Cognitive Skills Conversations: Series Highlights with Dr. Amy, Sandy, Dr. Jody, and Kim Hanson

About this Episode

About Dr. Amy Moore

Dr. Amy Moore is a cognitive psychologist at LearningRx in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the headquarters of the largest network of brain training centers in the world. She specializes in cognitive training and assessment for neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, brain injury, learning disabilities and age-related cognitive decline. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed medical and psychological journals and presented at conferences around the country. She has been a child development specialist, education administrator, and teacher of teachers with a PhD in psychology and a master’s degree in early childhood education. Dr. Amy has been working with struggling learners for 30+ years in public, private, and government organizations, so she knows a little about thinking and learning. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Modern Brain Journal, a TEDx Speaker, host of the Brainy Moms podcast, and a board-certified Christian counselor. Dr. Amy is married to Jeff Moore, a retired Air Force fighter pilot now working as a surgical nurse. They have three incredible sons (ages 19, 23, and 25) and a very mischievous but soft Siberian cat. Originally from South Carolina, Dr. Amy has called Colorado home since 2006.

Website: www.AmyMoorePhD.com
Watch her TEDx talk, Lessons Learned from Training 101,000 Brains
Read her research: https://www.learningrx.com/brain-training-research/

About Sandy Zamalis

Sandy is a brainy mom of 2 who loves co-hosting our show! She’s a Board Certified Cognitive Specialist and the owner of LearningRx Staunton-Harrisonburg in VA where she spends her days improving the lives of struggling students through brain training. Her diverse background includes being a USA Swimming Coach, probation officer, homeschooling moms, and small business owner in 3-D printing and scanning. Sandy has been married for 26 years and is her passion is helping families understand learning challenges so that children can find success and confidence. Find Sandy on TikTok @TheBrainTrainerLady.

About Dr. Jody Jedlicka

Dr. Jody is an audiologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of children with auditory processing disorders. She is also a certified success coach and trainer, and the Director of Support at LearningRx World Headquarters in Colorado Springs. Originally from Wisconsin, Jody has been married for more than 33 years, is mom to 3 adult children, grandma to 5 grandchildren and dog-mom to her rescue, Mikey. She spends her free time with family – traveling, biking, exploring breweries and restaurants and cheering for Milwaukee Brewers baseball. She also co-hosts another podcast, The Sisterhood of Success, with her sister.

About Kim Hanson

Kim Hanson is the CEO of LearningRx and BrainRx, the largest network of one-on-one cognitive training centers in the world. She’s also the co-author of Unlock the Einstein Inside: Applying New Brain Science to Wake Up the Smart in Your Child. Kim is a former teacher with a reading endorsement and has made it her career passion to help professionals, educators, and parents learn more about cognitive skills and how they impact learning. Kim is also a Board Certified Cognitive Specialist, an autism mom, a mom of twins, and a pastor’s wife. Originally from Wisconsin, she now lives in Castle Rock, CO.

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Read the transcript for this episode:

Dr. Amy Moore: 0:30

Hi, smart moms and dads, welcome to a special episode of the Brainy Moms podcast. We’re going to talk about cognitive skills because they are so important. They are the skills that the brain uses all day, every day, for thinking and learning. So the most commonly known general categories of cognitive skills are things like memory, working memory and long-term memory. Attention processing speed the speed in which we’re able to process incoming information. Reasoning skills, our logic skills, auditory processing, which is how we process language. Visual processing, which is our ability to manipulate what we see. So visualization type skills, spatial sense, and so those are the basic categories of cognitive skills. And so why are they important? Well, if we don’t have strong cognitive skills, then we’re going to struggle with thinking and learning.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:33

What does that look like, for example, in terms of like a struggle with thinking and learning? Because what if you have, you know, a student or a child who’s doing really, really well, but they just have one little hiccup or issue that you’re seeing Like? What does that look like if there’s an issue there?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:51

Yeah, so I’d love to do a demonstration. There’s an issue there. Yeah, so I’d love to do a demonstration. So you know, you and I, when we talk to parents about what it is that we do, we do a demonstration so that they can see and feel. You know what the intersection of all of these cognitive skills looks like. Right, so can I put you on the spot? Yes, all right. So in just a second I’m going to ask you to spell the last name of the 16th president backwards. Now, the 16th president is the one who gave the Gettysburg Address. Right? There’s my tip for you. All right, so I’m going to ask you to do it. You can’t use paper or pencil, right, you just have to use your brain. All right, but I’m only going to give you 10 seconds to do it. Ready.

Sandy Zamalis: 2:44

Go N-L-O-C-N-I-L. Yeah, lincoln, lincoln, you were fast. I had to like figure it out, like oh shoot, do I remember where the 16th president was? But I got it.

Dr. Amy Moore: 3:00

Exactly. So? Let’s talk about that, all right. So what skills did Sandy have to use? What cognitive skills did Sandy have to use to complete that task? Well, the first thing she had to do is remember who the 16th president was. That’s long-term memory. Now imagine if she had not been able to remember who the 16th president was, she would not have been able to do that task at all. She couldn’t even get started. All right. But Sandy remembered it, all right. So she engaged her long-term memory. But then she had to decide on a strategy for solving this problem. So that was reasoning. She had to engage her reasoning skills to determine the strategy.

Dr. Amy Moore: 3:40

Now, most people would project the word Lincoln either in the air or just in their minds, right? Which did you do, sandy, in my mind? Okay, so that is visual processing, right, so you project this imaginary image in your mind or in the air to help you solve the problem, all right. Well, the next thing that Sandy did is she started spelling the word, but she had to spell it backwards. So she had to manipulate the sounds in the name Lincoln. That’s auditory processing. Right, so her ability to manipulate sounds in our language. But she had to remember where she was in the word, because she was going backwards, right. So that was working memory, right. She had to engage her working memory, which is your ability to work on information, right, while holding something in your mind, and so she was manipulating those sounds. So about halfway through that word, she might have gotten frustrated Sandy didn’t, but a lot of people would so you have to really engage your attention skills in order to get through.

Dr. Amy Moore: 4:49

I only told her she had 10 seconds. She only had 10 seconds to solve that problem, so she had to work fast. So that’s processing speed, the speed in which she could process that information and then produce the answer. All right, so long-term memory, working memory, attention, visual processing, auditory processing and reasoning, and so she used all of those skills in that 10-second task. And so if we break that down and say, what if she had had a weakness in some of those skills in that 10-second task? And so if we break that down and say, what if she had had a weakness in some of those cognitive skills? Well, we already said what would happen if your long-term memory was bad. You wouldn’t have been able to solve it at all. What if your processing speed was kind of deficient? What would have happened?

Sandy Zamalis: 5:31

Oh, I probably would have forgot the question.

Dr. Amy Moore: 5:34

It would have caused my working memory to drop, yeah absolutely, or you wouldn’t have been able to finish it in the time that I allotted. Yeah, right, okay. What if your visual processing skills?

Sandy Zamalis: 5:46

weren’t strong. Well, you told me I couldn’t write it down, but I would have. Yeah, I would have had to, like try to use my finger or something to help me.

