This document provides information about cognitive training. It begins with an overview of the CHC model of cognitive strengths, including comprehension, long-term retrieval, visual-spatial thinking, auditory processing, fluid reasoning, processing speed, short term memory, executive function, and more. It then outlines the agenda for an upcoming cognitive training session, which will cover results, applications, caveats, methodology, and future directions. The document provides details on identifying appropriate cognitive training candidates and assessing cognitive synergy versus friction. It discusses establishing ground rules for students, parents, and brain coaches and managing motivation. The overall aim is to target malleable cognitive skills through cognitive workouts to improve academic well-being in the long run.

1. MBHE Cognitive Training Breakout
• In-class = theory
• Tonight = best practice guidelines
Week 6 – Cognitive Training
PSYC E-1609 Mind, Brain, Health,
and Education (MBHE): The Sciences of
Development, Learning, and Well-being

2. Training vs Teaching

3. Training vs Coaching

4. Malleable Cognitive Skills
4
Implications?

5. CHC Model of Cognitive Strengths
• Comprehension (Gc)
• Long-term Retrieval (Glr)
• Visual-Spatial Thinking (Gv)
• Auditory Processing (Ga)
• Fluid Reasoning (Gf)
• Processing Speed (Gs)
• Short Term Memory (Gsm)
• Executive Function (EF)
• Delayed Recall (Glrd)
• Phonemic Awareness (PA)

6. Tonight
• Results
• Applications
• Caveats
• Methodology
• Extended video sample
• Future directions

7. Local Results

8. Bungelabs Results

9. Sternberg Conclusions
• “Fluid intelligence is trainable to a significant
and meaningful degree;
• Training is subject to dosage effects,
• more training leading to greater gains;
• The effect occurs across the spectrum of
abilities…
Sternberg, R. J. (2008). Increasing fluid
intelligence is possible after all. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 105(19),
6791-6792.
9

10. Applications
Cognitive Training Targets the Underlying Causes of
• Dyslexia / RD / CAPD
• Target working memory, rapid naming, phonemic awareness
• ADHD-I and ADHD-c
• Target working memory, processing speed, executive function
• NVLD
• Target visual processing, reasoning, executive function
• Homework marathons NOS
• Target working memory, processing speed, executive function,
reading fluency
• Bright students who appear to hate school
• Leading to low self-esteem
• And family distress

11. Yet Cautions/Caveats Remain
• Numerous research opportunities
• Breakthroughs will continue
• Limited public/private funding
• Majority R&D funds directed to computer-based methodologies
• Or pharmaceuticals
• Without full MBHE considerations
• Family-centered Heartscope approach has significant
benefits, also limitations
• Challenges for lay parents/teachers to rapidly digest
• Not targeted to grades or test-score growth
• Resource intensive
• Limited commercial potential (currently operating as non-profit)
• thus challenging to operate at larger scale

12. ‘Complicated’…? Yes and No
• Brains are complicated, as are:
• kids’ personal health factors;
• teachers/classrooms,
• families,
• communities
• national/state/local policies
• some helpful; some perhaps misguided
• Development is dynamic;
• can be influenced
• preferably for well-being
• although sometimes towards unhealthy trajectory

13. An MBHE approach need not be
complicated…
• Understand factors underlying ‘dynamic’
• Learning is integrated
• Mind
• Brain
• Health
• Education
• Understand best evidence,
• Then take low hanging fruit 1st

14. Two Choices Facing Complexity
1. Follow a protocol
• Improving protocol with new research/application tools
2. Surrender to complexity

15. Surrender Options
• “It’s the schools’ job …
• “It’s the doctors’ job …
• “Is this covered by insurance?

16. Section 504 Inertia
• Certainly unfair not to provide accommodations to
deserving students in short term
• US law requires schools to provide ‘reasonable’
• Yet equally unfair to maintain for long term
• Accommodations which suffocate a student’s
• Autonomy
• Self-Efficacy
• Social comparisons
• Niemiec, C. P., Lynch, M. F., Vansteenkiste, M., Bernstein, J., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R.
M. (2006). The antecedents and consequences of autonomous self-regulation for
college: A self-determination theory perspective on socialization. Journal of
Adolescence, 29(5), 761-775.
• NO research supporting long-term accommodations
• Yet continues common practice

17. In Other Words
• Short-term, uplifting accommodations
= Life-saver
• Long-term, growth-limiting accommodations
= Life-sentence
• In practice, short vs long-term impacts
rarely a topic at parent/ SIT team meetings

18. Surrender narratives
• “meds worked great for my friend’s son …
• “try a different med ….
• “sleep/growth side-effects are ‘worth it ….’
• “too many kids use meds as a crutch ….
• “all kids hate school ….
• “some kids wired differently ….
• “I turned out fine ….
• “smart in other ways ….
• “just plain lazy ….
• “teachers are incompetent ….
• “poor parenting ….

