BrainWare Safari Research on Students with SLD

This note was sent to us by the folks at BrainWare Safari, regarding a small study that was done using students Specific Learning Disabilities.

It is always exciting to attend the prestigious Learning and the Brain conferences, and May’s conference in Arlington, Virginia was especially exciting as new data on BrainWare Safari was revealed.

The ground-breaking BrainWare Safari research, designed and conducted by Dr. Sarah Avtzon, Assistant Professor at Daemen College and Director of the Master’s Program in Early Childhood Development, showed that students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) were able to close the cognitive gap with normally developing peers in 12 weeks of using BrainWare Safari.  This is the first time, according to Dr. Avtzon’s research, that an intervention has been shown to have such a powerful effect.

“Previous research suggests that students with SLD must develop their underlying cognitive skills in order to benefit from reading and math interventions, but the question has been how to do that,” said Dr. Avtzon.  “Our study shows that we can develop the cognitive skills of students with SLD to the levels expected of normally developing children and in a short period of time.”

Participants in the study were assessed in a number of areas in which students with SLD typically have deficits, including Executive Functions, Verbal and Visual Working Memory, and Processing Speed.  The students who used BrainWare Safari raised their general intellectual proficiency from 63% to 89%, where 90% is the level expected of a normally developing student.  The average for students in a control group went from 62% to 63% between the pre-test and the post-test.

The importance of cognitive skills in reading and math was underscored by students’ performance on the academic tests administered in the study.  The SLD students who used BrainWare Safari improved their reading ability by 0.8 grade equivalent in 12 weeks, compared to 0.1 grade equivalent for the control group.  Math performance improved by one full grade equivalent for the study group, compared to 0.2 grade equivalent for the control group.

Best practices in working with students with SLD have traditionally focused on helping them work around their deficits.  This new BrainWare Safari research points us in a new direction:  Accommodation AND Remediation.

Gemm Learning provides BrainWare Safari at home with professional oversight as part of its educational solution.  Call a specialist to find out if we can help your child.