On Friday, June 17th we were treated to a very informative talk by Dr. Marcin Szczerbinski of the UCC Applied Psychology department. In his talk, Marcin discussed the main kinds of childhood learning difficulties, what was generally known about their diagnosis and treatment, and the different approaches used to address these difficulties. In particular, he looked at Brain Gym, a popular but pseudoscientific approach that claims it can help children with learning difficulties. He contrasted this with more conventional, science based approaches. He ended his talk with a baloney detector kit – rules of thumb to consider when evaluating potential treatment options.
His talk was wide ranging and of interest to anyone who has children, or works with children with learning challenges.
You can now listen to a podcast of his talk below. In addition, we will be providing further reading materials and references in the coming days.
Cork Skeptics 
June 21, 2011 at 6:03 am
Where is the talk supposed to be? Does it use some kind of Flash thingy or Quicktime doohickey to work? Does the mobile theme eat it? I know that IE for WinCE 5.0 is not a common setup (or, adnittedly, a good one*) but it does support links to MP3s or Ogg Vorbis files.
* I only use it because my main system has a fried mainboard and the replacement is not there yet…
June 21, 2011 at 8:39 am
The talk is on SoundCloud, which, I think, uses Flash. I just tried it with my iPhone and no luck there either. We might look for some server space to host MP3’s if we have more audio files to upload.
June 22, 2011 at 7:37 am
That would be greatly appreciated!
March 2, 2012 at 7:37 pm
Marcin Szczerbinski lacks even a rudimentary understanding of what Edu-K is. An individual Edu-K balance has over 1500 possible therapeutic responses, many which aren’t physical. The simple Brain Gym he refers to is used in classrooms to de-stress and encourage an optimum learning state in children. It continues to be used worldwide because it works.
There is no place for sarcasm and ridicule in serious academic debate. He insults all the therapists, teachers, parents and children who practice and benefit from Edu-K. Take note of his own quote and beware “He’s an experienced teacher, an experienced doctor, therefore [everyone assumes] he knows what he is talking about.” It is ludicrous that he is advising people on something he has no first hand experience of.
July 4, 2012 at 9:49 pm
This girl is kiddin’ isn’t she? That is what is called humour?
I have followed Marcin Szczerbinski for long so and I wont never say something about about him…