19. a priori Barriers
• Education innovation must be
• school-based
• ‘proven’ to ‘work’ raising test scores
• Computer-based innovations must provide
• widespread access
• minimal oversight requirements
• commercial potential
• Medication non-compliance
• (both in terms of starting, as well as
continuing over long term)
• must denote negligent parenting

20. Yet, while we wait for
Research ….. politics ….. technology
• Many students suffering
• undiagnosed
• under-diagnosed
• misdiagnosed
• struggles mis-attributed to flawed character
• Time marches on
• neurons that fire together, wire together
• children average 1200’ of new ‘wiring’ growth each day

21. Myth Inertia
• “Many scientists and most laypeople believe you are
only as smart as your genes allow…
“Such thinking is …
“extremely unfortunate for the individual…
“and a disaster for public policy…
“Fortunately, that point of view is wrong. Here is
how we know…”
• Nisbett, R. E. (2009). Intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and
cultures count. WW Norton & Company.

22. Cognitive Training Methodology
• Step 1 – Identify Appropriate Candidates
• Step 2 – Assess Impact of Cognitive Synergy vs Friction
• Step 3 – Assess Emotional Synergy
• Step 4 – Ground Rules for Students
• Step 5 – Ground Rules for Parents
• Step 6 – Ground Rules for Brain Coaches
• Step 7 – Motivation Management
• Step 8 – Program Oversight
• Step 9 – Progress Test

23. Step 1: Identify/screen candidates
Most common brain training candidates (one, often more of)
• Partial responders to in-school interventions
• Partial responders to medical monotherapy
• Students struggling for >1 semester
• And/or more than one subject area
• Homework exhaustion nearly always present
• Previously identified SLD
• ADHD (-i, -h, -c)
• Dyslexia / CAPD / RD
• NVLD

24. …Partial responders to in-school
interventions
• Challenge: grade inflation
• Challenge: parents’ challenged to navigate (often
without support) waves of data that can be
• misleading (report cards, many 504 assurances),
• intentionally omitted (FAPE) and/or
• overwhelming (IEP)
• Challenge: family awareness of threshold criteria for
investigating symptoms’ underlying cause(s)
• Discrepancy
• RTI
• Failure to meet minimums?
• vs failure to maintain optimal?

25. … Crisis vs Subclinical
• Early interventions
• limits initial emotional damage from spreading
• more effective
• less costly
• both short and especially long-term
• yet easiest to dismiss/surrender
• Challenge: majority of families in these categories
are exhausted

26. … Partial responders to medical
monotherapy
• Challenge: a pill is not a skill
• Yet widespread practice to use medical therapy to treat non-
medical obstacles
• Challenge: physicians’ legitimate resource constraints
• Challenge: physicians’ cynicism towards family vigilance
• Challenge: physicians’ prior snake-oil experiences
• Challenge: minimal track record of sustainable
professional practice models for non-insurance based
interventions, eg,
• mindfulness,
• art / music / pet therapy
• neurofeedback,
• parenting classes for ADHD-h aged <6

27. … Students’ school struggles NOS
Defined as more than 1 semester and/or
more than 1 subject
• Challenge: parents’ over-reliance on report-card
grades
• Challenge: parents’ ego investments in kids’
school/sports performance
• Challenge: parents’ and teachers over-reliance on
re-teaching at home
• Challenge: cultural inertia favoring youth sports
• Challenge: cultural inertia accepting teen rebellion
• distinction angry teen vs exhausted teen

28. Step 2: Assess cognitive synergy
Cognitive Synergy vs Cognitive Friction
• Recall Broad CHC Components of IQ
CrystallizedFluid

29. … Fluid Intelligence
Components
• Long-term Retrieval Glr
• Visual-Spatial Thinking Gv
• Auditory Processing Ga
• Fluid Reasoning Gf
• Processing Speed Gs
• Short Term Memory Gsm
• Executive Function
• Working Memory
• Phonemic Awareness
• Most accessible to
targeted
intervention
• Early intervention
preferred
• Gains available at
least through young
adulthood
• likely entire lifespan

30. … Crystallized Intelligence
Comprehension-Knowledge (Gc)
• ‘Best’ training is by
• Reading as a life-style
• “Reading changes your brain” (Wolf)
• Quantity of pages K-16, (ref Stanovich, The Matthew Effect)
• Breadth of vocabulary exposure
• Writing
• Verbal interaction
• Parents, peers, community

31. … Cognitive Synergy Example
Thus IQ +/- 120; SAT projected +/- 1700; 90th percentile

32. … Cognitive Friction Example
Also IQ 120 – with much higher SAT upside in optimal
conditions (yet optimal unlikely to attain)

33. Which Student Most Likely To Attain
Optimal Growth?
Friction = likely disruptive from age 5-6 on.
More likely medicated than assessed. High risk
anxiety-related disorder as teen/young-adult
Synergy = comfortable with
school; learning ‘history’
likely very positive year by
year. Less vulnerable to
below-average teacher.

