A major cause of learning struggles is one or more deficient cognitive skills. These deficiencies result in a child who either cannot process the information, cannot process it fast enough, or can’t retain it long enough to process it.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes “skill” as: a learned power of doing something competently; a developed aptitude or ability. Cognitive skills can be learned.

Following are definitions of the major learning skills enhanced by PACE:

Auditory Processing: to process sounds. Helps one hear the difference, order, and number of sounds in words faster; basic skill needed to learn to read and spell; helps with speech defects.

Auditory Discrimination: to hear differences in sounds such as loudness, pitch, duration, and phoneme.

Auditory Segmenting: to break apart words into their separate sounds.

Auditory Blending: to blend individual sounds to form words.

Auditory Analysis: to determine the number, sequence, and which sounds are within a word.

Auditory-Visual Association: to be able to link a sound with an image.

Comprehension: to understand words and concepts.

Divided Attention: to attend to and handle two or more tasks at one time such as taking notes while listening, and carrying totals while adding the next column. Required for handling tasks quickly or tasks with complexity.

Logic and Reasoning: to reason, plan, and think.

Long-Term Memory: to retrieve past information.

Math Computations: to do math calculations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

Processing Speed: the speed at which the brain processes information. Makes reading faster and less tiring; makes one more aware of his or her surrounding environment; helps with sports such as hockey, basketball, football, and soccer and activities such as driving.

Saccadic Fixation: to move the eyes accurately and quickly from one point to another.

Selective Attention: to stay on task even when distraction is present.

Sensory-Motor Integration: to have the sensory skills work well with the motor skills—such as with eye-hand coordination.

Sequential Processing: to process chunks of information that are received one after another.

Simultaneous Processing: to process chunks of information that are received all at once.

Sustained Attention: to be able to stay on task.

Visual Processing: to process and make use of visual images. Helps one create mental pictures faster and more vividly; helps one understand and “see” word math problems and read maps; improves reading comprehension skills.

Visual Discrimination: to see differences in size, colour, shape, distance, and orientation of objects.

Visual Manipulation: to flip, rotate, move, change colour, etc. of objects and images in one’s mind.

Visualization: to create mental images or pictures.

Visual Span: helps one see more and wider in a single look. Improves side vision. Enables faster reading and better, faster decisions in sports.

Working Memory: to retain information while processing or using it.

Even just one low cognitive skill can make school difficult and children with learning disabilities usually have many. By developing the aforementioned skills, everything about school becomes easier.

Whether your child is learning disabled, just struggling, gifted at risk, or gifted, cognitive training will improve his or her chances at school, college, and eventually a career.

Ask Lisa@accomplished.ca

My son is two years behind in his reading ability even though he gets extra help at school. What is wrong and what can be done about it?

The primary reason for reading difficulties is a lack of phonemic awareness (auditory analysis): the ability to process the sounds in words. A lot of time and effort is involved in developing auditory analysis skills and the school cannot possibly provide that amount of one-on-one specialized instruction.

Once the phonemic awareness/auditory analysis problem is solved, children experience significant improvement in reading. PACE averages a four-year improvement in reading skills in just 12 weeks.

Why aren’t cognitive skills taught in school or in Learning Assistance?

The school’s purpose is to teach curriculum, not to prepare a child to learn that curriculum. In Learning Assistance the goal is still the same: to teach curriculum. Unfortunately, because it is at a slower pace, the child often falls further behind. Preparing a child to learn better through cognitive training is the parents’ responsibility.

My daughter gets A’s in most subjects but just scrapes by in Math and Science. The school assessed her as “gifted at risk.” What is that?

Overall, her average score on an Intelligence Test (IQ) is gifted (above average). However, to be “at risk” means she has some scores that are very low while others are very high. She is not diagnosed as learning disabled because she is, on average, very intelligent. But she does have one or more cognitive skills that are low and cause her problems. PACE would identify and train these!

“At risk” is scary. It means she is at risk of not succeeding in school or work. 14 to 30 percent of school dropouts are gifted at risk and their suicide rate is staggering. To learn more, do a search on the Internet for “gifted at risk.”

What’s the difference between PACE and tutoring?

Tutoring is just more help on academic subjects. This may be perfect if your child has missed learning material due to frequently changing schools or a long absence due to illness. A major tutoring business claims an 80 percent success rate in raising a client by one grade level in one subject in about four months. The 20 percent they are missing are the kids who need cognitive training instead of tutoring.

PACE guarantees at least two years of improvement in just three months by training the cognitive skills listed in this newsletter (average improvement is three to four years). With these skills intact, a child is able to learn new academic material and can catch up on what they’ve previously missed.

PACE is one-on-one for each one-hour session whereas in a group tutoring session your child may only be getting 15 minutes of individual attention. Though PACE may seem more expensive at first glance, it is actually less expensive when you consider the actual one-on-one time involved.

Facts to Ponder

Studies show that whole word methods do not work with 50% of beginning readers and phonics doesn’t work with 30%. Eclectic methods (combination of both) are even worse! Only sound-to-code methods are proven to be effective for remediation. Master the Code, a sound-to-code method, is available at Accomplished Learning Centre.

Statistics (source www.ldav.ca)

There are few accurate Canadian statistics; Statistics Canada is trying to rectify this. These stats are from the US:

• While 15% of people have learning disabilities, most go untreated because they have not been diagnosed.
• Reading deficits are the most prevalent condition associated with learning disabilities. Among Special Education students, more than 80% are identified with this condition. (Lerner, 1997)
• Dyslexia affects approximately 20% of children in first through ninth grades. (Cramer & Ellis, 1996)
• 60% of adults with severe literacy problems have undetected or untreated learning disabilities. (NALLDC, 1994)
• Learning disabilities often run in families. (Lyon, 1994)
• 35% of students with learning disabilities drop out of school.
• Rate of unemployment for students with learning disabilities two years out of school is twice that of students in the general population.
• Nearly 60% of adolescents in treatment for substance abuse have learning disabilities. (Hazelton, 1994)