Dr. Amy Moore: 5:55

Right. So if Sandy had not been able to visualize the word Lincoln because her visual processing skills were weak, she would have really struggled, because I wouldn’t let her use a pen or pencil for that task. All right, what if your auditory processing skills had been weak?

Sandy Zamalis: 6:11

Oh, that would have been really tricky. In fact I was working it by syllable. Oh, that would have been really tricky. In fact I was like working it by syllable ling cun. So I was trying to chunk it so that I could manage that a little easier. And if I couldn’t even figure out the syllables in the word to let alone the sounds that with it, because there’s a hidden L in there.

Dr. Amy Moore: 6:27

Right, Absolutely so. Most people don’t realize that the key to reading and spelling are strong auditory processing skills. We think reading is visual. Okay, well, reading is visual, but the foundation for strong reading is your ability to manipulate sounds and their associated letters in the English language. And that’s auditory processing. Okay. What if you had weak reasoning skills?

Sandy Zamalis: 6:56

Oh, I wouldn’t even know.

Dr. Amy Moore: 6:57

would have known how to start, I probably would have got stuck right there Right, because you had to decide on a strategy and then, if you had had weak attention skills, what might have happened?

Sandy Zamalis: 7:08

I probably would have had to ask for the question again.

Dr. Amy Moore: 7:11

Yeah, so either she wouldn’t have caught it the first time, right, because she didn’t attend to my instructions, or sometimes that frustration kicks in when something’s hard and then you lose your ability to pay attention and so she might have just given up, right, lost motivation, or given up because she just couldn’t remember where she was. Or and that was the last skill, right If your working memory was weak, then you would have lost track of where you were in the word. So you can see, then, from that really simple demonstration how our cognitive skills interact and work together to help us think or learn, and that if we have a weakness in even just one of those cognitive skills, it can create a struggle, and most people have at least one weak cognitive skill, but kids who are struggling in school usually have two or three weak cognitive skills.

Sandy Zamalis: 8:12

Well, I’m really excited about this and we’re really going to dig down on each skill individually. We’re talking about attention, which is my favorite skill to talk about because it’s I call it the gatekeeper of all skills. So most people think of focus when they think of attention, but it’s actually more complicated than that. Right, let’s dig into that. What does? What is attention? Are there different pieces to attention that a parent kind of needs to know about?

Dr. Amy Moore: 8:37

Yeah. So attention is pretty complex. I mean overall, if you think of an overall attention umbrella, that is, the brain’s allocation of processing resources towards something like so, towards a task or a stimulus, towards something like so, towards a task or a stimulus. So there are multiple types of attention that researchers have identified Selective attention, divided attention, sustained attention are the primary ones. Sustained attention is the ability to focus on a stimulus or a task for an extended period of time. So that’s what we think of when we think of focus.

Sandy Zamalis: 9:19

Right, it’s sustaining those cognitive resources towards something when would you see, for example, with your child, if they had a weakness in that area. What would kind of stand out to you?

Dr. Amy Moore: 9:36

a weakness in that area? What would kind of stand out to you? Yeah, so the key to sustained attention is the ability to keep focused on a task without being distracted. So the ability to go from start to finish on a homework assignment or reading a chapter without getting distracted by something else happening in your immediate environment or even from your imagination and other things, can impact sustained attention too. So if you’re tired, right then, even if you don’t have a deficit in sustained attention, you might temporarily have a struggle with it. You know, if you’re tired, if you’re not feeling well or if you’re hungry.

Sandy Zamalis: 10:18

How about selective attention? What is that?

Dr. Amy Moore: 10:21

Yeah. So selective attention is your brain’s ability to attend to the most important task or stimuli. So it’s the ability to say, hey, there are four things going on in the environment around me right now and I can pay attention to the one, that I need to pay attention to, the one that’s most important setting.

Sandy Zamalis: 10:50

So a child sitting in a classroom and they’re supposed to be listening to the teacher, but the kid behind them is clicking their pen or chewing gum. There’s movement to the right. There’s a bird flew by to the left. Is that what you mean by selective attention? To be able to focus in that one zone, I need to be listening to the teacher in front of me in that one zone.

Dr. Amy Moore: 11:16

I need to be listening to the teacher in front of me. That’s exactly right. So it’s the ability for the brain to kind of automatically say the teacher’s voice is the most important stimulus or the most important thing happening in my immediate environment that I need to be paying attention to, and tune out all of those distractors or those things that aren’t really relevant at home. So let’s say your child is doing homework but you’re cooking dinner. Their sibling is talking on the phone, right, and so selective attention would mean they can focus on doing their homework while ignoring the pots and pans clanking in the kitchen and their siblings’ conversation.

Sandy Zamalis: 12:04

Okay, so the third one was divided attention. What does that one look?

Dr. Amy Moore: 12:07

like yeah, so divided attention is the ability to process more than one thing at the same time or to have the cognitive flexibility to rapidly switch between those two demanding tasks or stimulus. So, for example, let’s say you are cooking something and reading a recipe at the same time. So it’s the ability to read the recipe and crack the egg and whip it at the same time. Those are competing tasks, right, like so? Reading and then, of course, comprehending what you’re reading, while also using your motor skills to crack the egg, whip the egg, and then where does it go next?

Sandy Zamalis: 13:01

Well, let’s talk about ADHD specifically. You did a study on ADHD. What did you find about attention and other cognitive skill relationships?

Dr. Amy Moore: 13:12

Yeah, we’ve actually done a couple studies on ADHD, but we did a really big one on more than 4,000 people with ADHD from ages 4 through 40. And we looked at their cognitive profiles, right, and what we saw consistently across age groups from age 4 through 40 was that attention was not actually the weakest cognitive skill in ADHD. Working memory, long-term memory and processing speed were weaker than attention. The reason why that study was so interesting and exciting at the same time is that when we think of helping kids or adults with ADHD, we think, okay, what can we do to help their attention? We think, okay, what can we do to help their attention when, if we’re only focused on attention, then we’re kind of missing the boat on really helping all of those struggles. Right, that we’re also needing to focus on memory and processing speed issues as well, and so. But those are going to show up Like this is not something that you’re not already seeing.

Dr. Amy Moore: 14:13

Maybe you just don’t have a label for it, right? Let’s say, you give your child a three-step direction, right? Hey, I need you to go upstairs, brush your teeth and put your pajamas on. Okay, three steps Go upstairs. Second step brush your teeth. Third step put your pajamas on. That requires working memory, and so you have to attend to the instruction initially, but then you have to remember what the instruction is as you’re walking up the stairs. So not only do you have to remember what comes next, what have I already done, what were the three things that I was supposed to do? And so when you see your child not be able to complete all three steps, that’s clearly a memory problem. The other issue is, let’s say, 30 minutes have gone by. Right, it could be a processing speed problem. If your child is a slow processor, right, then that requires long-term memory. Then, to keep track of all three steps, right, that isn’t happening. Bam, bam bam. That is happening over the period of 30 minutes, and they’ve already forgotten the third step by then.

Sandy Zamalis: 15:18

What are the two memory skills and how do we need them to learn?

Dr. Amy Moore: 15:24

Okay. So short-term working memory is our ability to to capture information, hold it and do something with it in the immediate term. So it’s our ability to hear hey, I need you to add 23 to 46. So we have to remember the two numbers. Then we have to add them together and produce a sum.

