telling time

[sparrow]

hi, I'm kinda new....
does anyone know a good arguement for me to give my mom concerning digital watches and regular watches? She insists that 'I can still learn it', and prohibits me from getting a digital watch. She doesn't know how many times I've just frozen up, trying to tell the time. Aye, she buys me lovely hand watches, but most of the time i have to have someone else read it for me ...
now, if you give me my own sweet time, i can read it- but she doesn't know that. How do I convince her?

thanks,
sparrow

[ellyodd]

Hi Sparrow, welcome! We are all new here, the forum is new

Well, the whole telling time on a normal clock is something with cognitive skills. It has a technical explanation... why some people have problems with that. I'll search the net for an explanation for you, in the next couple of days - then you can give your mother a good explanation she can't "deny"

If she still insists on buying you normal watches because they look nice to her, I don't know what to do... I'm sure she means well, and you can just keep a digital clock in your bag or something like that..?

Or maybe you can find nice/pretty/beautiful/cute digital watches on the net that you can wish for instead?

[sparrow]

thank you for looking for me! I'll try to give her the most profound arguement ;D

[ellyodd]

Sure I'll do it, I have too much spare time these days

Not today though, I'm on my way to an interview about dyscalculia, the second one I'm doing for the dyscalculia association. This time it's just for a student in journalism making a project about dyscalculia so it's not sure that it will be published yet.. I'll take my chances, maybe it will

[ellyodd]

It's called visual-spatial problems. Or in other words, when the brain has trouble processing what the eyes see.

I searched and searched but i couldn’t find anything with clocks AND dyscalculia - besides that the problem is listed as one of the symptoms of dyscalculia EVERYWHERE.

Here is an article about visual-spatial problems. It is NOT aimed at people with dyscalculia, but maybe you can use some of the things he says anyways? DON'T mind that he is saying that everyone can learn this, because he is talking about people without learning disabilities.

From mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/dwm/kk.html

Overcoming Difficulties in Telling Time By Dominic W. Massaro, Ph. D.
Editor's Note: Dr. Massaro is the inventor of a popular product featured in the Beckley-Cardy QUARTERLY - Kid KlokTM. In a sense, this is the story behind his invention. We hope these thoughts may benefit your efforts in teaching a vital element in students' lives.

It's well known children have difficulty learning to tell time. Much of this stems from trying to relate to an abstract yet traditional concept, analog time. Most of us understand this. After all, even after being taught to tell time, it took years of experience to enable us to automatically read minute and hour hands on a circular face. So, because of design, analog or traditional clocks have slowed the learning process. Since children can more readily read the direct numerals of digital time, it would seem the time-telling problem would be solved by the widespread use of digital timepieces. Yet there are several important reasons why analog clocks will remain central to telling time. First, analog clocks retain traditional meaning still valued by many individuals and societies. They are a measure of time intervals and duration based on the principle of equating spatial distance (the movement of the earth around its axis of rotation) with time. The circular face and hands of a traditional analog clock specify more than a simple reading of time. Analog clocks enable us to comprehend time. Secondly, with this idea of comprehending time comes understanding of time values. Seeing 3:58 on an analog clock not only indicates how long a period has elapsed since 3:00, it shows us how close we are to 4:00 and so on. The distance the hands travel on the circular face also gives us a direct perception of how much time has passed between two or more readings. The third reason is an intellectual benefit. There is evidence that understanding of analog time facilitates understanding of other more complex and abstract subjects like arithmetic. For example, analog meaning of numbers in P.M. or A.M. will facilitate a child's learning of cardinality - a number's integral or separable quantity as opposed to something that is merely counted. A fourth advantage is simple readability. Analog clocks can be read quickly at a distance since the location of the hands suffices in telling approximate time.

There are limitations in traditional analog clocks. Interestingly, the limitations of analog clocks stem from some of the advantages. Very little has been done to improve the standardized yet arbitrary design of analog clocks. Time can be misread. Hands can be confused, reversed at a glance so that 3:10 may be read as 2:15. It's easy to relate to a child's confusion when they learn to read analog time. Digital clocks give exact time in numerals. Analog clocks demand a child overcome conflicting information given by two hands which must be read and understood separately. An example of this second common problem is where seeing the "big" hand on the Numeral 2, the child reads 2 minutes past the hour instead of 10. Evidence indicates people of all ages have difficulty making a response that conflicts with their current perception. This is similar to a well-known interference effect where people try to name the color of the ink (ex. RED) instead of the actual printed word "blue." Children are required to learn the difference between hour divisions printed on the clock face and minute divisions which are basically unseen. They are required to count in fives amongst a dozen intervals. This may be an inappropriate method of reading numbers. We should think carefully before telling a child to call a number "five" when a 1 is a "one".

