Four Key Cognitive Skills

We all need four key cognitive skills for effective learning. They are: memory, attention, processing, and sequencing.

Here are some behaviours you might notice in a person who is weak in these skills:

Memory

An adult tells a child, "Colour the apples red, the tulips yellow, and the cats black." A child with poor working memory may only remember the first colour.

You instruct your teenager, “Put your backpack upstairs, bring down your laundry, start the washing machine and don't forget to clean up after your snack.” A teenager with a poor working memory won't be able to remember what you said.

Attention

Imagine that you are a classroom teacher. Instead of paying attention to you, your student might be watching what another student is doing.  Perhaps this student noticed a  noise coming from the other side of the classroom. You may find that your student is wasting a lot of time focusing on small distractions that the other kids can easily ignore.

Processing

Your teenager may misinterpret visual cues like facial expressions and gestures. This is a sign of poor visual processing skills.

Your child might be reluctant to answer your questions. This could be due to poor auditory processing skills. They may not be able to accurately notice the difference between sounds. Their brains will be busy trying to figure out what you asked them. It might be impossible for your child to  answer you quickly.

Sequencing

People with weak sequencing skills may not be able to retell a story in a logical sequence.

Why are these cognitive skills important for learning?

You can Train these Cognitive Skills with Fast ForWord® Online

Children and teens will have a difficult time in school if one or more of these cognitive skills is deficient.

Fast ForWord is the only scientifically designed and proven intervention that targets memory, attention, processing, and sequencing, all within every training session.

At Neuroplan, we tell kids that Fast ForWord wakes up their ears. It gets their brains ready to work at top speed during listening tasks.

Often these kids have had their hearing tested and the results have been normal. This can be surprising to the teachers and parents who know them. These kids are such poor listeners that the adults are often sure there is a hearing problem.

A hearing test is a low level brain task. It basically asks, “Did you hear a beep?” A basic hearing test does not tell you much about auditory processing. It doesn’t tell you if the person can interpret incoming speech sounds and map meaning onto these sounds.

Some children have auditory processing deficits. They simply can’t interpret speech sounds quickly and they end up guessing and making mistakes when they are trying to figure out the meaning. These kids have auditory processing difficulties rather than a hearing loss.

The good news is that Fast ForWord has been scientifically proven. It is an effective treatment that gets to the root of the problem. 

Cognitive Skills are the Foundation

Comprehending language is a high level brain task. Language is the crucial foundation for literacy development.

Students require a strong memory, excellent attention, fast processing and accurate sequencing in order to succeed with academics. They must be able to hear differences between speech sounds because this changes the meaning (e.g. “peas” versus “peace”). They need the ability to match speech sounds to alphabet letters quickly and accurately.

All these cognitive skills help students succeed at listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Often older students get discouraged when they are asked to use intervention methods that look childish. The Fast ForWord LITERACY Series has age-appropriate graphics. 

There are many causes of reading difficulties in this age group. For some, the problems have been present since childhood because of a learning disability, dyslexia or attention difficulties. Some people don’t get the chance to develop their literacy skills during childhood because of poor access to education. Sometimes people lose skills when they are injured or as they age.  There are many reasons why teens and adults need help in order to become better readers.

At Neuroplan Treatment Services, we have used these programs with people who have attention deficits, learning disabilities, dyslexia, auditory processing disorders, and autism. We have also been successful in using these programs for rehabilitation of aphasia and other types of acquired brain injuries.