Ep. 193: Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D. - Building Blocks

Sucheta Kamath: Welcome back to Full PreFrontal exposing the mysteries of executive function. I'm your host Sucheta Kamath. I believe we have been on this journey for a while talking about importance and value of executive function over the lifespan. We are going to dive in today with a important age, which is preschoolers, and then eventually we're going to ramp up and talk about even learning and teaching in middle school, high school and college. You know, as as I was thinking, preparing for this podcast episode, a story came to my mind when my children were little. I used to carpool with a friend of mine, and she came to the door to pick up my son. And she came into the kitchen and saw me packing lunch. They went to a preschool and they children brought lunch from home. And I was putting real utensils along with the sandwiches and fruit. And she said, you're putting real silverware? And I said, I didn't understand her question. I said, Of course I do. And she she was so surprised. And she said, Your son doesn't throw it into into trash. I said, You mean, like the core of an apple? She said no, like, he doesn't throw the utensils in the trash. And I said, No, I've told him not to. And so she was so surprised, because she showed me that she was packing a brown bag with everything disposable because her son would or as soon as the lunch would be over, he would take his whole bag and throw it into trash. So each day, so this happened for several days. So mom kept replacing the bag and the plastic spoon or started with a, you know, steel, spoon to plastic then eventually throwable. And that was such a slice of life that alerted me that sometimes we take these things for granted that when we are encountering children who are yet to develop skills, their behaviors are indicative of their knowledge. And when somebody if a child throws plastic utensils into trash or real utensils, the parent adapted and she never taught the kid. And so anyway, that story popped into my head. Because of the expert that I'm going to talk to today, who's going to shed light on this very important point of why certain children throw their entire lunch bag and the lunch into trash while while other children learn to bring it home. So it's a great pleasure and joy to introduce Dr. Laura Rhinehart. She is an assistant researcher at the Center for dyslexia, diverse learners, and social justice at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has received her MS and PhD from UCLA Department of Education. Her current research focuses on dyslexia, early literacy assessment, and reading interventions and children's executive function skills. She has articles that have been published in peer reviewed publications, including the Reading League Journal, and the Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. And she is a former teacher. And she brings her wisdom from that perspective, as well as a researcher. So it's such a joy and pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome to the podcast.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it. And thank you for that story about the children with the lunches. I think that's such a good example of executive functioning skills and early executive functioning skills. And perhaps parents and even teachers don't think of it in that way. They think, well, you know, maybe this is too difficult for the child to you know, remember or to inhibit, you know, throwing the whole the silverware away. But I think that there are ways I mean, these skills are very valuable. That's one thing that we learned. And just to go back a little bit, you know, thinking about executive functioning skills, when I went to write this paper on, you know, describing, measuring and improving children's executive functioning skills in preschool, what became really challenging was just defining executive functioning skills. Many people have, you know, even researchers, different ways to, you know, capture these these skills that are so important and then underline, underline a lot of the skills that children also are learning in school like math and reading and just, you know, pro social behaviors. But the way it's typically broken down is it's you know, working memory, which is kind of remembering information that's, that's given to you and also being able to adapt it. So I think in the lunch box scenario, that would be like, oh, yeah, like, you know, my mom said, don't, don't throw that away, or maybe...

Sucheta Kamath: A third time, don't throw it away.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: And then, you know, there's inhibition. So inhibition means, you know, you have this initial desire to do something, but you inhibit it. And in the lunch scenario, that would be, you know, the child's thinking, Oh, I'm done. You know, I see other children throwing things away. But, you know, to inhibit that response to say, Nope, I'm going to bring this home, this is going to go somewhere else. And then the set shifting, like being cognitively flexible. And I think that also could be being flexible, where your friend that, you know, did allow the child to throw the whole thing away. But, you know, later, she might have given the child so we're into it, nope, you need to bring this home, to being able to be cognitive, cognitively flexible, is also critical. And I think that's, that's a really important skill. So all of those skills are really being developed in preschool. As you mentioned, you know, this prefrontal cortex, this is a critical time for it. And so all these skills are coming online, and children are improving them. Every year, when you measure children on these skills at three and four, and five, they just, they continue to get better. But we can provide settings and opportunities for them to help them get better and even faster rates and have more experience so that they have opportunities to practice these skills.