34. Quiz: Synergy or Friction?
Hint: 100 IQ is exactly ‘normal’. This student is faster
than average and a decent (not stellar) reader.

35. A:(trickquestion): It Depends On…
• Are peers (social comparison) ‘average’ or ‘college prep’?
National
Average
College
Prep

36. … Because Ecology Matters
Must consider BOTH
• Personal friction/synergy, ie, “Intra-synergy”
• Classroom “Inter-synergy”
• (Often family ecology as well)

37. … The Curse of ‘Has The Ability…’
• Implied: ‘choosing not to use it.’
(therefore character failure also implied)
• No child likes (nor thrives) being judged as flawed
• especially by those he most loves and seeks the approval of
• Alternative Inquiry for parents/teachers:
is there a plausible cause for cognitive friction?
• Alternative: child-centered (vs curriculum-centered)
i,e, ‘seek first to understand’ students’
• fatigue/surrender
• vs inattention
• vs amotivation
• (Off the record, this is point when parents most likely in tears)

38. s3: Assess Emotional Synergy
• Eustress vs distress
• Homeostasis vs Allostasis
• “Without attending to [multisystem resiliency] interactions,
stress effects are often masked and missed.
• “Taking account of the cluster of positive buffering factors
that operate across the lifespan will take us a step further in
understanding healthy … aging broadly, from cellular to
systemic health.
• Puterman, E., & Epel, E. (2012). An Intricate Dance: Life Experience, Multisystem Resiliency,
and Rate of Telomere Decline Throughout the Lifespan. Social and personality psychology
compass, 6(11), 807-825.
• Also: Repetti, R. L., Robles, T. F., & Reynolds, B. (2011). Allostatic processes in the family.
Development and psychopathology, 23(3), 921-938.
• Ganzel, B. L., Morris, P. A., & Wethington, E. (2010). Allostasis and the human brain:
Integrating models of stress from the social and life sciences. Psychological review, 117(1),

39. … Physical Fatigue
vs Emotional Fatigue
• “… colleges now only admit
over-scheduled children...”
• Elaine Tuttle Hansen. Executive Director of the Johns
Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. 4/8/13 NPR

40. … Internal vs External
• Limbic (HPA) Activation
• Internal vs External Threat
• Actual or perceived
• Internalized vs Externalized Behavior
• Girls may tend to internalize self-judgments
• Are boys really 4x more vulnerable for ADHD?
• Or perhaps 4x more likely to externalize their frustration?
• Projected trajectory of misguided self-judgments

41. Steps 4+: Initiate Training
Guided By Assessment, Begin ‘Brain Workouts”:
• Ground Rules for Students
• Ground Rules for Parents
• Ground Rules for Brain Coaches
• Motivation Management
• Program Oversight and Adjustments
• Progress Test

42. s4: Ground Rules for Students
• Daily 3GT: Three Good Things
• Posture – breath – hands – feet
• Okay to make mistakes
• “I’ve failed over and over and over
again in my life ... and that is why
I succeed” Michael Jordan
• Effective response to mistakes is a learned skill
• Okay to feel (a little) frustrated
• Not okay to quit
• Effective response to small mistakes helps avoid big mistakes
• Benefits of positive self-talk
• “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, …..
you are probably right.”… Henry Ford
• ‘Ready to Work?’ is a binary question
• If yes, best efforts expected
• If no, reschedule for a better day

43. s5: Ground Rules For Parents
• Parents’ self-management of own stress
• Healthy body is healthy brain
• Esp ‘green time’
• Daily parent/child 1:1 attention
• Understand subtle impacts of performance praise:
• authentic vs
• contingent vs
• unconditional
• Dosage effect of training
• 5-6h average per week appears optimal
• Less likely significant growth < 3hr

44. … Parents…
• Homework cap at 15m per grade level
• Eg 6th grade cap is 90min
• Fun-reading doesn’t count against cap
• Engage positively with school allies
• Resist emotional response to resentment
• Navigate around school foes
• Encourage – don’t insist upon – Heartscope/teacher
collaboration

45. … Parents…
• If current/history of meds
• Suggest titrate to sleep
• Rule-out rare, but vexing, comorbidities
• History of sports concussions
• Sleep apnea, restless leg
• Vit D, anemia, TSH
• Infectious disease (Lyme, giardia, West Nile)
• Encourage parents/docs explore nuances of
AACAP vs AAP guidelines
• NOTE: We collaborate with willing docs, but NEVER
substitute our judgment for theirs
• Challenging/complex cases urged to seek a second opinion

