Cognitive Training Program

Our cognitive training program is highly unique in that it is designed to address ALL area of cognitive weakness, working with children and adults individually and gets them to generalise their skills to everyday tasks. You would have probably seen the products on the market claiming they ‘train the brain’. Most of these programs have very strong results: they show that by having people practice gaming they will improve on these games after a certain period. But lets be practical! Most people don’t care if they have better gaming skills (unless they are kids!)- they want to be better learners, have stronger memory and have better attention in educational environments or the workplace. We train kids and adults in real-world tasks and get them to generalise their skills in the specific areas they have functional weaknesses in.

Our cognitive training program is based upon principals of neuroplasticity, aimed at changing the actual brain pathways involved in various cognitive skills. For some children these skills can be retrained, whilst for children with more significant deficits, a combination of improving core skills as well as compensating for these weaknesses in daily life will be trained. All training involves weekly one-on-one sessions with a clinician, with a home program set up individually for each person to be completed between sessions. Each area trained undergoes the following 3 stages:

Stage 1: Basic core training

At this stage we will build core skills through a variety of abstract tasks. These tasks are aimed at building core skills and strategic mindsets in approaching a variety of tasks specific to the area of cognition that needs to be trained. This stage also involves training in concepts of generalisation, so that strategies taught are also applied to new and novel tasks. By doing this we not only train people on a specific task (like many other computerised cognitive training programs), but we also teach you to generalise these skills to other tasks. This initial stage is done in the clinic, and then various iPad/computer tasks are practiced at home.

Stage 2: Real world task training

At this stage we will then introduce real-world daily activities that are impacted by the core cognitive weakness, and train children and adults to enhance this skill through applying the same techniques learnt in stage 1. This will involve not only in-clinic training, but also a variety of tasks that are practiced at home. These tasks are modifications to everyday tasks that people normally have to complete, however the processing demands of the tasks will be altered.

Stage 3: Academic enhancement

At this stage we will ensure that all the cognitive areas that are being trained are generalising to specific educational tasks and educational environments. Based upon precise cognitive assessment, if weaknesses are found in any of the areas below these can each be trained through our cognitive training program. The extent of the issues listed below supports the need for thorough neurocognitive testing by a neuropsychologist. Depending on the specific cognitive profile of strengths and weaknesses, an individualised program will be formulated.