Sucheta Kamath: I think I really like you taking the time to define executive function, because I think, you know, literature talks about more than 30 definitions of it, and it can get often confusing. But I think these three important features of working memory inhibition and mental flexibility sounds really great. And before we proceed, I was wondering if we could pause and talk a little bit about your own executive function skills as a child or as a, you know, young adult professional? And what did you When do you think you became aware of your self as a learner and a thinker? And when did you come about strategizing for learning?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Oh, great question. Um, well, I think that I didn't think so much about executive functioning skills. And, you know, that wasn't part of, of my background. And in teacher training, they simply don't talk about it, or at least that teacher training I did. But I think once I got into the classroom, and all the demands of, you know, working with children and families, and you know, in a kind of chaotic school system, I started to look for strategies so that I could improve. And so I think that So have a think about the three main executive functioning skills, probably my working memory is just about average. And I think that, you know, my inhibition is pretty good. But probably also, maybe around average, but I think something that I might be a little better. And that really helped me with grad school is the cognitive flexibility. I think I went into graduate school because I was working with high school students that really struggled with reading. And I thought, I want to go to graduate school to create these reading curriculum that really helped kids that are in high school that are multiple years behind, because there's nothing really that age appropriate for them. But then when I got to graduate school, I learned that, you know, that probably a lot of these individuals had dyslexia perhaps in really what would be very helpful is early intervention to prevent what was happening. So I think I kind of pivoted towards younger students, and I think graduate school is really good for someone like me that had a bit of a career and then went back. I think that cognitive flexibility really helped me kind of recalibrate, because there was a lot of things that I have learned from experience. But literature shows, you know, the academic literature shows that that was just my experience. It's not really the case. So I had a couple of times where I really had to rethink my goals, recalibrate what I was doing, and sometimes start from scratch. And I think cognitive flexibility really helps with that.

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah, it you know, I'm probably going to say I have a probably similar profile. But only difference is my working memory is probably is below average. But I'm, I'm great at strategizing and I'm really good at my insight is probably the most helpful feature of my cognitive profile, I would say. I mean, I'm not claiming all the insight, but I'm always thinking about what, what's my blind spot. So now that you mentioned dyslexia, and that's your another area of expertise, I was wondering if you could connect, maybe defined dyslexia, and what is the interplay between executive function and dyslexia or these are and literacy and maybe you can talk about both literacy and dyslexia together? And they there is an interplay, but does one have a stronger hold on the other or it's equal, if we can even think that way?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Right. So I think of executive functioning skills as kind of these domain general skills, they're things that you know, skills, you have to have to be successful in many things academically, socially, emotionally. And so underlying the reading ability are, if you look at children, or, you know, adolescents, or adults that are doing well, academically, they do really well in reading, they tend to have strong executive functioning skills, but and when they look at very young preschool children, and you follow them longitudinally, you see the ones with the best executive functioning skills tend to be the ones that go on to have, you know, high scores and literacy assessments. But I do think that there is room for compensating so that children that may not have very strong executive functioning skills, that's where the teaching really matters. So you know, children come into the classroom and kindergarten, they may know their letters and sounds. And if they have really strong executive functioning skills, that they'll be able to pick up reading pretty quickly. Because, you know, if you think about cognitive flexibility, you know, something like the T you think it makes the "t" sound and then you learn the th and you think, oh, no, you know, you have to be very flexible with you know, the symbols can mean multiple things. So, you know, as a speech language pathologist how confusing that can be. And so children with cognitive flexibility, they'll be able to map the different sounds, especially the vowels. You know, sometimes the A says a sometimes says, ah, sometimes it says something totally different. That skill really helps with reading, working memory is always really important, you know, paying attention to the teacher, when, you know, and being able to, to remember what was taught. And then also, you know, inhibition, just the skill to sit down, and really focused on on reading. So these executive functioning skills tend to lead to better outcomes and literacy. with dyslexia, it's a little bit different, because, you know, it's a brain based challenge with reading often at the word level, where children are kind of struggling to break words down into their sounds, you know, the phonological awareness, you know, thinking of Sox, as are a better example six, you know, we think s-i-x, you know, three sounds, but really, it's four sounds, you know, it's that the S sound ii sound, the K sound, and as sound for six, so you know, being aware that it really is four sounds, and you know, linking that on to the word a lot of children with dyslexia will get more caught up in non than children with without dyslexia. So the relationship between executive functioning skills, and dyslexia is less clear. But with, as with a lot of other things, high executive functioning skills, even for an individual with dyslexia, will lead to better academic, including literacy outcomes.

