Fast ForWord
"(After Gemm) we received a totally different
report card I keep
thinking Are they
talking about my kid
when I heard the teachers
telling me how well
she is doing in class.
She seems so happy
and more secure
in school.
+++++
Fast ForWord Background
Beginnings
The story of the Fast ForWord program begins with four research scientists: Michael Merzenich, William Jenkins, Paula Tallal, and Steven Miller.
When the work of these four scientists intersected, their collaboration proved that the underlying cognitive processes that influence speech and language problems could be identified—and permanently improved.
These findings led to the development of the Fast ForWord program, a groundbreaking computer-based reading intervention.
The Changing Brain
Michael Merzenich earned his Ph.D. in neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins and went on to the University of California at San Francisco, where he pursued his interest in how the brain processes information. Among his achievements: developing the cochlear implant, which electrically translates acoustic signals into the nerves used for hearing.
Collaborative experiments that were the beginnings of Fast ForWord by Merzenich and William Jenkins, Ph.D.—who joined the UCSF lab in 1980—showed the adult brain also demonstrated change and adaptation in response to behavioral stimuli. “We established that our brains were created to reinvent and reconfigure themselves throughout our lifetimes.” This ability is known as brain plasticity. Another study showed that progressive training could actually accelerate the rate at which the brain changed.
Auditory Processing and Language
Meanwhile, Paula Tallal was pursuing her Ph.D. in experimental psychology at Cambridge University. She theorized that speech and language difficulties were related to auditory processing problems, meaning the children had difficulty distinguishing between speech sounds. This was an important Fast ForWord research.
She found that that these children did well discriminating long-duration speech sounds, but had trouble differentiating rapid sounds such as the consonant sounds “ba” and “da.”
A Meeting of the Minds
The scientist met at conference held by the Santa Fe Institute, a think tank devoted to fostering multidisciplinary collaboration between scientists who might not otherwise work together. When she and Merzenich heard each other speak, says Tallal, it all fell into place. “It really clicked that we should work together,” she says.
Jenkins and his team developed complex algorithms that could stretch the speed and enhance the components of speech, but the challenge was how to package the software so it would engage children.
The solution? Make a game of it.
The software component used to train the brain to increase its sampling-rate characteristics was disguised as something called Circus Sequence, while another component became Old McDonald’s Flying Farm. Within six months, they had a prototype.
Putting it to the Kid Test
Tallal and Miller focused on setting up a “summer-school” study at Rutgers University designed to evaluate the efficacy of the software. They ran the first study for four weeks in July of 1994 with seven children. The results were excellent.
Although the scientists were eager to bring the product to market on the strength of those results, they decided to run a second study with a larger sample group. This time, the results were stunning. The children using the version with acoustically modified speech showed a huge improvement in the rate of auditory processing. “The results were spectacular,” says Tallal. “Fast ForWord moved many of the kids well into the normal range, and that’s what I didn’t think could happen.”
Taking the Next Step
The Fast ForWord study results were published in the journal Science in the summer of 1995, which sparked an article in the New York Times. The public response was immediate and overwhelming. “Something like 20,000 people tried to call Rutgers to get information, but we don’t know exactly how many because the phone banks blew up,” says Miller. “In the end, we took about 17,000 calls, and CNN covered it.”
Soon, Rutgers and UCSF, who jointly owned the technology and the ideas behind it, looked into licensing it for commercial use, but the quality of the licensing applicants was under whelming. And so in early 1996, Merzenich, Tallal, Jenkins, and Miller formed Scientific Learning Corporation. The company began offering the Fast ForWord program to speech language professionals and school districts across North America, and expanded over time to more than 40 countries worldwide.
Today Scientific Learning continues to create educational software that accelerates learning by improving the processing efficiency of the brain. The Fast ForWord® family of products provides struggling readers with computer-delivered exercises that build the cognitive skills required to read and learn effectively. The Fast ForWord Language program helps children under ten years of age. Fast ForWord Literacy is the same program for older program. Scientific Learning also has a Fast ForWord reading program series that develops reading skills from first grade through adult.