Sandy Zamalis: 16:02

That is an example of how we would use short-term working memory. So you talked the way you just explained it. That’s actually an auditory side of that memory too.

Dr. Amy Moore: 16:09

Is there a visual side to that? Absolutely so. A good example of visual working memory would be looking at a map while you’re driving somewhere and saying, okay, I’m going to have to turn right on Smith Street and left on 7th Street and then right again on Johnson Street, and then putting your map away so that you can safely drive and pay attention to the road, but being able to remember what the street names were and which way you’re supposed to turn while you’re driving. So that would be visual working memory.

Sandy Zamalis: 16:40

Okay. So what I like to share with parents a lot of times is working memory. Is that memory that you need when you’re telling your kids they need to go grab their school bag, go brush their teeth, get their shoes on, grab their water bottle and meet me in the car?

Dr. Amy Moore: 16:58

Yes, is that a good example? That’s going to be sequential auditory working memory, right? So you’re giving them a sequence of tasks that they need to remember and act on. You’re actually expecting your child to act on something that you’ve said and that requires strong auditory working memory.

Sandy Zamalis: 17:19

I bring that as an example with parents a lot, because that’s a frustration point right at home when you give your child tasks and they have a hard time following through on them and when working memory is weak, what does that look like for the child?

Dr. Amy Moore: 17:37

working memory is weak. What does that look like for the child? Yeah, so not only is it a source of frustration for the parent, you better believe it’s a source of frustration for the child. And so we have to be super careful as parents to stay calm, right and help our kids by either giving them less steps right to remember Like, if we know our child has weak working memory, then why are we overloading them? And so that’s one way that we can help is just to not give them five steps. Let’s give them two steps and see if they can do that and then give them the next two. But of course we can also remediate that memory right through memory training exercises. So we don’t want it to be an accommodation forever, but it is the first step to help reduce that frustration for both child and parent.

Sandy Zamalis: 18:46

Okay, so maybe that’s a good transition to talk about, well, what is long-term memory?

Dr. Amy Moore: 18:50

Yeah, so long-term memory is the brain’s process of taking in information, encoding it and banking it away for later use. And so typically the hippocampus is the part of the brain where memories are processed and stored, and so again it takes attention skills, because if we can’t attend to something then we can’t remember it, and so we have to be able to pay attention to something before the brain can actually encode it in some way to bank it away for later use and retrieval. So long-term memory is a two-part process, right Encoding it, banking it away and then being able to retrieve it later. So a long-term memory weakness could be in the receiving of the information or in the retrieval of that information later.

Sandy Zamalis: 19:50

Okay. So one of the examples I try to give parents and let me know if I’ve got this right is I think of it like a test-taking memory skill. So I’ve studied all week, I get to the test. Can I then retrieve the information that I need for the test? Because sometimes parents will say we studied, he had it, he had it the night before and then he didn’t do well on the test the next day. Now there could be a lot of reasons for that, but it could also be that it didn’t bank right, it didn’t get stuck in that long-term memory. So testing can kind of help us figure that out. But is that kind of a good scenario, thinking about as the test-taking memory? Can you take that information, hold it long enough to then use it when you need to, for example on the day of a test?

Dr. Amy Moore: 20:39

Right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 20:39

I think that’s a great example and it gives us the opportunity to talk about, hey, what could have happened?

Dr. Amy Moore: 20:45

Right, so for mom to say he knew it last night, right, but it has to be consolidated and that happens during sleep.

Dr. Amy Moore: 20:56

And so let’s say you studied it and you were able to regurgitate it back to your mom as she was quizzing you last night, but then you didn’t get quality, restorative sleep sleep right, maybe? Because after you studied, you decided to log onto the computer and game for three hours. You were drinking a monster, you know caffeine drink while you were gaming for three hours, and so you might’ve thought that you got restorative sleep for the three hours prior to waking up for school. But if you didn’t, right, so if you didn’t get restorative sleep, then those memories might not have been consolidated. So sleep is super important for that process and it actually demonstrates how, when college students pull an all-nighter right, they literally have studied it and gone straight to the class and regurgitated it. But if they had stayed up all night and then class and regurgitated it, but if they had stayed up all night and then had to regurgitate it the next day, they might not have been able to.

Sandy Zamalis: 22:04

They want to make experience. That dump, right. I remember that in college.

Dr. Amy Moore: 22:07

Right, you take the test and then gone, Gone Two weeks later gone Right, because you didn’t get to consolidate those memories right after studying, and so that’s why it’s super important to even take a nap without a brain injury, to have a true long-term memory deficit. So there’s usually something happening in the environment that is keeping that child from encoding that information into long-term memory. So it isn’t that their hippocampus is broken, right, it’s that something’s happening in the encoding process that’s preventing them from banking it away. And so then we have to look at so are we flooding them with too much information at one time? Are there too many things happening that maybe, if this child has an attention problem, right, that they’re paying attention to all of the wrong things and not the one thing we need them to pay attention to. And then it also goes back to are they stressed, are they sleeping, are they eating? Well, because it’s a holistic issue when there’s a long-term memory deficit, typically, Okay, that’s a really great point.

Sandy Zamalis: 23:27

So let’s talk about, let’s switch gears a little bit. So let’s kind of get to the basics what is processing speed? What do you mean?

Dr. Amy Moore: 23:35

Yeah, so processing speed is the brain’s ability to take in information, interpret that information and then act on that information. So, for example, let’s say you’re driving and you see a stop sign. So that is visual input that the brain has to recognize, take it in, say oh, that’s a stop sign. What does a stop sign mean? A stop sign means I need to stop. And then the brain says to the body press the brakes, stop right. So acquire it, interpret it and then act on it. That would be processing speed.

Sandy Zamalis: 24:15

So let’s extrapolate that you gave a great driving example. What does that look like in a five-year-old? What does that look like in school-age children?

Dr. Amy Moore: 24:31

look like in school-age children. So we use processing speed to inquire, interpret and act on anything in our environment, right? So processing speed is ubiquitous, right, we need it for interpreting anything from our parents saying, hey, it’s time for dinner, right, so that would be okay. I recognize my mom’s voice. Her voice is saying words, so I’m hearing those words. What did she just say to me? Hey, it’s time to come down for dinner, and now I need to act on that. I have to put down what I’m working on, walk down the stairs and walk into the kitchen for dinner. So as simple as that.

Dr. Amy Moore: 25:14

To a teacher teaching a math problem Okay, I see my teacher writing numbers on the board. This is what those numbers mean and this is what she’s telling me I need to do to those numbers in order to solve this problem. And so it’s the speed and efficiency in which I can take that in, interpret it and then act on it. And so some people who have slow processing speed might take a really long time to react to the information, and so we don’t know whether it’s a breakdown in acquiring it, interpreting it or acting on it, but somewhere in that three-step process there is something slowing it down, and so that’s how we might see slow processing speed show up.

Sandy Zamalis: 26:07

So when we talk about processing speed, we always talk about it as kind of in that cohort of automatic processing skills. What does that mean? It’s running behind the scenes all the time, right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 26:18

Some cognitive skills that we use require active processing, such as reasoning. We have to decide on a technique that we’re going to use to solve this problem, based on prior knowledge and prior experience of what we know and techniques that we’ve learned in order to solve problems. Processing speed is working underneath that process how quickly we’re able to retrieve those different techniques for solving a problem, how quickly we’re able to act on those techniques for solving a problem. While reasoning is a higher order cognitive skill, processing speed is automatic. It is just how quickly those wheels are turning underneath how we’ve chosen to drive the car.

