Posted by Kathy in MD on 17:55 Jan 17
In Reply to: The $1,500 eval would likely just confirm everything you have already observed. posted by Claire
Visualize a pyramid divided into 3 sections horizontally. The bottom section is sensory imput. This is how your senses gather in information from the world to present it to the brain. So someone with eyes that don't track smoothly, the eyes jerk and literally miss parts of the visual picture (text) and therefore can't transmit it to the brain.
The middle part is cognitive skills. This is where the brain takes the raw imput from the senses and interprets it, makes sense of it and stores it. These skills include discrimination, processing speeds, organization, working and long term memory and other items.
The top portion is academic skills. Weaknesses anywhere below this level makes it very difficult to learn academic things. Therefore, generally we stress repairing the lower portions of the pyramid before pushing hard on academics.
Good cognitive training skill programs are PACE and Learning Rx, both produced by the same company. Unfortunately they terminated their home based program. However there is a new home-based program being introduced sometime this year that is promising.