Sucheta Kamath: That makes sense. And you know, as we think about these early years when children enter preschool, and the learning environment is so rich, and there are lots of opportunities, and those with strong executive function actually are able to engage with those learning opportunities and that requires executive function. And of course, we know that from research that these children tend to be more engaged, they listen to instructions, they don't cause disruption because they can stay on task. They actually follow the lead of the teacher or cue from the teacher? Is, is that something similar with children with dyslexia, so their inability to acquire that relationship between sound and symbol and understand these multiple rules, same letter? Do they also suffer from these disadvantages that children with this exact executive function challenges have? Which is they are not able to be interactive in the learning environment? Or is that more related to with executive function problems?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: That's a good question. I mean, we do see what what you describe to me sounds a little bit like ADHD, if you think about, you know, ADHD as being more, you know, behavioral, and you do see a high overlap of dyslexia and ADHD. So whether those are two disorders, or their one disorder, kind of impacting the other one, I think that that's a little difficult to tease apart. But I think when you do see the dyslexia, which kind of may come online, particularly during reading, then you also may see these these behaviors that aren't very helpful, that are kind of behaviors we would think of, you know, related to ADHD, and there is a whole lot of overlap.

Sucheta Kamath: So then maybe can you share a little bit about why, you know, strong executive function skills are linked to impulse control, managing emotional outbursts, and then even engaging or following through with instructions? And that has bearing on not just academic, but non academic skills as well. What do you think about is the proposed relationship between executive function and other, you know, set of skills such as vocabulary, building language, expansion, a theory of mind, and even this moral doing the right thing, when the that right thing is hard? You know, you're so tempted to grab that toy from somebody, but just saying, No, I'll just ask politely. Right. So what is the relationship there?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Um, well, I think the things you described have a lot to do with inhibition. So, and executive functioning skills, you know, there's this, you know, some people call it cold. And then hot executive functioning skills are colder than more cognitive, you know, can I read you a list of numbers? And can you give it back to me backwards, you know, it doesn't tap into emotion. Within there are, you know, inhibition tests with for executive functioning that are more hearts where there's this gift wrap test, where the researcher will, you know, wrap a gift, and they see if the children, the, they look at the gift, or they peek when they're told I love that study, there was the famous marshmallow test. I'm sure your listeners know about the marshmallow test. But so these things really are. I mean, I think researchers think of it as inhibition, maybe hot and inhibition. And those skills are really important. Because, you know, if you think about it, I think in terms of relationships is important, because in the preschool classroom, or in elementary school and beyond, you know, relationships are important you think about relationships with your friends, and if it's the kid that blows out your birthday candle, or takes your toy, or, you know, isn't flexible with whose turn it is, which are a lot of inhibition skills, that's going to it's going to be hard for the child and I think they're going to have a less, a less good time at school, you know, it's not going to be as fun. And then the teacher, the teacher, you know, this will prompt the teacher to, you know, remind the student reprimand the student, you know, it's circle time now, or crisscross applesauce, not bouncing up and down. And so I think that both of these things can really lead to, you know, more or less academic success. At the same time, you know, I've been in classrooms lately in more maybe you want to call them progressive schools in Los Angeles where I am where they really are saying, you know, what, if we do have a bouncy ball for the child to sit on during circle time, you know that that's okay. We're, you know, we think about sitting in your canoe for the children in the circle and they they get to like rock it back and forth a little bit, and then they they have some time to be a little more still. So I think helping children with inhibition is really important. You know, some children will just walk into the classroom with higher skills, but for those children that need support, I think there are a lot of great opportunities for for teachers to help them with That kind of scaffolded and, you know, provide a safety net for, you know, maybe, maybe it wasn't modeled for them at home. So they really need extra modeling at school.