Sandy Zamalis: 27:13

How can that affect attention?

Dr. Amy Moore: 27:16

Yes, so if our processing speed is slow and we have low attention skills, then it’s very easy to become distracted because it’s taking too long. If the underlying processing speed is slow, then that attention can be impacted.

Sandy Zamalis: 27:41

So that’s really important to know because from, for example, a teacher’s perspective, if a teacher’s giving feedback to a parent this happened to me this week where I was doing a consultation with a parent and the feedback they were getting was that their child just really had a hard time focusing. But when we did some testing, while there was some attentional component to it, there was a weak processing speed component to it as well, and that was just a really important piece of information and I think a teacher could be empowered by knowing well they’re processing slower. I might need to change how I am giving the information so that they can receive it more clearly and can process it at their pace.

Dr. Amy Moore: 28:25

Yeah, absolutely, and so sometimes we don’t give enough credence to the impact that processing speed can have on all of those other cognitive skills, and then, of course, all of the other subjects.

Sandy Zamalis: 28:40

How does weak processing affect things like reading?

Dr. Amy Moore: 28:44

So a couple of different ways. We know that processing speed can impact working memory, and the reason it can impact working memory is because if our processing speed is slow and we’re trying to hold multiple things in memory at one time in order to act on them, we might lose some of those items that we’re holding in working memory, because we’re processing too slowly and we require working memory in order to read fluently. And so it absolutely. Processing speed can impact our ability to decode words. It can impact our ability to read fluently because if we’re decoding too slowly, if we’re breaking down or you’re trying to manipulate the sounds and the letters that are attached to those sounds, if it’s taking us too long to do that, then our reading is not going to be fluent. And when our reading is not fluent, then our comprehension is impacted. Right? If it’s taking us so long just to fluently read words, we’re so focused on decoding words and we’re not actually processing the meaning behind those words. So it has this trickle-down effect. Slow processing impacts decoding, which impacts fluency, which impacts comprehension.

Kim Hanson: 30:05

Same in math, I’m assuming.

Dr. Amy Moore: 30:07

Yeah, absolutely. We need to be able to hold things in working memory right, because math is exactly that Like we’re manipulating multiple pieces of information in order to solve problems, and so if we lose some of those pieces of information then we can’t solve the problem. But another way that slow processing speed impacts math is that math instruction tends to go pretty quickly, and so if you have slow processing speed and you’re not able to process the instructions quickly enough, the teacher has moved on to the next step or the next two or three steps in the problem solving process, and you’re still on a prior step, so you’re not even able to encode everything that she’s saying.

Sandy Zamalis: 30:54

That leads to a lot of frustration for individuals with weaker processing speed right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 30:59

Absolutely, and then that frustration has an impact on processing speed as well. So it’s this kind of vicious cycle. So what happens here is your processing speed is slow, you get behind in the instructional process and that creates an emotional response. Frustration is an emotional response. Well, we know that that response is a fight or flight, amygdala hijack of our prefrontal cortex, in which we can no longer access our reasoning abilities. So that is going to impact our processing speed. Right, so we start with slow processing speed and then we get frustrated because of our slow processing speed, which slows down our processing speed.

Sandy Zamalis: 31:44

What are some strategies or exercises that we can do to improve processing speed?

Dr. Amy Moore: 31:51

Yeah. So I think the easiest and simplest way for us to help build processing speed skills is through games. That’s the easiest way. So you have a child who you just want to encourage the development of processing speed, right, because you recognize that that processing speed skill underlies every other skill, right? Our ability to pay attention, our ability to process things visually and auditorily, how fast we can reason, right. So we know that processing speed is an important skill.

Dr. Amy Moore: 32:25

We want to maximize our kids’ ability to learn and think quickly, and so games, especially speeded and timed games like Bop it and Simon and Spot it all those where you have to do tasks quickly and accurately are a phenomenal way to engage and increase processing speed and they can be super fun. It’s an amazing way to connect with your kid and with each other. But that isn’t how we remediate slow processing speed. So I want to really be clear about that distinction that if your child truly has a processing speed deficit, all the board games in the world are not gonna solve that issue. That requires a specific intervention like cognitive training.

Sandy Zamalis: 33:20

Okay we’ll talk about cognitive training in just a little bit, but I wanna kind of stay here for a minute.

Dr. Amy Moore: 33:26

I wanna just give some warning signs or some things. That’s a great idea, yeah, to look for to help you recognize if your child might have slow processing speed. So one thing to look for is that your child takes longer than other people do to complete tasks or to respond to questions. To complete tasks or to respond to questions, do they have difficulty following multi-step instructions such as I need you to go upstairs, brush your teeth, put your pajamas on and pick out a book for bed? Right, so that was three steps in an instruction, and so if they have difficulty following all three of those, if they have difficulty keeping up with conversations a lot of times, kids with slow processing speed take so long to process what a person has said in a conversation that by the time they come up with a response or a way to contribute to the conversation, that conversation has moved on to another topic already. Do they struggle to make decisions? Is starting tasks hard? That’s a sign of slow processing speed. Do they miss social cues or kind of nuances in interactions? That’s a sign. Do they need to reread information multiple times in order to understand it? Or do they need your directions repeated multiple times in order to understand it. Do they have difficulty with timed tasks or tests or assignments that are timed, and do they appear to be easily overwhelmed by information, and that is frequently because they’re having a hard time processing all of it at once. So those are some red flags to look for.

Dr. Amy Moore: 35:21

So academic performance would be that they read less fluently than their same-age peers. They read less fluently than their same age peers that they have difficulty comprehending what they read, so their reading comprehension is low. Are they late, turning in assignments consistently? Are they not able to finish classwork in the same amount of time that their peers can finish their classwork? Are they constantly asking for more time? Are they asking the teacher to repeat instructions because they only caught the first part and they were still processing that, so they don’t know. Oh, what was I supposed to do next? Does it take them longer to read chapter books? And sometimes these are reading struggles, right, but the difference is do they know how to decode words? Versus does it take them longer to decode words? So that’s the difference that we would want to look for. Do they know how to do the math problem? It just takes them longer to do the math problem. Those are some red flags, right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 36:30

It can be really frustrating to have slow processing speed. It can impact self-esteem and self-confidence. It can have far-reaching effects right, not just in the classroom but in relationships, in your ability to hold conversations. Safety, like you mentioned, sandy, driving, navigating, you know, is it safe to cross the street or not, quickly enough to be able to take all of the stimulus that you’re seeing in your environment and act on it in a safe way? So it can have far reaching impacts when we do have processing speed. But this is a message of hope Processing speed can be remediated with targeted, intense, validated methods. So we are continuing our discussion with Kim Hansen, reading specialist author and CEO of LearningRx. Reading specialist. Author and CEO of LearningRx.