An educational clock. Helping out one day in my son's second grade classroom, I was troubled by errors children made in their lesson on telling time. One child made the typical mistake of reading a clock set at 4:10 as 4:02, another read the same time as 2:20, and 2 s were commonly read as "ten". These errors were not random guesses, rather they indicated inherent flaws in the design of the clock. I observed how students were asked to read analog time only during their lessons on time, not during the remainder of the school day. None of the students paid attention to the analog clock on the wall. As a cognitive and experimental psychologist, I was challenged to uncover the nature of the difficulty in reading traditional analog time - to design a better mousetrap. By employing principles of psychology, cognitive engineering, observational and experimental evidence, I set out to build a timepiece that made analog time-telling easy to learn. I quickly discovered there were many advantages to this. Such a clock would reduce time spent in class learning to tell time so valuable classroom time would be saved for other profitable learning. This clock would also enable exceptional children to more readily learn to tell time. Evidence also showed that with a better mental picture of a clock, children would simply be encouraged to use, understand, and remember time more readily to their advantage. The most obvious improvement in the clock I created was a visual segregation of hour and minute paths with enhanced size and color. 1. In turn the clock minimized confusion by providing more patural mapping between information on the clock and current time. 2. By providing redundant information, the clock made time reading easier and more accurate. 3. This meant a greater proportion of students would read and use analog clocks. 4. A vast amount of initial failure associated with older teaching methods and clocks would be reduced. 5. Learning to tell time would be more fun!

The traditional clock is a leftover from history, not an efficiently designed, easy to read device like a digital timepiece. Yet no one should assume digital time will replace analog clocks. After all, analog clocks have withstood the test of time. More importantly, analog time reading helps develop important abstract, perceptual, and cognitive skills badly needed in a modern, digital world.

[ellyodd]

I hope you liked the article, I think there is some useful things in it. Here is a picture of the clock



But you can also read about it at mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/dwm/kk.html

If this problem is REALLY big for you, I wonder if you have nonverbal learning disorder? You can read about that here if you don't know what it is - www.nldontheweb.org/ and www.nldline.com/

"Spatial dyscalculia

Spatial dyscalculia is often named non-verbal learning disorder (NLD), and is based on a dysfunction in the parietal areas, mainly in the right hemisphere. They have math difficulties, because they can't imagine the math visually. They get by in grammar school, but experience a decrease in math understanding as the math turns into geometry and equations. They will experience their first difficulties in aligning numbers for easy computing, and even more when negative numbers are introduced. These people often get lost, even in their own street or in their house. They hardly ever start to draw recognizable drawings, and cannot use maps. They will never learn how to drive in reverse with a trailer. They often experience great troubles telling time from a traditional clock, but need digital clocks to understand the concept of time.

Apart from that, they often have difficulties reading other peoples emotions, and can therefore be mistaken for autists. Reading problems are not unusual in this group, but their reading difficulties are different than in dyslexics; the child does not have the overview of a word, but needs to concentrate on every single letter. As toddlers these children often get diagnosed with semantic-pragmatic language disorder, which is characterized by quite good language abilities, but problems in grammaticism, syntax and in understanding the use of language for communication.

If these difficulties are severe, these children will often end up in special schools for the mentally handicapped, because their spatial difficulties will impair them in all subjects requiring visualization. This is obvious in physics and math, but also in understanding literature, where visualizing a story will enhance understanding dramatically."

I do have A LOT of these symptoms but I'm pretty sure I don't have NLD - so don't be all "I have that!", because most people with dyscalculia have these problems... There is said to be a lot of different kinds of dyscalculia, but 2 general.

