Technology-based Cognitive & Academic Remediation Programs

We are one of the premier agencies to provide Computerized Cognitive Remediation Training targeted specifically to your child’s area of need. While personalized and prescriptive interventions with a specialist may be preferred, this option is not always possible for all families. Due to monetary reasons or time constraints, technology-based remediation may be an alternative option to improve cognitive and academic weaknesses.

For the past 20 years or so, great efforts have been put forth to develop cognitive exercises, many of which use technology driven approaches, to address identified weaknesses in how one processes information. Instead of traditional academic tutoring, where one focuses on reading, writing, or math, these prescriptive exercises focus on the subsystems that underlie the development of reading, writing and math; motor control, processing speed, memory, auditory/phonological processing, attention and inhibition, language, systemic integration, spatial reasoning, pattern recognition and more.

Research on these exercises yields mixed results. While some individuals show substantial improvement, large-scale studies with random subject samples often yield unimpressive overall improvement rates. This raises the question: Are cognitive abilities fixed, or can they be enhanced through practice?

Individual cognitive system development varies in timing, and when a system lags in development, targeted exercises can promote efficiency and integration with other systems, improving the ability to handle classroom demands. In certain cases, the right exercises, whether in person or technology-based, yield significant gains in underdeveloped systems.

There is no question that in select cases, when the right “immature systems” are paired with the right activities, live or through technology based exercises, improvement is inevitable and meaningful gains in the integrity of the underdeveloped/immature systems is seen. All of our brain systems depend on each other to communicate and rely on dense interconnected networks. With information moving at tremendous speed (electrical and chemical connectivity) in every direction among 86 billion neurons, the effects of a particular intervention of the overall efficiency of the brain is difficult to measure.

With detailed neuropsychological testing, it is not difficult to clearly define who is a good candidate for what type of cognitive exercise to improve the integrity of a system that is intertwined and codependent on multiple other systems. When one system is strong, it can carry or aid a weaker system.

Brain training activities can work, but only if the right training is paired specifically with the system that needs the support.