At Lighthouse Learning Solutions, we work with many students in Ventura County who have diagnosed and undiagnosed learning disabilities. The challenges associated with these disabilities can have a significant impact on a student’s academic and social success. Therefore, it is important for us as instructors to continually educate ourselves about new and innovative methods of improving the weaker cognitive skills that form the basis for many of these learning disabilities.
One of the programs we use here at Lighthouse is a computer-based program called BrainWare Safari. This program works to improve many different cognitive skills including those involved in attention, visual processing, sensory integration, auditory processing, memory, and thinking. The President and C.O.O. of The BrainWare Company, Betsy Hill, recently hosted a webinar on remediating cognitive skills for students with learning disabilities. This webinar focused on improving these basic cognitive skills, through the use of the BrainWare program, which improves a student’s overall academic performance.
Learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia are all characterized by deficits in many cognitive areas such as auditory and visual processing, executive functions, attention, short-term memory, and processing speed. Traditionally, the role of Special Education has been to find ways to eliminate the need or bypass the use of these weakened cognitive skills in daily tasks for their students. However, at Lighthouse we subscribe to a growth mindset in which we acknowledge the areas where students are having trouble and, in collaboration with students, families, and teachers, we work to strengthen the weaker cognitive skills and thereby improve the student’s overall academic performance. To do this effectively, it is important to have an understanding of how the brain processes information from input to output. As Betsy Hill explained during Tuesday’s webinar, when information (input) is presented, the brain goes through a specific process beginning with reception, where the information is screened and organized. Next, the information is identified and interpreted in the perception step. Manipulation of this information then happens in the direction step, and finally the creative output happens in the thinking step. Each of these steps of the process constantly taps into the memory in order to function properly, which is why long-term, short-term, and working memory are all important aspects of the cognitive processing model.
At Lighthouse we employ the use of highly acclaimed intervention techniques and programs that target learning issues in language processing, reading, and math. However, we also investigate the presence of substantial cognitive deficits that can be strengthened through cognitive skills training and the use of BrainWare.
It is important to understand that there are many cognitive processes associated with both reading and math. In general, we think of reading as a combination of decoding, word memory, and comprehension. However, decoding can be further broken down into its cognitive components, which consist of sustained attention, visual discrimination, sequential processing, and auditory discrimination. Fluency involves visual span, flexible attention, and processing speed, and comprehension includes visualization, planning, and working memory. Similarly, math can be thought of as a combination of understanding spatial representations, information manipulation, and logical problem-solving. The cognitive processes involved with each of these areas include spatial memory, visualization, directionality, working memory, sequential processing, selective attention, planning, and inference.
As mentioned earlier, the BrainWare program works to improve many of these cognitive areas through repetition, consistency and precision, progressive challenge (working in the zone of proximal development), integration of skills, motivation and engagement, feedback and coaching, and frequent and intense training. These are all keys to effective cognitive training of any kind and are all aspects of the BrainWare program. Thus, we use this program for cognitive skills training at Lighthouse, either as an independent program or in conjunction with other intervention programs that we offer. By having our students participate in the BrainWare program in conjunction with academic intervention programs that target specific reading and math skills, we are helping them to improve all of the cognitive skills that are hindering their success in these areas.
Hill, Betsy. Remediating cognitive skills for students with learning disabilities. [Powerpoint Presentation]. Retrieved from: Personal communication with the author. 8 December 2015.