Kim Hanson: 37:30

About visual processing skills. So visual processing is understanding what you see, and then it’s also being able to picture or make mental images in your head. So it’s kind of like creating the movie in your head as you read. It’s being able to see things, imagine things, kind of some people call it like the mind’s eye, but it’s being able to make images in your head for the most part. But it involves a lot of things when it comes to how do you process visually, because we take in so many things. That’s probably the number one sense that we use when it comes to how we learn, how we read, how we understand the world.

Dr. Amy Moore: 38:18

Right, so visual processing is this big generic term for a bunch of smaller skills, right? Yes, yes, can you talk about some of those skills that fall under the visual processing umbrella?

Kim Hanson: 38:35

Yeah, yeah. So if you even think of like a baby, right. So, for example, when I was a baby, one of the things that you first learn is like your hand-eye coordination, right. So it’s, you know, you want to touch something, you want to reach out to something. My dad actually has film of me as a baby and instead of giving me, like my pacifier, he’d always put it in my hand and then I would have to sit there and try to like get it in my mouth, right, or he’d put like mobile things above me and I would bat at them and see them and move them, and so one of the things is that hand-eye coordination or it’s being able, it’s kind of your motor skills and how that ties in with what you see, right. So you need that for a lot of things.

Kim Hanson: 39:30

You need that when you’re parking a car, when you’re catching a ball, when you’re trying to throw a ball into a hoop, those kind of things Tying your shoes, and then there’s also just discrimination, so it’s kind of how you see an object, like a paintbrush. So when you look at an object, and if you distance of how close it is and then also the orientation, which way am I holding. It is part of visual processing and knowing where you are in space or even if it’s moving towards you. That would be important if you had, let’s say, a large black round object that was coming at you, if you could discriminate how fast and how big, and if that was a balloon versus a bowling ball, right. So if that’s flying at me quickly, I have to move faster for the bowling ball, and so hopefully I can figure that out. Where a balloon, I might have more time right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 40:59

So is that visual discrimination is part of that process, determining the emergent nature of what movement comes next. Is that part of visual discrimination, or is that a reasoning skill that’s separate, Like oh no, it’s a bowling ball, it’s going to hit me and break my nose, versus oh, it’ll be okay, I don’t have to move as quickly for the balloon.

Kim Hanson: 41:25

Right, right. But the faster you can discriminate and make those choices, the safer you are, so I could see why that would be important for driving. Yeah, so it’s also like if you think of the ability to match something or to sort something or to track something, to visualize something, to also hold something that you see in your memory. So all of these things kind of play into that, that, how you process visual information.

Sandy Zamalis: 42:00

What’s the difference between vision, or eyesight, and visual processing? We’ve talked about it a little bit, but we might get stuck because if you say, oh, my child has an issue with visual processing, would you necessarily go to an eye doctor to help you with that?

Kim Hanson: 42:19

So an eye doctor is for seeing clearly typically and being able to track and teaming. So both of your eyes working together is typically what you would even do like vision therapy for, unless it kind of goes into more of a cognitive area. But typically it’s being able to see clear and most people that struggle with visual processing most of them can see clear.

Dr. Amy Moore: 42:50

Okay, so to clarify then, vision or eyesight is just the ability to use your eyes to see clearly and for your eyes to work together in seeing clearly, whereas visual processing is this set of skills that are cognitive in nature. It’s how the brain processes the information that the eye actually takes in as one of our senses. Is that correct?

Kim Hanson: 43:22

It’s a little bit of imagination how you can see things that aren’t there. If I were to describe a frog, and I could describe the frog and I can change your picture. So when I say frog, most of us imagine a frog. If we’ve had experience with a frog, right. But I can change your description by giving you details so I can talk about the size of it. Maybe it’s huge or maybe it’s small. Maybe it has polka dots on it, maybe it’s not green, maybe it’s actually pink with blue polka dots, maybe it has a smile on its face. So I can change your image.

Kim Hanson: 44:02

I can talk about what’s in front of it, what’s behind it, what’s above it, what’s next to it, and so it’s being able to see that in your head. So someone who’d be good at visual processing is usually good at finding things. They’re usually good at reading maps. They’re usually good at being able to understand what you’re asking them or what they’re listening to or what they’re reading. Visual processing has a lot to do with comprehension creating that movie in your head as you’re listening or as you’re reading, as you’re learning.

Dr. Amy Moore: 44:43

Well, so that’s a great segue, then, into why do we need strong visual processing skills to learn so in reading or writing. How do we use those?

Kim Hanson: 44:56

skills. Well, you have to be able to see what letters you’re looking at right in the very beginning, and the orientation. The letter B, right. So you should be able to know that that’s a, B, no matter what the font is, no matter what the color is, the shape is, the size is. You know, you should, even even if it’s sideways, you can still kind of tell that that’s the letter B. When it comes to visual processing and understanding and comprehending, you need to picture all of the details, but not too many details, right? So you kind of want to see what are the important things.

Dr. Amy Moore: 45:48

So even prioritizing is important in visual processing, being able to plan and being able to think. So let’s talk about some red flags that parents should be on the lookout for that signal. Hey, my kid might be struggling a little bit with visual processing. What are some red flags?

Kim Hanson: 46:01

So hearing, I don’t understand this. Hearing I can’t find this. Not being able to sort, not being able to match, getting something just very confused, are all examples of what you would find in someone who struggles with visual processing. So it’s kind of like that you can almost see there’s no movie. So it’s kind of like you can almost see there’s no movie happening in their head. Anytime you’re doing word problems and somebody is confused or doesn’t understand, not being able to answer questions after listening to a paragraph or reading a paragraph if they have a hard time manipulating shapes or not being able to identify them and definitely just not understanding. The great thing about visual processing is it can be developed, just like all of our cognitive skills.

Sandy Zamalis: 46:58

Thank you so much, kim, for coming on. Our topic today is auditory processing, and who better to help us dig deeper into this topic than our very own co-host, dr Jodi Jedlicka, who is a doctor of audiology and has specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of auditory processing disorders. Good morning, jodi. What is auditory processing and why is it important for our overall ability to communicate and understand speech?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 47:23

understand speech People think of a hearing problem as difficulty actually perceiving sound, but there’s so much that happens once that sound gets past the ears. So it’s what’s happening in the brain when you are hearing something. People think that you hear with your ears. You don’t hear with your ears. You perceive sound with your ears, but you really hear with your brain, and so when we talk about auditory processing disorders, it can affect a whole host of different behaviors and developmental things in kids. But auditory processing is like an umbrella term and so it refers to a lot of different things and there’s different types of auditory processing disorder that kind of fall underneath that umbrella. An auditory decoding deficit is when a student has difficulty hearing those sounds of speech clearly and so everything for lack of a better term sounds a little muddy to them. It requires a lot of concentration to be able to hear. It requires a lot of concentration to be able to hear. That type will affect things like reading and spelling and writing. Because they’re not hearing the sounds correctly, they have a hard time pairing those sounds to the correct codes that are required for reading. Prosodic disorder happens in a different part of the brain, a different part of the auditory system, and what that is is it’s difficulty understanding the inflection or tone of voice or sarcasm they’ll have difficulty with. Kids who have that difficulty will think everybody’s mad at them all the time, because they just have a really hard time not hearing the information but rather understanding kind of the feeling behind it. And then there’s another one called integration disorder, and what that is is it’s the two sides of the brain talking to each other. Can I put it all together? And probably my best example of that one? So those kids will have trouble just kind of doing more than one thing auditorily at the same time. So they may have difficulty like looking and listening at the same time or doing something while they’re listening like copying off the board. But a good example of that one would be I had a little guy in my office and when he talked to me he would look over my shoulder and the mom said to him look her in the eye when you talk to her. It’s really important to make eye contact and it clearly was something they’d been working on. And he looked at her and he said yeah, but I can’t hear her when I look at her. And so you know, kids will always tell us what’s going on.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 50:12