46. s6: Ground Rules for Coaches
• Above all else,
• Emotional safety
• Nonjudgmental
• Authentic
• Praise/critique ‘process’
• Never ‘person’
(NOTE – Reasonable to expect ‘Do
whatever it takes’ parents to attain
60%+ coaching efficacy in 4-6w)

47. … Proximal Challenge
• ‘Training Zone’ (TZ)
• Ref Vygotsky, Csikszentmihalyi
• Respond to TZ changes
• Day by day
• Task by task
• As growth solidifies
• Or cognitive stamina declines under duress

48. … Cognitive Competition
• Simultaneous challenge
• 3 dimensions
• Layered Cognitive Targets
• Complexity
• Intensity

49. … Error Correction
• Immediate
• Nonjudgmental
• Better to model correct response than critique
• Evolve from coach-detect to student-detect

50. … Goal = Automaticity
Vs Classroom Paradigm of ‘Mastery’
• Automaticity likely reflects decreased PFC activation
• Precision essential
• Perils of ‘practicing it wrong’
• (technically or emotionally)
• Automaticity illustration:
• Say a driver is late and lost to an important appointment…
(ie, seeking visual/spatial orientation)
• Why, then, do most drivers need to turn off the radio?
(what does auditory input have to do with V/S processing?)

51. … Invest in Long-Term Goals
• Remember long-term target NOT GPA or test-score gain
• although low GPAs and test-scores almost always improve
• Rather, training goal is to target precursors
to long-term academic well-being
• Attention
• Efficiency
• Resilience
• Versus more common short-term response in
many schools (and some families) to work
AROUND, not ON,
weak cognitive skills

52. Video Training Example

53. s7: Motivation Management
• Remember primary student motivators (Bandura)
• Situational/Contextual
• Ecological
• Vicarious
• Historical
• “Persuasion” coaching methods
• Either positive or negative
• Are generally ineffective
• Yet most commonly used

54. … Handling Amotivation During
Training
• Short term student affect is irrelevant
• Ignore annoying, diversionary or attention seeking
behaviors
• “Tell me later, now let’s get back to work….”
• STOP training when behaviors interfere
• Default to empathy response - never presume malevolence
• Interview for daily stressors
• Re-assess ‘Ready to Work?’
• Binary options: Yes or No
• Limit/eliminate ‘Persuasion’ responses
• Coaches self-check own stress/fatigue levels

55. … Plausibly ZERO Cases in 24yr
Of genuinely amotivated students ages 3-21
• Without significant causes / comorbidities
• (granted hindsight offers clarity)
• Students’ personal MBHE factors
• School ecology
• Family ecology
• Some suggest Teen Motivation is Art, not Science?
• Or is ‘Art’ a surrender narrative for grownups
unfamiliar with motivation science?
• Especially relevant
• Bandura
• Dweck
• Deci/Ryan
• Zimmerman
• Ericsson (Anders)

56. Step 8: Program Oversight
• Regularly review presence of authentic ‘process’ praise
• As opposed to “He got an A on his spelling test,
Hooray! He’s not lazy!” (Client-Mom, 4/8/13)
• Optimize ‘TZ minutes per month’
• Rotate activities to maintain novelty
• 10-12 active from superset of 30
• Chart significant breakthrough moments
• School
• Home
• In-session

57. … Rebalance tasks to overweight
then-weakest skills
• Requires systematic review
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Analyze plateaus
• Danger of ‘anti-training’
• Challenge of distinguishing events vs trends
• Thus succinct charting essential

58. … Progress test after 80 training hours
• Combined home, clinic, PC
• Note primary publishers don’t currently provide form A/B in
cognitive tests
• Debrief team after every progress test
• We’re committed
• But not perfect
• Human nature to be susceptible to attribution errors

59. … Check-in with student/family after
6-12 months
• Many ‘modest’ qualitative outcomes evolve
over time to ‘major’
• (not always correlated with quantitative growth)
• Yet some families forget school pain, recall
training burden
• Some families/schools continue to struggle with
comorbidities

60. … Coaches can expect serendipitous
encounters
With families/students showing exceptional
• Courage
• Commitment
• Love
• Openness to personal growth and new Learning

61. So, Which team dominates
the 4th quarter?

62. Future
Open-source brain training
• Bungelab games (*)
• (disclaimer no endorsement implied )
• Community contributions
• Improve teacher/specialist/physician awareness
• Role of cognitive skill strength
• To growth in authentic self-esteem
• Accessible all demographic groups
• Data collection / analysis
• Better forecast potential burdens of comorbidities
• Thus better prioritize evidence-based interventions

63. Study Dosage/Delivery Effects
• Confirm/refute contributions of
• limbic,
• parental,
• allostatic loads, etc.
• Optimal TZ minutes per week
• Optimal % TZ online
• Long-term:
• Confirm/refute developmental ceiling

64. Further Questions
• tom@kcbrain.org