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah. And I think, to your point, I just love at the start that you had mentioned, you know, these are malleable skills. So not only they are going to grow and develop because of the experience and exposure, but the real crux of the matter is they're going to grow because of training and specific support. So I love these two examples that you gave about, even if inhibition is hard, then create environments where they get to practice that inhibition. So I know maybe we, before we get into a little bit more details about the interventions for preschool children. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how do we assess these executive function skills in preschool children. And, you know, when I started my career close to 25-30 years ago, number one, we did not call them. I mean, we were doing higher order language skills, we were talking about, we did not call executive function and cognition was separate from language or, you know, people had. And secondly, I think there was also static versus dynamic aspects of testing executive function, right? If you give clear instructions that compensates for requiring mental flexibility to shift and think about different alternatives. So I'm just curious, now that so much research is out there that talks about specific ways of testing, even like a flanker test and, and so I'm wondering if you could maybe share a few tests, ways that children in preschool can be tested? And secondly, what are your thoughts about the gap that exists between as, as you mentioned, you became a you are a teacher, I'm a speech and language pathologist, but none of my training involves training and executive function. So even because I specialized in brain injury, my assessment, you know, the tool sets come from very different parts of the silos that we operate in. So how do we expect teachers to assess these skills man, when they may not even have had any training in that? So that's a second question, but maybe first, we can talk a little bit about assessment. What does it entail?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Sure, so I think, you know, there are these very old clinical cognitive assessments that, you know, you might need some more training to give a child you know, like a flanker task or something like a day night task, where you know, the children, the child sees a picture of a moon, they need to say day and they see a sun, they need to say night, so you know, something, getting up the inhibition, and, you know, the working memory with the rule and the cognitive flexibility. So those things, you know, can can be done. And, but I think that the better tasks to do, and kind of, you know, the more interesting and maybe more useful for what children are actually doing in the classroom is something like the, the head, I love that yeah, older task, if you're familiar with that. So children who say, you know, touch her head, touch your toes, touch her knees, touch your shoulders, and, you know, they learn how to do that. And, of course, it really matters for, you know, which age children get really good at this as they get much older. But then the challenging part is, you know, at some point, you say, in touch your head, and they need to touch their toes. And so if you think about it, that's tapping into the all three executive functioning skills. So it needs a working memory, to remember what the assessor says, they need the cognitive flexibility to say, you know, even though they said head, you know, I need to touch my toes, and they need to inhibition to actually follow through. And even though, you know, they, their initial response would be to touch their head, they need to touch their toes. So that's been that task has been shown to be related to a lot of academic and social emotional skills. And I think it's kind of fun for the children to do and it can give it a teacher some some insight into where their children are with their executive function. That's great.