Auditory processing disorders need to be assessed by an audiologist, and not just any audiologist. They really have to have some specialized training in that area, and so they will do a hearing test just to rule out a peripheral hearing loss. But the tests that go along with auditory processing diagnosis will dig deeper, and what we’re trying to do in the testing environment is really stress the auditory system, really push it to kind of the boundaries of what it’s capable of doing, and we’re looking for when do things break down? For that student Kids who have auditory processing disorders will clearly break down earlier than kids who don’t. If you kind of pick apart or look at how the different tests kind of fit together, that’s what allows you to put that diagnostic label on that. So if you want to call it a decoding deficit, they’re going to struggle or break down in one test or a different test if they’re struggling with a prosodic disorder, and so you’re just looking for number one is that breakdown happening? And number two where are they breaking down and what is that telling me?

Sandy Zamalis: 51:28

Okay, individuals who struggle with auditory processing do you typically see that, hearing loss or no, the hearing is fine. It’s just how the brain is processing the sound that is glitchy.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 51:40

Right, that’s a really good way to say it. You actually do need to rule out peripheral hearing loss before you test for auditory processing, because people with hearing loss also have weak auditory processing. It’s just due to a peripheral hearing loss, so it’s not really an auditory processing disorder. There’s a different underlying cause for that, and so we’re going to treat it a little bit differently.

Sandy Zamalis: 52:04

So let’s talk about that. What are some signs and symptoms that parents can look for for their kids that there might be some auditory processing difficulty?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 52:14

I know this one would be a hard one because kids don’t listen to directions for different reasons.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 52:19

But if they have trouble following directions, if they need to look at you in order to be able to follow directions, sometimes I’ll have parents say if my son is sitting in the back seat and I’m sitting in the front seat talking to him, he can’t hear me Because you use your visual skills, whether you realize it or not. People tell me all the time that they hear better with their glasses on, and so if they’re sitting in the back, they’re not looking at your face. They’ll have a lot more trouble hearing with background noise, and I would say that in a typical classroom it’s much noisier than what most of us realize. Those kids are just really sensitive to the noise in the background. I think the biggest, most impactful one for me is learning to read. It’s really difficult to learn to read if you don’t have a good, clear idea of what those sounds should be sounding like, and so when you see kids who have trouble just with that initial instruction and learning how to read, those are always kids that would throw up a red flag for me.

Sandy Zamalis: 53:28

Would you include, like speech and language delays in that as well? Obviously.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 53:32

Yeah.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 53:33

So, they may have articulation issues that go beyond or last beyond the time that they end for other kids. So those would be great kids to refer for a speech evaluation. They may say their sounds out of order, like we all expect kids to say Biscotti, or, as my grandson will always say, and I think it’s so cute, but we have auditory processing disorder. That runs in our family too. But he’ll say instead of tomorrow, he’ll say tomorrow and he just he’s convinced that that’s what it sounds like. And so, yes, speech and language issues too, those are always a red flag for me.

Sandy Zamalis: 54:13

What if it flies under the radar a little bit, as sometimes these things do? What would it look like for, say, a middle school or a teenager, if auditory processing may be an issue that we need to address?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 54:25

Yeah, I think a lot of the same behaviors, but they’ve been dealing with them for so long, so their self-esteem, their confidence, really starts to take a hit the older that they go. On the other hand, though, it is never too late to address this problem, and so I would say that, as soon as you do have concerns or worries about that, just get it checked out and see if you can’t start on the road to better performance. And so, I think, same things. It’s just that some of those, the way that they see themselves, the way that they feel about themselves, the way that they approach challenges, they just don’t trust themselves all the time. Gosh, I swear, I thought I heard her give me this direction and she said do this, and I can’t do anything, you know. And so we’re tough on ourselves, and it just gives them one more reason to be tough on themselves, right?

Sandy Zamalis: 55:24

How does auditory processing impact cognitive skills like attention, memory and just overall learning?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 55:31

Yeah, so auditory processing actually can mimic attention problems. So that might be the thing that a parent comes in saying you know, he’s just not listening. He, you know he’s got attention problems. I give him a direction. He can’t remember the directions. Well, did he hear them? Or is it a memory issue? Or is it a behavior issue?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 55:53

Or I think that if kids can do well, they do do well, right. So I always think that if there is a consistent complaint or behavior that you’re seeing from your child, I think it’s worth checking it out, because nobody wants to feel like they’re just never getting it right, right. So I think it’s important to separate out what the issue is and what the surrounding issues are, and so I can’t stress enough that looking at auditory processing in a vacuum, while it’ll still help, it, exacerbates all those other issues that might be present in the child. So you really do need to look at memory. You really do need to look at processing speed. You really do need to look at the other things that make up that child, because every time there’s a piece that’s weak, it makes the problem look bigger. Does that make sense?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 56:50

Yeah, exactly, I love how you talked about it mimicking ADHD sometimes, because when we did our podcast on attention, we talked about that selective attention piece. Well, if you have weak auditory processing, having selective attention, being able to prioritize sound is really hard, which is kind of what you described at the beginning.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 57:10

Yeah, and I think that kids learn what they can do and learn what they can’t do, and then they don’t actually even put forth the same amount of effort if they don’t think they can do it. So auditory training is much like we would do with somebody who has a hearing loss, but what you’re doing is you’re training them to hear the sounds, recognize the sounds clearly, hear them in the right order, hear them accurately, be able to play with and manipulate those sounds auditory processing disorder or weakness but it is also one of the key critical skills kids have to be good at in order to have reading and spelling come more easily to them, and so we have the added benefit of kind of hitting a couple different directions.

Sandy Zamalis: 58:01

What is it that we do specifically that addresses this auditory processing weakness? That’s different than what you may find, for example, in an audiologist’s office.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 58:11

Yeah, so auditory processing is actually what brought me to LearningRx.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 58:16

Our auditory training piece of our program is so far beyond anything else that I’ve ever seen.

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 58:24

Because we’re doing metronome training and because it is so targeted, we can make improvements so quickly with our kids. The other thing I really love is the way that it’s put together allows a trainer to be on the lookout for what that student’s errors are and to adjust their target sounds that they’re working on on the fly, and it can happen so quickly that there’s not even a pause in the action that we’re doing, and so it just. They’ve thought of all the different little pieces that could possibly happen during a training session and because speed is a part of our training, we’re also working on processing speed, but we can get so many more opportunities to the student that’s sitting in front of us, listening opportunities, items that we’re covering in a session. And then again we’re looking at things like memory and processing speed and all those other skills that need to work kind of in coordination with auditory processing, and I think that’s the biggest difference between us and any other option that I have seen. It’s more of a whole brain approach really Exactly.

