A new book called, "Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?” publishing February 7 by Roger Stark and Betsy Hill focuses on benefits of building cognitive learning skills and the long-lasting ramifications of improving these skills for higher education, the 21st century workplace, and more.
Roger Stark, the first person to deliver a briefing to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on neuroscience in the classroom, and award-winning educator Betsy Hill are committed to helping children achieve their fullest learning potential by using tested and proven neuroscience in their groundbreaking book. It includes a guide to helping parents understand how brains learn and how their child's brain learns best empowering them like never before. Not only will they understand why their child reacts the way they do to school-they will be able to help them.
I had a chance to learn more in this interview.
How do cognitive skills development improve classroom behavior?
When learning is difficult for children, it can be very stressful. When a child doesn’t understand what they are being asked to learn, they often shut down or act out to deflect attention from the fact that they don’t know the answer or how to approach the problem. When children develop stronger learning skills, they are less likely to do that. It is also important to know that there is a subset of cognitive skills called executive functions that are the skills that help us stay organized and get our work done, as well as manage ourselves. Building these skills enables children to remember and follow a set of instructions, suppress inappropriate responses, and see things from multiple perspectives.
What is cognitive literacy and why is this the answer to our education crisis?
Cognitive literacy means that an individual can learn efficiently and with ease. Just like (reading) literacy means being able to read and math literacy means being able to do math, cognitive literacy means having the cognitive skills one needs to learn. It also means understanding one’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses, how one learns, as well as having a personalized toolkit of strategies that leverages cognitive strengths. So, for example, if your visual memory is stronger than your verbal memory, you would know that pairing vocabulary words with images would be a better way to learn them than simply trying to memorize definitions.
Cognitive literacy can play a vital role in addressing our education crisis because it can prepare our children for an uncertain future. Our children and grandchildren cannot hope to memorize how to do what they will need to do in the future roles and careers. They will have to learn what to do – and then learn again, as the circumstances and demands of the world change.
Can children with dyslexia improve their ability to read by building cognitive skills?
Most children with dyslexia can improve their reading ability by building cognitive skills. The skills that are generally considered the basics of reading – decoding, fluency and comprehension – depend on underlying cognitive skills. So, for example, sustained attention and sequential processing are necessary for decoding. Visual span (how much information one can take in at a glance) and processing speed impact fluency. And visualization and working memory are very important when it comes to comprehension. Building these underlying cognitive processes can dramatically improve the brain’s ability to accomplish the complex task of reading.
Are struggles with math just math phobia, or is something else going on?
Struggles with math usually have an underlying basis in cognitive processes and in instruction that focuses on process rather than concepts and number sense. Like reading, math requires well functioning cognitive skills. Counting and arithmetic operations required sequential processing and working memory. Problem-solving relies on abstract and verbal reasoning, as well as working memory and cognitive flexibility. And advanced mathematics often involves visual-spatial reasoning. If any of these underlying skills are weak, learning to do math will be more difficult. Repeated unsuccessful math experiences can then lead to a desire to avoid math (sometimes called math phobia), but the struggles are almost always real.
Can children with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, etc., improve ability to be successful in school and life by building cognitive skills?
A growing body of research indicates that building cognitive skills can make a big difference for children with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities and other factors that are often associated with lower academic performance. While there are no known cures for conditions like autism and ADHD, cognitive skills such as attention, working memory and sensory integration, that are often weak for these individuals, can be strengthened, giving them the capacity to achieve much more rapid gains in school. And since these skills are also needed in everyday life, greater success is typically seen there as well. For students with learning disabilities, the research shows that the cognitive skills that are weaker can be strengthened, on average to the level that would be considered normally developing, yielding rapid gains in math and reading.
How do we reach all the kids out there who haven’t been diagnosed?
Many researchers and practitioners believe that there is a problem both with under- and over-diagnosis. In other words, there are many children with ADHD or autism or a learning disability who haven’t been diagnosed, but there are also many who have been diagnosed and who don’t actually have the condition or disability they were diagnosed with. Furthermore, a diagnosis (or a label) doesn’t generally tell us how a child learns, that is, what their cognitive strengths and weaknesses are. It is important that parents understand everyone has cognitive strengths and weaknesses, so when children struggle with learning, there is almost always a reason that doesn’t have to do with instruction. Children who struggle with schoolwork, who can’t complete it independently when they are expected to, or who are getting good grades but simply take much longer than they should to complete assignments, could all benefit from cognitive training.
BETSY HILL, an award-winning educator, studied the neuroscience of learning with Dr. Patricia Wolfe and other pioneers, coining the term neuroeducator. She is former chair of the board of trustees at Chicago State University and teaches strategic thinking at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management where she received a Contribution to Learning Excellence Award. She received a Nepris Trailblazer Award for sharing her knowledge for the neuroscience of learning in classrooms around the U.S. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA from Northwestern University.
ROGER STARK is CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. His vision was to combine multidisciplinary clinical cognitive training with videogame technology.Over the past fifteen years, he championed efforts to bring comprehensive cognitive skills training and cognitive assessment within reach of everyone and led the team that developed BrainWare SAFARI, now the most researched comprehensive, integrated cognitive training tool delivered online in the world.
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