Sucheta Kamath: And then I think, to your point, you know, Simon says, for example, age old tested, good game, it's not so much test, but it's a good way to kind of keep training children to do that as well. So now that, you know, it's so interesting. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the disadvantages created by behaviors of this dysregulation? And how a huge piece in preschool of executive function is pro social behavior, how included you get, and and rather you get quickly become a burden on the teacher or get excluded because of your inappropriateness or you're just not going with the flow. Can you talk a little bit about? How does that kind of determine the trajectory of that student down the road? Not just preschool.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Right. So I have another paper on children who receive special education services for ADHD. And I took a big national data set. And I did some regressions, you know, to see which skills and predicted which children would be I looked at them in kindergarten, to see which children would be identified with ADHD and needs special education services in in fourth grade, that some people, children have ADHD, but they don't need special education services. This was a hire new group of children with ADHD. And I found that, you know, one of the biggest predictors was, you know, working memory was a, even though it's not typically assessed, I did have the the children's working memory skills in kindergarten, that was a significant predictor. But another significant predictor was the conflict with the teacher in kindergarten, I thought that was interesting, because, you know, kindergarten usually is a very positive time for a lot of children, they have typically a positive relationship with their kindergarten teacher, but children that went on to receive services for ADHD, even in kindergarten, had a tough time with their teacher. And this was a teacher report. So the teacher reported that, you know, that child didn't follow directions. And then even more personally, that, you know, the child didn't like them, or they just they really struggled with an interpersonal relationship. And there's been some work showing that, you know, the relationship that students have with their teacher can be a protective factor. And it's a really important factor, looking at overall academic achievement. So I see this as an area of opportunity, where potential training for teachers to help them help the children but also understand kind of some of these challenges that children with ADHD have, and maybe make the classroom a little more welcoming. And the relationship a little bit...

Sucheta Kamath: Can we talk a little bit about this piece? You know, I'm going through a trauma informed schools course right now. And it's so interesting, it comes down to people keeping their own emotions in check before they deal with dysregulated children. And I feel that one of the common problems it's it's goal block, right. So as a teacher, who's tasked to teach 15 to 20 kids in the classroom, or maybe 10 to 12 kids. He or she has an agenda, and it that goal directed focused tasks. And children who are dysregulated become a little burden. And I don't mean in a bad way. It's the nature of the learning dynamic communities, but a persistent behavior of a kid that is not cooperative. So not only not staying on task, but it's not verbally redirected becomes a huge problem for the teacher. And it can lead to annoyance. And so to me, annoyed teacher is less likely to be vested in a kid who is dysregulated. But that teachers investment is so meaningful to that child's progress. So as you're saying, the, you know, these are protective factors, how do we address this very tricky balance when the teacher needs to have some sort of acumen to tolerate the shenanigans of this dysregulated child? Am I getting this right?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And, you know, what's interesting is okay, so yes, I'm not totally answering your question, but I'll come back to it. So I was useful teacher, and I had kids that, you know, I definitely had some students who really, you know, struggled. I was in I was working in a low resource part of Los Angeles. So no, I know that those kids had a ton of trauma. And I think that, you know, that was one of the driving factors of some of these behaviors that were really frustrating to me. I had some kid eat my lunch one day. I mean, think about how frustrating that is you you You know, he's like, Yeah, I ate your lunch, I was really upset. But, so it's hard to deal with these students. But I will tell you, I think about that child a lot. You know, he's a young man, but I never forgot him. And I'll never forget him, he really made an impact on me, I think a lot about, I wonder what he's doing? What could I have done better. So I wonder if, you know, they, they really crave attention and the strategies that they use work, because I remember that a child really, that really well, for younger children, you know, I wonder if this is a hypothesis I have, but if allowing in I know how challenging this can be in a school, but allowing the teacher to get to know the child a little bit, a little bit about the family, what helped me with that student, when they ate my lunch, challenging for me was meeting his mother learning a lot about her background, you know, what was going on her job was really intense, there was a lot of moving around, there was a lot of things going on with her family. But for me, that helped me understand the child a little bit more. And I wonder if having the opportunity to know, you know, who are these, this child's more about their, their friends more about their family more about what makes them frustrated, because they're in your classroom, or, you know, maybe five, six hours a day, but the majority of their life, they're at home, what is that home environment like and, you know, the behaviors that they've developed to, uh, you know, manage their home life might not be very helpful for the school setting. But for me understanding that really helped.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, that's such a such an important point that I think ultimately, the relationship is a two way channel. And that requires time. And if the only relationship you have with a student is through their dysregulation, there is no real there is not a relationship. But if you actually have gotten to know a little bit, and another factor that I find is very interesting is teachers with good sense of humor, or a little bit light on their feet, or teachers don't take everything so seriously, that it's not directed against them, also can be very, very useful. And also, I think, lastly, you know, I think such a powerful way, if you engaged other students to help in promoting regulation in the student who is misbehaving can be also very useful, right. So as you are Yeah,

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: absolutely. Because these children, sorry, just I was thinking that, even though they may not be well liked by their peers, I do think they really want that a lot of them really do crave that. So I think, yeah, getting peers on board is another great strategy.

