Molly: Episodic Memory

Case Study
Student Background Molly is seventeen years old and a senior in high school. She was adopted from Poland along with her brother when she was a young baby. She was born prematurely, so she has some developmental delays including epilepsy, intellectual, and cognitive disabilities (e.g., struggles with reading, writing, math, etc.). Her maturity level and cognitive processing abilities are around that of a thirteen-year-old girl. Since her learning process is delayed, she has been placed in a special education classroom setting, and she does not attend any general education classes.
Her brother is a little less than a year older than her, but he has developed normally and does not experience any cognitive or intellectual disabilities.
She is extroverted and loves sharing information about her favorite music artists and actors. Molly is very confident and loves discussing her opinions, and she is not afraid to disagree with her peers. Impressively, Molly has very detailed and accurate long-term episodic memory, so she often assists peers with remembering certain activities and social situations in class. Her sarcastic sense of humor evokes laughter among her peers and teachers. Molly is great at understanding verbal information, but she experiences difficulties reading and comprehending text on her own. Molly’s seizures are induced by flashing lights (i.e., abrupt and repetitive changes in contrast), so this should be taken into account very seriously in the classroom (e.g., some movies or animations may contain contrast changes which provoke
large angles). I would demonstrate these concepts by pointing them out in presentations on the board and coloring sheets. I would make sure to keep the ratio of words to pictures and diagrams in the presentation small since Molly experiences difficulties reading and comprehending text. I would also make sure to not include any animations in the presentation which may provoke seizures (e.g., a “gif” of tessellation similar to this: http://benice-equation.blogspot.com/2012/08/monster-tessellation-2.html). In order to check that Molly is following along, I would ask her to identify some of the concepts we have discussed in her chosen coloring sheet as we go along. As recently mentioned, I would make sure to coordinate with her math teacher and follow Molly’s progress in math class as well. I would try to incorporate concepts that she is learning in math concurrently into the tessellation