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Statistically significant improvements in Reading and Maths achieved by Special Needs Students as a result of Brain Gym ® intervention - New re-evaluation of data published in Smart Moves by Carla Hannaford (1995)

by Dr Buffy McClelland, 2007.

Introduction:

In this paper, a statistical analysis is carried out on data from a research experiment which was described in the book, Smart Moves by Carla Hannaford, published in 1995. This new statistical evaluation of the published data demonstrates that nineteen children aged 10-11 years old, with Special Educational Needs, made statistically significant improvements in reading, reading comprehension and mathematics as a result of a year-long Brain Gym ® programme.

The students' reading age was on average more than 2 years behind calendar age at the start of the experiment, and after the intervention, their reading age had improved to be on average less than 1.5 years behind. In contrast, without costly special individual intervention and only using the typical interventions used in schools for Special Needs, such students would normally have fallen further behind to a typical level of 2.3 years behind calendar age. Thus, the total improvement is close to an extra year in reading age, which is demonstrated to be highly statistically significant using Student's T-tests. The improvement in mathematical ability is smaller, but also statistically significant.

The Experiment:

The experiment involved nineteen "fifth grade" Special Education students (Age 10-11; equivalent to UK Year 6). Ability levels in reading, reading comprehension and mathematics were monitored at the beginning of the grade year and again at the end of the school year using the Brigance Inventory of Basic Skills (Albert H Brigance, 1977, Curriculum Associates).

The intervention consisted of a Dennison Laterality Repatterning procedure (Personalised Whole Brain Integration, Paul and Gail Dennison, 1985) which was carried out at the start of the experiment on each student, and thereafter each child did 5 to 10 minutes of  Brain Gym movements daily (Brain Gym, simple activities for whole brain learning, Paul and Gail Dennison, 1986). The specific movements which were used in the experiment were not indicated in the book Smart Moves.

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Results:

Raw data: Graphs of the results of the Brigance Skills assessment are provided in the book Smart Moves on page 114. For copyright reasons, the graphs are not reproduced here. The data values have been extracted from the graphs and are tabulated in the tables below. Table 1 shows the raw data extracted directly from the graphs. The values are of the Grade level for reading or maths (i.e. the normal age group with this level of reading or mathematical ability).  Note that the US Grade levels start at Grade 1 for age range 6-7 years, so a Grade level of 0 is below that of an average 6 year old, while a Grade level of 3 is equivalent to the reading ability of an average 8-9 year old, for example. The values of "Reading Age" and "Mathematical Age" shown in tables 1 & 2 have been calculated by adding 6 years to the Grade Level. The arithmetic means (averages), standard deviations and standard error values have now been calculated.

Table 1: Raw data on Reading from Figure 7.2, p 114 Smart Moves, C Hannaford, 1995.

Reading: At the start of the experiment, the average reading age of 7.95 years was more than 2 years behind calendar age.

After the year-long intervention, the average value of reading age of 9.53 demonstrated an improvement of 1.58 years in reading, during the 10 months of the experiment. This converts to an improvement of 19 months over a 10 month period, or 1.9 months per month of intervention. The maximum improvement seen for any one student was an improvement of two grade years in one academic year, and 10 students improved by this amount.

Figure 1. Reading Age data from Hannaford 1995. Purple bars indicate the number of students with Reading Ages in the indicated ranges at the start of the Brain Gym intervention, Green bars indicate the number of students with the indicated Reading Ages at the end of the experiment.

Table 2: Raw data on Mathematics from Figure 7.2, p 114 Smart Moves, C Hannaford, 1995