Sucheta Kamath: Now that we kind of have really a good way to understand that the challenge of being a preschooler, believe it or not, or think of being a preschooler will be so hard. But what what are some of the interventions or if you can give examples of some successful interventions that have been used? And you mentioned a few, little bit a while ago, but it might be great to just talk a little bit about that, and how, why they seem to be effective, might be very helpful.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Sure, so for preschool, I think, you know, there have been a lot of researchers and studies that have focused on improving children's executive functioning skills. And some of them have, you know, been more successful than others. But really, the kind of the core components I see is really helping children develop their executive functioning skills in preschool have been, you know, really focused on kind of emotional regulation, which is, you know, it's kind of related to inhibition, but it does help the children with their emotional regulation, intervention interventions that actually bring the parents in because like I was saying young children, spend so much time at home with their parents with their family. So having a parent components, that's helpful, you know, really teaching teachers to understand the developmental stages, that's helpful. And just, you know, one's programs that really see that the child holistically you know, the idea Improving a child's working memory by just making them memorize more and more numbers, that's not necessarily the most helpful, what what turns out to be helpful are some of these programs that, you know, maybe they're not going to get better at Simon Says, But you know, maybe they are learning some of these, these self regulation skills that are so important and will help them so much when they get to kindergarten.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, I have developed a curriculum called ExQ. It's an executive function curriculum from grade six to 12. And in one of the districts, we deployed it in a semi urban district in, in state of Georgia. And it was very interesting, I was talking to the superintendent, and they have lots of children who are receiving free and reduced lunches. And these infractions of dysregulated behaviors were notable quite often. And so they made a policy change, that instead of sending the child home, they made parents come and take a class. So the child never missed the opportunity for learning. But the consequence was also that there was more education offered, and they sound saw great results, by shifting that type of strategy at a policy level. So just feel that, you know, there's some innovative ways that we can think about as a community, because I think what I don't like to see is the concrete ways people think that you're either in or you're out, you are behaving well, or you're misbehaving. You know, because trauma also makes children appear as if they're misbehaving. But they could be stressed behaving. And so I think having this kind of discreet discernment can actually allow the roots to take place, as you said that emotional regulation could be because there's just chaos in in the background that we may not be privy to. And to your earlier point, earlier point, just getting to know the parent, as you said, you know, if somebody's eating my lunch, maybe I need to have a talk. Should I bring to lunches?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Right, right, exactly, exactly. I think, yeah, getting to know the background, you know, seeing how, you know, I am not, you know, to use a psychological like differentiated from from the child or, you know, being triggered by the student, like, being really aware of your own mental health or own background, and whatever you bring into the classroom is huge. So I think for teachers, this is really important. You know, when I was a teacher, I did a Vipassana course, a 10 day silent meditation retreat. When I was a teacher, I was able to do it over the holiday break and that really helped me.

Sucheta Kamath: Can you share a little bit about the Vipassana some of our listeners may not have heard the practice? I'm very familiar with it, but it'll be great to. 