Sandy Zamalis: 59:43

We’re trying to get the whole brain to work together more efficiently. You mentioned the metronome and just how powerful that is. Why is that so impactful for auditory processing?

Dr. Jody Jedlicka: 59:54

Yeah, because timing issues, like my grandson who says to Ronald he doesn’t hear the order that those sounds go in, and sounds and words happen in milliseconds I mean tiny. And so the metronome training helps them speed up their thinking, their ability to recognize those sounds and to hear them in the right order which again is another thing that our training does is it helps them to hear them in the right order, it helps them to play with and manipulate those sounds so that they can get better at that.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:00:28

Thank you, Dr Jodi. What is logic and reasoning from our perspective?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:00:33

Okay, so it’s the ability to use some sort of procedure to solve a problem. That is what fluid reasoning is.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:00:45

Okay, so this is a higher level thinking skill, right?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:00:49

Absolutely.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:00:50

It is not automatic processing.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:00:52

Okay, so we have skills that are automatic processing skills, like processing speed and attention. But higher level thinking skills require the use of those automatic skills and the use of what we know typically right to solve a problem. So it’s like the coordination of what we know, the ability to project what might happen and the use of those underlying processing skills all at the same time. I mean it’s the cornerstone of thinking and learning. In fact, some researchers say that fluid reasoning is intelligence.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:01:40

A student who has great logic and reasoning skills would be able to generate ideas and possible outcomes pretty quickly, given a set of facts or possibilities. And so they’re probably great at class discussions because they can take what they’ve read, take what they’ve learned heard the teacher say what might happen if and they can quickly generate possibilities. Because reasoning fluid reasoning is all about looking at what all the possible outcomes could be and choosing the most reasonable outcome. And so if you have strong reasoning skills, then you will probably do really well in math and really well in science, because the scientific method is all about taking what you know, generating hypotheses about what could be and then acting on those. So we automatically think oh, you’re great at logic, you’re great at reasoning, so those STEM fields are perfect for you, but reading also requires reasoning, and I’m sure that you see that with your clients all the time Right, because that drives comprehension right and it drives the ability to understand how the English language works, how we organize our language, how we spell our language.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:03:09

There’s a lot of logic associated with reading, for sure.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:03:14

Absolutely. I mean even something as simple, as you see a word that has I before E, and so you have to say, okay, what is the rule that I apply when I’m reading this word?

Sandy Zamalis: 1:03:27

Yes, exactly. So let’s think about that. On the flip side of the coin, academically, if you were weak in logic and reasoning we talked about, for example, science, where would we might see a hiccup in that logic and reasoning if a student’s weak in that area, for example, a science experiment?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:03:49

Yeah, so it would make it difficult to generate a hypothesis if you are weak in logic and reasoning skills. And so when we’re generating hypotheses, we are taking what rules exist about the natural world and then say, if we combine these two things, knowing these rules about the general world, what might happen?

Sandy Zamalis: 1:04:16

Can test taking be hard for somebody who has weak logic and reasoning skills? Absolutely.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:04:21

Especially a test with multiple choice answers, because you have to determine what is the best possible answer out of these four or five choices, and so you have to be able to reason through why or why not each answer is the plausible answer, right.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:04:42

I would say critical thinking kind of lands in this logic and reasoning bucket. I would say critical thinking kind of lands in this logic and reasoning bucket, so much so that, especially in elementary and early middle school, we were putting a lot of effort into building these critical thinking or logic and reasoning skills a little too early, because they’ve come at a detriment to building skills like processing speed building skills like working memory and long-term memory. What are your thoughts on that hypothesis?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:05:12

Yeah, so I think that that’s a pretty astute observation. So, first of all, I think it’s important to help kids learn to think. I think it’s important to help kids learn to reason through possibilities right, Because we don’t want them to just memorize information and regurgitate information and not know what to do with the information. And so the older they get, the more application becomes important, and so without the ability to critically think through all the possibilities, then they’re not going to be able to apply facts right in the real world and in education settings. But it’s putting the cart before the horse.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:05:58

Right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:05:58

Right. So critical thinking skills require strong underlying learning skills, underlying cognitive skills. So if we have weak attention skills, weak memory skills, weak processing speed, weak visual and auditory processing, then we can’t learn to think critically because we’re stuck in the cycle of I can’t even remember the rules about the world because my memory is weak. I didn’t pay attention. I couldn’t pay attention to the lecture that then led up to this assignment of applying what the teacher taught us to now solving a problem because my attention skills were weak. My processing speed is so slow that I couldn’t keep up with the discussion. So I don’t even know what we’re supposed to be thinking critically about yet. So it’s putting the cart before the horse to expect kids to learn how to apply the information that they’ve learned in a critical way if they’re still struggling with the ability to learn the basics.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:07:10

Well and developmentally, the prefrontal cortex isn’t even online until later.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:07:16

right, that’s the part of the brain we’re talking about, so reasoning we would argue happens in the CEO of our brain, so the prefrontal cortex, which, by the way, is not fully developed in the CEO of our brain, so the prefrontal cortex, which, by the way, is not fully developed until the mid-20s. There’s some research to suggest it happens even later than that. And can we do things to help speed up the development of the prefrontal cortex? Absolutely, but we have to recognize that those processes aren’t fully integrated at age seven, and so, as much as we want to push our kids academically, we can’t skip over those underlying foundational skills that they need first.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:08:06

So we’ve talked about how weak logic and reasoning can show up academically. Let’s talk about behaviorally. How does it show up there?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:08:14

Yeah. So it’s very difficult to reason through all of the possible outcomes unless you have strong reasoning skills. And so when a friend dares you, you know to drive 100 miles an hour. You know down this dirt road. Without strong reasoning skills you aren’t going to quickly be able to generate all of the potential outcomes of that behavior, and so it can be absolutely dangerous right.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:08:44

So how do we start building those skills?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:08:47

Relationally and behavior. Behaviorally, that has to start with the conversations that we have with our kids. So narrating your own thought processes day to day and then helping deconstruct mistakes in a calm and curious way helps build those reasoning skills okay, we do that in our centers too.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:09:08

I mean, that’s how we train it. Actually, we just take that broad concept and like bring it all the way down into small tasks that our students or our clients do with us, narrating our thought process, especially if they are overwhelmed with the task, giving them lots of different options or ideas or strategies that they can then pick and choose from. But then also, on the flip side, when they are working it on their own, helping them deconstruct. Why did you choose it that way? Why did you take that strategy? Can you explain why? That is the answer to me. Pretend I don’t know.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:09:51

Absolutely, and recognizing that this process of thinking through decisions and why you make the decisions can be uncomfortable at first. So you do see some frustration when you start having these conversations with your kids in the beginning, because their brains aren’t trained to think critically yet. Until we help build those skills along with recognizing okay, do they have the attention skills to even have this 20-minute conversation? And if not, we got to go back to the basics there too. Do they have the memory to even remember why they made the decision they made?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:10:32

Again it goes back to we can’t put the cart before the horse. We have to recognize that those automatic processing skills play just as an important role in logic and reasoning as the actual prefrontal cortex executive functioning skill itself. Fluid reasoning skills really are those skills that coordinate and include all of the other thinking skills. That it’s we get to H or M and so to know. While we want to encourage kids to think critically, while we want to encourage their reasoning skills to recognize that there may be deficits, you know, in those lower processing skills that we want to address first.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:11:36

