fictions, as opposed to measuring learning across time and assessing for skill deficits that account for why a child struggles with reading or other learning.

This episode explores the reasons behind children's academic difficulties, the truth behind neuropsychological testing, and the damaging effects that the DSM-5 learning disability labeling of children has.  Dr. Berens explains that labels that children are given are predominantly a result of ineffective instructional environments as opposed to a made up reason for what is occurring in the brain. Most importantly, Dr. Berens explains what we can do to disrupt this vicious cycle and improve children's learning abilities.

She explains that for the majority of children, “school does not work” and why. She makes it clear that she is not blaming teachers, but rather that teachers need explicit training in behavior science and effective teaching practices.

You’ll hear Dr. Berens' real anger at a professional that after testing a student’s performance on one occasion, then makes a profound leap to explain that the reason for the performance is due to something in the brain that cannot be measured, and that there is no scientific support for the label given to the child.  

Dr. Berens then reviews a case study of a student with a Neuropsychological Report versus the type of report that a Precision Teacher would produce, to look at skill deficits a child has to account for their reading challenges, as opposed to a hypothetical construct of why the student performed badly on a test one time.

Dr. Berens is a scientist-educator, a precision teacher, and the founder of Fit Learning. She is also the author of the book, Blind Spots: Why Students Fail... and the Science that Can Save Them.  Her stand is to transform education on the planet through the use of behavior science, and how that science can change the world.

 

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HIGHLIGHTS

3:19 The truth behind neuropsychological testing and learning disabilities.

6:11 The types of assessments that neuropsychologists conduct.

8:04 What distinguishes a scientific method from an Explanatory Fiction?

21:48 Common forms of disabilities, backed by neuroscience.

28:21 Why does Dr Berens think school is ineffective?

51:51 The application of behavior science to video game creation.

54:37 Imitation is the main method by which infants learn; it is not a genetic trait.

1:00:17 What can we do to change this vicious cycle?

1:17:41 Scientific illiteracy: The difference between neuroscience and neuropsychology.

1:24:22 A sneak preview of what Dr Berens will discuss at the Annual Conference of the Standard Celeration Society in Denver in November 2022 as the keynote speaker. 

 

RESOURCES

Learn more about Dr. Kimberly Beren’s work: https://www.drkimberlyberens.com

 

Listen to her podcast episodes: https://www.drkimberlyberens.com/new-page

Now to Next with Nanton featuring Kimberly Berens
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/now-to-next-with-nick-nanton-feat-dr-kimberly-berens/id1509498480?i=1000524816542

 

Transforming Your Child’s Learning Abilities with Kimberly Berens
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/428-transforming-your-childs-learning-ability-with-dr/id1038689970?i=1000576980127

 

Behavioral Habits with Dr Kimberly Berens

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/dr-kimberly-nix-berens-on-behavioral-habits-how-we/id1093028505?i=1000552098643 

 

QUOTES

3:40 “Whenever a child is referred for a neuropsychological evaluation, it's based on, more often than not, a teacher's observation of that child in her classroom.”

13:55 “People make a lot of money off of this kind of testing  [neuropsychological] and these kinds of classifications, and schools get funded based on kids having these kinds of classifications, and those people get paid to supposedly treat these kinds for disabilities, but they are not scientifically valid. They've never been validated in a scientific way. They're all hypothetical.”

19:46 “Performance and learning are two profoundly different things. Performance is a measure of a child's behavior at one time. Learning is the measurement of behavior over time. That's the only way learning can be evaluated. It's a process.”

23:02 “Not only do we have data from the United States on the profound ineffectiveness of this, but we have global data from across the globe, schools don't work for the majority of kids.”

25:17 Children learn how to cheat at a young age because, once again, schools do not care about the process. Schools care about the performance on one test, and then they move on.”

32:46 "So we know in behavioral science that learning is best defined as the change in behavior over a period of time.”

1:14:32 “Being a scientist is about telling the truth. Period. It's about finding an objective truth and then telling the truth about what was found.”