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: I actually did it in Georgia down in Jessup, I think the center is still there. And so Vipassana, I think the traditional one taught by Goenka is you need to do a 10 day silent meditation retreat, it's you don't, that's where you start. And it sounds really overwhelming. And I would say that, for me, it was really challenging initially. But, you know, you spend a lot of time, many, many hours, just sitting and breathing and focusing on your breath. And always going back to your breath, whenever, I guess I become dysregulated, you know, there's a thought that comes up, that's uncomfortable for me, you know, focus on your breath. And it makes a little bit easier to kind of process these, you know, unhelpful thoughts or something that that's in your life that's out of your control. And I found that that meditation, when I went back, it really helped me with my students, I was a little less triggered, when, you know, they brought something that you know, dysregulated behavior. And I, I, I know there are some programs that kind of bring mindfulness meditation to teachers, I don't know how effective those are. But I would think that it could be very helpful and not to put everything on the teachers because I think it's a whole system, you know, you have to have supported administration. You have to have, you know, well funded well resourced schools. It's not you know, all about meditating all these terrible things away. But I think it is one strategy that helps in the moments. You know, when you're standing up in front of a class and someone says something that's really terrible. Go to your breath. And then come back. And I found that really useful. And I think it would be nice, if more teachers had that opportunity.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, as you're, I, myself have an almost 13 to 14 years of meditation practice, practice, and literally practice, not expertise. I, however, had never done practice of silence. And I like to tell this funny story that my grandfather who was a teacher, who would observe a noble silence on Mondays, and he would come to school and teach in silence. And so his students kind of adapted, and just worked with that, because that was his, you know, noble silence. So it's just funny. But anyway, so I myself started during the pandemic, I'm about to finish my mindfulness meditation teacher training program. And so I started my, so thank you. So now I observe one day of silence a month, but I did seven days. And then I've done 10 days now. So, so I'm building my, my, my muscle, but you're right, I think what I love what you just said about this mindfulness practice, it's mostly for self, to recognize that I am not my thoughts. I think that has been the biggest and strongest discovery for myself. And I also find, find that this kind of effortful ways, practice for ways to build your mental muscle of effort also kind of changes the way you empathize with others, without really personalizing it, or internalizing that as a somehow the barrier between you and others melts away. Is that something you also noticed that once you sit in mindful mindfulness, you invoking warmth, and kindness towards others, also, a little bit.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: I think it's really beautiful not to be reactive. And I think that, you know, for some children is, if that's what they want, you know, and that's what maybe they're used to at home is I do this, I get this big reaction. And if you can train that inhibition muscle, which I think is something that that meditation does, you learn to sit and not react, or at least create a little bit of space between, you know, the stimulus and, and the reaction, I think that's a gift to give other people and allows, you have to, I think, really see them more, because you become more of an observer, instead of just diving into whatever, you know, trauma or chaos. I think that, you know, people can bring, and, you know, for a lot of students in a lot of environments. I think that's a gift to give.

Sucheta Kamath: So as we think about coming to the end of our conversation, one of the topics that you have also looked into is college students and their engagement or multitasking in the classrooms with their laptops or devices. Can you share a little bit about the nature of that study? And what were your intentions? And the findings were fascinating. So maybe we can talk about that?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Sure, so we started all over the place with my research, but this was when I was in graduate school, I was, you know, ta in a course in psychology. And I noticed that, you know, all the students were on their laptops, some watching movies, whatever. You know.