To compare, here is the other version of dyscalculia, according to one psychologist;

Primary dyscalculia
Primary dyscalculia is associated with working memory deficits, and is probably caused by dysfunction in an area called angular gyrus, right behind the ear in the left hemisphere.
This kind of dyscalculia manifests in a lack of the ability to see the numbers and the amounts that they symbolize as different entities. These people have difficulties understanding, that when you count potatoes, you don't name them, and that they could just as easily be counted in another sequence some other time. It is hard for ordinary people to understand difficulties like these, resulting in ignorant teachers shaking their heads over stupid pupils instead of proper help. Students with primary dyscalculia often have additional reading difficulties. They also have all the other symptoms described in the dyslexia section of this site: Naming problems, slow process speed and time perception difficulties. If they have additional problems with finger agnosia, not being able to differentiate between fingers without the use of sight, it's called Gertsmann's syndrome. This syndrome isn't that rare, but the diagnose is controversial, and the label doesn't offer any directions for remediation. If the brain is damaged in angular gyrus, you can develop Gerstmann's syndrome.

People with severe primary dyscalculia rarely learn to add numbers, if the sum exceeds ten. It's just too difficult. And they have extreme problems understanding the concept of subtraction, even in very small numbers, not to mention multiplication and division. Their dyscalculia and possible dyslexia is their main problem though, and if they learn to ask for help or get by using compensating devices, they can manage their lives in quite a good manner. If the problems are not that severe, the child will experience great difficulties in grammar school, and will never be confident in arithmetic’s, but might suddenly wake up understanding higher math in secondary school. Their handicap will not be as severe as the first group as adults. They are the pupils that still use their fingers in counting in grade five, and therefore needs very concrete math instruction, but do well if they can translate arithmetic’s to spatial representation, for instance by using cake arithmetic’s instead of percentage and use thermometers in order to understand negative numbers.

And you know what? I have symptoms from both versions of dyscalculia, so... It's a jungle. But if you haven’t already read about Nonverbal Learning Disorder, then do it now.

IF you feel like taking the challenge it is learning this (it IS possible in most cases, if you find the right learning method for you), here is some links to stuff I thought sounded interesting;

Here is a reading disabled with this problem, who learned the analog clock - www.ldresources.com/articles/writing_tools.html

A discussion from a Nonverbal Learning Disorder-forum - www.nldline.com/wwwboard/messages/10958.html

But.. Be sure to remember that the problems with telling time isn’t as important as your mom thinks

Just ask if you have any questions, I'll try to help

[Lucere]

Ellyodd:

Thanks so much for these articles, they are great. I'm mostly OK with maps and real-world spatial things (dealing with spatial concepts mentally is another matter). I can't add mentally -- but if I write it down, I can add -- and I can subtract small amounts with a system using my fingers and verbalizing. I can do multiplication tables by memory and writing. I can do only the most simple division. I can't do reading problems at all. I can't do algebra or geometry, period.

I've never really thought about this in much detail, I mean figuring out exactly to what extent I can and can't do math, or work with spatial ideas. So reading these articles is helpful.

Lucere

[Lucere]

Hey, I just realized that this professor who invented the KidKlok teaches at UCSC, a university in the same town I live in!

Hmmmm

L.

[sparrow]

Ellyodd:

Thanks so much for the article! I've been out of town for a few days and I was unable to reply. but now I think mom 'gets' it a little better. maybe i'll get a digital watch for christmas!

[ellyodd]

Hi Lucere, you’re welcome

I love reading about all this, because I can see myself in it - I was so misunderstood for 21 years AND 2 months, by others and myself. So now that I have an explanation, I can finally be something other than lazy and slow, you know.

That wasn’t supposed to rhyme ;D

Cool, small world

[ellyodd]

Sparrow, I hope you can explain it to her. If you still have a problem with explaining something to do with this, just ask

[Ettina]

I've had that problem too. I don't have dyscalcula, by the way. I have PDD NOS, which is atypical autism. In my case it's pretty mild. Anyway, any autism spectrum condition seems likely to come along with a grab bag of other traits and in my case, I'm very good at most spatial things, except distance, and I am good at math concepts but keep making sloppy errors because I tire easily when doing calculations, I have trouble stopping things once I've started and can't start unless the motivation is internal or it's a very quick thing, and with time, I can't estimate how much time has passed any better than morning, noon, afternoon and evening unless there's some obvious cue like a class ending(and I happen to know what time that class ends). Also, I have trouble telling time from a clock. I always though that was due to being nearsighted and always loosing my glasses, which meant I got very little practice. I can tell time, but it takes a lot of mental effort. It's not automatic.

[ellyodd]

About the clock... I have problems with that too, especially that whole AM/PM-thing - what is what. Here where I live, we have 24 hours in a day, so I'm not used to AM/PM at all, even though Ive been online for 10 years. It just wont STICK to my brain.