I’ve been listening to some conference workshops (taped at a local homeschool conference) by a woman named Linda Kane. She is a Certified Neurodevelopmentalist. I’ve found the content to be completely fascinating.

She uses a number of different methods to improve a child’s processing ability, one of which is something she calls “digit spans“. She contends that for each year of a child’s age, he or she should be able to process that many pieces of information. A child of three ought to be able to repeat back a random number sequence with three digits; a child of six should be able to repeat a sequence of six numbers. At age seven, the length of these sequences stops increasing each year; indeed, the average adult can only do a digit span of seven. BUT, a person who is able to do a longer sequence will have better processing skills and be able to retain information that is given auditorially. Kane contends that college students who do well with lectures and seem to easily achieve high grades are better able to process individual pieces of information and are likely able to repeat a lengthier digit span than their counterparts who are struggling.

I think it’s interesting that she’s not saying a child needs to be smarter or know more or learn more; she’s simply saying that improved processing equals a better equipped child (Kane, by the way, is a homeschooling parent).

She suggests checking a person’s processing ability by presenting digits in a monotone. If a three year old can only repeat two digits, he is “stuck” at two and will behave more like a two year old than a three year old. An adult who can only do a digit span of five will likely have developed methods for coping with this processing shortfall, but could excel if the processing were improved. In addition to auditory digit spans, kids can practice visual digit spans, improving visual processing.

Kane encourages parents to practice these methods with their kids a couple of times each day -  make it fun! - to improve their ability to repeat back the sequence given. Even adults can make their brain connections work better by improving their digit spans.

She highly recommends this method for kids with labels such as ADHD, autism and Asperger’s. In fact her eldest son has Down’s Syndrome and went from not being able to recognize his own name at age 12 (when they first implemented this method with him) to being able to recognize 300 sight words in three months. Pretty impressive! The ability to process information well also seems to help with behavioral issues.

One fact that she cites was interesting to me: our brains are 3% brain cells and 97% connections between those cells. She claims that by exercising the connections with methods such as this, our neurological systems will be much improved.

Interesting stuff. If you’d like to see an example of digit spans being given to a child, check out this video on You Tube. Kane’s website is here.