Sucheta Kamath: Unbelievable. Yes, I do.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Whatever, you know, and I'm going. And so I, we talked to the professor, and we decided that we would prompted by some other research that we would create a screen free zone, and that these students would sit if you didn't want to be distracted, because it turns out that screens are a little bit like smoking in the sense that secondhand screen use can affect you. So even if you're not using a screen, if you sit next to someone who is you can still be distracted by it. So we created this section of screen free use. And, you know, we found that individuals that set in the screen free section did better on our assessment and had better grades, which is very important for college students these days. But you may think, Well, you know, those are just better students, you know, the A students were sitting there, and that may be the case but something else interesting was, what we found was after we gave the midterm, you know, students said, you know, I really am disappointed with my grade and I'd like to do better in this course, we said, well, you know, we suggest you move into the screen free zone. And that individuals that moved from the wind to the screen free zone had the biggest jump in their scores. So it shows that not only, even if you're not the type of person that chooses the screen free zone, if you kind of do that as a strategy, or as an intervention, your grade will go up. And or we show that on average, it does. So I think that's really exciting. And it gets to this idea of multitasking. You know, it turns out that even if we believe that, you know, you're paying attention to the professor, but you're also on your laptop, that, you know, it's not as as effective. And there's lots of research showing that taking notes by hand, is more effective than taking notes on the computer so we really wanted to promote taking notes by had.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, as in one thing that stands out for me is, you know, we all want to do well, but the way we go about it may not be serving our purpose. And this willingness to change the path. So from sitting in a screen nonfree zone to screen free zone is also a good choice. And do you need feedback of a bad grade to do it? Or are you going to do it in anticipation of a bad grade. So to me, that's such a telling process of executive function to write. But I love that the that you create an environment where they could experiment with their own learning, because that's how you evolve and get better. Some some things we are blind to about our own ways. And we need some failures to teach us. And, and but failures don't necessarily lead to strategic thinking. So I love that there were choices provided. And I think we talked about this during our prep that you yourself, understood this change. As instructors, can you talk a little bit about teachers and me this insight to me, it's very helpful for teachers to think as they're designing classrooms and wanting success for their students, they have to play with it, they have to show mental flexibility, right.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Right, so professors, and you know, for me, as I was a TV, I get feedback from students. And when we told them not to use their laptops, the feedback tanked. Because this is a you know, looking at they were mostly sophomore, junior seniors in college, that's a really important age, I think now it's referred to emerging adulthood. So they're kind of playing around with they want a lot of autonomy, and a professor telling them, don't use your laptop, that's not really going to work. But what we do want is to encourage them to, you know, make the choice make a smart choice. And to kind of make it a little bit easier to make that choice is helpful. Because initially, we had the, if you want to use a computer, you had this control of the classroom, and the students hated that they felt like they were being punished it trigger them to think about school or, you know, younger, so they really didn't like that. And I think that's important feedback for this age group is, you know, they, they want autonomy, and they crave autonomy. And I think it's important to have it, but also seeing that the teacher ratings dropped just without one change. It also shows that maybe take the ratings with a little bit of a grain of salt, because, you know, I think that's really important information. But, but students, you have to make sure that students are also aware of why we're doing things and what you know, some things might be, might seem a little painful, because the idea of taking notes by hand, or read some research on this, people feel like they take better notes when they type everything out. But it turns out that that actually doesn't lead to better test scores. It's actually better to take notes by hand, because you you take fewer notes, but when you write it down, you're condensing what you've learned. And it's more of it's it's more conducive to learning. Yeah, it's not this stegnografer. You know, writing everything down is not helpful. And moving students away from that is really challenging but it is actually what's best.

Sucheta Kamath: Wonderful, so as we close our eyes actually interview, I always love to ask my guests do you have any recommendations for us? Any books that have come across your table that have influenced you positively or you think are strong recommendations for our listeners, and they can benefit from it?

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Ah, I would say that in my center at UCLA, the Center for Dyslexia, a lot of our work is based on Dr. Marianne Wolf's books. So her book, Proust and the Squid and Reader Come Home, I would highly recommend those about, you know, the brain basis of reading. And the second book is a little bit about the study I just spoke about. It's, you know, the impact of screens, you know, reading on screens versus reading, hardcover, you know, paper books, you know, it's different. It's our brain processes it a little bit different. So both of those books talk about executive functioning, reading, dyslexia, the brain, and Reader Come Home is the second one, the most recent one.

Sucheta Kamath: So fabulous, well, we can't wait to get your book in my hands so I can have you come back. Thank you so much for for being on the podcast and sharing your wisdom and knowledge, and listeners. That's all the time we have today. Thank you again, for joining in. You can see these are important conversations. And having all these these amazing, knowledgeable and incredibly qualified, passionate experts, provides us with a unique perspective not just on our children that we may be taking care of, or educating but ourselves. So definitely, if you loved what you're listening, share with your friends and family. Definitely leave us a comment or a question. And lastly, don't forget to subscribe to Full PreFrontal using your favorite listening app. And definitely look forward to seeing you all again right here next time on Full PreFrontal. Thank you.

Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.: Thank you for having me. It's been a real pleasure.