How do we address that? What is the current paradigm with how we look at cognitive skills, let’s say, in a school setting?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:11:43

Yeah. So they’ll do things like preferential seating, where they put the child at the front of the class so that they’re not distracted by other things, or they’ll give the child extra time. So schools have great intentions, right, when they identify that a child might be struggling, but they don’t always know, except for attention. They don’t always know why they’re struggling, and so they just, they will accommodate it right to just help support that child. The problem with supporting it, while, again, a great intention, is that it’s not doing anything to remediate it. And so we have to actually use a targeted intervention to remediate weak cognitive skills.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:12:30

Now, don’t get me wrong. Not every child who has a weak cognitive skill needs an intense intervention. Right, some kids are going to respond to some fun games or strategies to just improve those cognitive skills a little bit. But when you’re seeing your child truly struggling, and if there’s a chance that two or three of those cognitive skills are weak and creating that struggle, then we need to go in and do an intervention. And so for us, what you and I do is we strengthen those cognitive skills through cognitive skills training, and so we do that by using very intense, very complex, targeted, carefully selected human-delivered activities, mental activities. They’re fun, they feel like games, even though they’re hard right To drill down on those weak cognitive skills and hope to strengthen them.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:13:34

So let’s talk about intensity. Why is that so important? To build a cognitive skill.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:13:38

Yeah, so that repeated exposure is really what drives neuroplasticity, and so we can’t just dabble in activities here and there and expect to see change. And so for our neurons to grow or to regenerate or to be generated, in the first place we need our brains to release a protein called BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor. That’s like miracle grow for the brain, and so that’s only released through intensity, right? So we know it’s released during physical exercise. So, like intense aerobic activity releases BDNF. The hypothesis also is that intense cognitive activity will release BDNF, and so that’s what you need in order to drive neuroplasticity, to drive those changes in the brains. So that intensity is critical to that process.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:14:41

Now you also mentioned that human, face-to-face, one-on-one kind of interaction for training. There’s lots of brain apps out there and things that you can do. What’s the difference? Why would one be more beneficial than the?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:14:54

other. I love that question In fact it’s one of my favorite questions to answer and there are multiple reasons. There’s so much research that says that the number one predictor of success from an intervention is the relationship with the person who’s delivering the intervention. And so if we apply that to the cognitive training environment, then the number one predictor of success is going to be your relationship with a cognitive trainer that’s delivering that. And so you know, we think that some of those reasons are motivation right. So if you’re playing a brain game on your laptop and you get frustrated when that game gets hard, what are you going to do? Turn it off? Yeah, you’re going to shut the laptop, you’re done.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:15:44

If you get frustrated with the intensity or difficulty of a cognitive training activity, as you’re sitting across the table from a cognitive trainer, you don’t have the option of turning the trainer off, and so that trainer can read those cues, that trainer can recognize when you are getting frustrated and they can adapt the exercise.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:16:02

Right, they can pull back a little bit, lower the intensity, let you experience some success and then push you some more. And we do high fives, which release dopamine, right, and dopamine increases motivation, and we know that, especially kids with ADHD, and adults too. They really struggle with dopamine and they need dopamine for motivation, and so those high fives and that verbal encouragement is critical. So some fireworks on a screen, that’s not going to do it. That’s not going to do it when you’re struggling with how difficult it is, and so cognitive training, one that’s designed specifically for that person, is going to give them the ability to master each task, and we have over 100 different training tasks, and those training tasks have 10 to 12 different levels, so we have a thousand different ways that you and I use to train the brain.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:17:00

I guess my next question that I want you to address is what happens if you don’t do anything? What happens to skill in the brain if we don’t address it at all?

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:17:10

Yeah, I like that question too, sandy. So we created cognitive profiles of several thousand kids with reading struggles or dyslexia, and so what we saw was, in the absence of an intervention, those skills continued to weaken over time. So it isn’t that they just stay in one place, it’s that as school gets harder, as you get older and you’re having to juggle more, those skills weaken, so the struggle becomes even harder, and so that was a cross-sectional study of thousands of kids.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:18:05

But to take a snapshot, like that of a very large sample, really shows us that early intervention is important.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:18:21

Absolutely, absolutely that we talked about today, those core seven skills. Is there anything you wanted to say about cognitive skills in general that we didn’t get to say in this episode? So I think one of the things that we didn’t talk about was the difference between tutoring and cognitive skills training, because we typically, as parents, see our child struggle and we say, oh, I think they need a tutor, and that might be true in many instances. Right, like so. Let’s say, you’re in a higher level math class, algebra two or calculus, you know, or you’re struggling in chemistry or biology in high school. A tutor is probably going to be a great choice. Right, you’re just seeing a struggle in one particular class because your child is struggling with those particular concepts. Right, you’re not seeing a struggle across the board. And I think that’s where you see the red flag. When your child is struggling in multiple classes, in multiple areas, then it’s probably because cognitive skills that are weak are impacting their ability to learn in all areas, or many areas, not just in that one particular class. And so I think that it’s really important for parents to be able to recognize that, hey, there is something else that might be happening here besides a struggle to capture this particular piece of information or this particular subject. So that would be where I would say, hey, maybe you want to explore the possibility of cognitive skills being the underlying issue and maybe cognitive skills training as being a potential intervention.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:19:42

So you could then go to Sandy or to someone like Sandy who runs cognitive training centers across the world, and you can find those how LearningRxcom, yep, learningrxcom, yep, learningrxcom. There’s a section at the very top right of the website that says find a location or find a center, or you can call 1-866-BRAIN-01, which is the central phone number, and they can help you find a center. And, interestingly, if you don’t live near a cognitive training center, a LearningRx center, you can get it over Zoom and so we can reach anyone in the world. But we are in 43 countries and we’ve been doing this since the 1980s. This is not new. That’s the cool part, right Like we have lots and lots of peer-reviewed research published in medical journals. In fact, that’s my job as the director of research for LearningRx. That validates what center owners like Sandy do all day, every day.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:20:47

Amy, thanks for this high-level view of cognitive skills and how they impact learning. Dr Ken.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:20:53

Gibson, who created the cognitive trainingitive Training Program, learningrx, wrote a book called Unlock the Einstein Inside and it is all about cognitive skills and we’re giving it to you for free. So in the show notes we will provide a link for you to access the PDF version of Unlock the Einstein Inside by Dr Ken Gibson, so you can learn even more about what we talked about.

Sandy Zamalis: 1:21:17

It’s a great read. It’s super short and it has lots of great tips inside as well, so enjoy. And then we also have a game pack too, right? Yes, we do, and it really highlights different games you can play and kind of how you can tweak them and add that intensity that Dr Amy was talking about. So that’s a lot of fun and can kind of enhance your family game night. So, between the book and the game pack, kind of play around with cognitive skills and see how you can implement training into your routine.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:21:50

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Brainy Moms podcast. If you’d like more information about cognitive skills training or cognitive assessment, you can visit Learningrx.com or call 1-866-BRAIN-01 to find a center near you or simply to ask questions or find out more information about how LearningRx might be able to help you or your child think better or learn easier.