White Papers & Reports Archives - Cognitive Literacy Solutions

Importance of Children’s Cognitive Readiness to Learn

Research in neuroscience proves that even the best teaching and curricula can have surprisingly little effect when a child’s cognitive and emotional readiness to learn is not adequately addressed.

Cognitive functioning: supporting people with mental health conditions

Cognitive impairments are a key feature of some mental health conditions, including schizophrenia and affective disorders, such as depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety.

Brain Fitness and Executive Function

According to a report from BrainFutures, “The evidence is clear: every school in the U.S. should adopt an executive function program and executive function training should be a standard component of teacher certification programs.”

What Teachers Know about the Science of Learning

This article from The Learning Agency Lab concludes that “teachers are not being provided with the knowledge and evidence to make their teaching truly effective.”

Future Teachers Have Only Shallow Understanding of Learning Science

Future teachers have only a shallow understanding of basic principles of learning science and struggle to make instructional decisions compatible with the science, according to a study by Deans for Impact.

Executive Functions & Poverty

This article concludes that educators can have a meaningful impact on closing the achievement gap for low-SES students addressing the development of cognitive skills generally, and executive functions in particular.

Educator Perspectives on Social and Emotional Learning Programs

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is receiving increasing attention in the world of education. This report summarizes findings from a small survey of educator perspectives and practices.

Research Summary – BrainWare SAFARI and Low-SES Students

This document summarizes the research on BrainWare SAFARI and students from low-SES and the impact cognitive skill training is having on their cognitive functioning and academic achievement.

Research Summary – BrainWare SAFARI and Students with Learning Disabilities

While BrainWare SAFARI is not uniquely designed for students with learning disabilities, cognitive skill training is having an impact on cognitive functioning and academic achievement for them in a variety of settings.This document provides a summary of the research to date on BrainWare SAFARI and students with learning disabilities.

Rethinking Remediation in Higher Education

This white paper addresses the potential impact of cognitive training for students who are academically and cognitively underprepared for college, suggesting that it may provide an opportunity for many students to achieve their dreams of a college education and the advantages that education entails by giving them the foundation and the capacity for academic success at the post-secondary level.

Blueprint for Building a 21 st Century Worker

It is becoming increasingly clear from neuroscience research that intelligence is not fixed and that the ability to learn, think and problem-solve can be enhanced at any age. The implications of this new knowledge in the workplace are profound. This paper explores the implications of neuroscience research for the preparation and training of workers for 21st century work.

Cognitive Skills and English Language Learners

Today, more school districts than ever are challenged to educate children who speak little or no English when they enter the school system. This brief addresses the demands on certain cognitive skills that are relatively greater during the early stages of learning a new language, including working memory, sequential memory, and auditory memory skills and how these skills may be enhanced.

Neuroscience and Education

Education informed by neuroscience can give new and real meaning to our desire as a nation to leave no child behind. Moreover, it may offer the only true opportunity for the disruptive change that education needs for current and future generations to be educated to face the challenges ahead

Psychometric Properties of the Penn Computerized Neurocognitive Battery

Based on the analysis from these large-scale data, the Computerized Neurocognitive Battery offers an effective means for measuring the integrity of intended neurocognitive domains in about 1 hour of testing and is thus suitable for large-scale clinical and genomic studies.

Neuroscience and Special Education

The purpose of this document, commissioned by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, is to provide a brief overview of how links are being developed between the rapidly expanding field of neuroscience and the practice of special education.

An Effective Neuroscience Intervention for Title I Students

This paper discusses the impact of poverty on the development of cognitive capacity and the evidence that students from low-SES families on average come to school with less capacity to learn and to be successful in school and in life. But, the story doesn’t end there…

The Road Less Traveled

Recent reforms aimed at increasing student achievement have focused primarily on what can be termed basic academic skills. A robust research base, however, tells us that student success in school requires a combination of social, emotional, and academic/cognitive competencies. This paper discusses and makes policy recommendations regarding how the developmental sciences can prepare Educators to improve student achievement.

Keeping the Promise of Accountability: Building Student Capacity

Accountability is, at heart, a promise.2 The Blueprints promise is that all students will graduate from high school ready for either college or a career. To accomplish that, schools must, among other things, build student capacity the ability to think and learn. Neuroscience research has shown that the ability to think and learn can be developed and enhanced through cognitive exercise

The High Cost of Low Educational Performance

This report uses recent economic modeling to relate cognitive skills as measured by PISA (Programme for International Student Assesment and other international instruments to economic growth. The relationship indicates that relatively small improvements in the skills of a nations labor force can have very large impacts on future well-being. Moreover, the gains, put in terms of current Gross Domestic Product (GDP), far outstrip the value of the short-run business-cycle management.

A cognitive neuroscience based computerized battery for efficient measurement of individual differences: Standardization and initial construct validation

A cognitive neuroscience-based computerized battery based on translating tasks used in functional neuroimaging to tests for assessing individual differences in multiple cognitive domains. Inter-item correlations were moderate to high within domain and low to nil across domains, indicating construct validity.

SkateKids Cognitively Based Reading Program

Empirical Validation of an On-line Literacy Program using DIBELS for Title I Students-Naglieri

This first empirical examination of SkateKids suggest that the program appears to be an effective method for improving DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency scores for Title I students and, importantly, that the more children played the game the greater their improvement.

$Cognitive Skills and Math$

Cognitive Skills and Math

While reading difficulties have been studied extensively in the last few decades, difficulties learning math have received less attention. Math disabilities, however, are as common as reading disabilities at 5 to 8% of the population1. Like reading disabilities, math disabilities may have multiple causes and dimensions. There is growing evidence that underlying cognitive processes play a significant role in math performance. This paper discussed the different types of cognitive skills involved in common math disabilities and the role of cognitive training in addressing weaknesses in those skill areas.

Does This Really Work?

This report, published in Learning and Leading with Technology, by the International Society for Technology in Education, discusses why some technology implementations are more successful than others. It explains how technology implementation can borrow from the scientific method to improve implementation effectiveness and incorporates principles from the Software and Information Industry Association SIIAs Software Implementation Toolkit for Educators.

Cognitive Skills and Reading

Learning to read well requires that the basic processes of decoding and comprehending become automatic so that they do not have to be thought about consciously. Readers who must decode letters and words consciously are distracted by the process and are thus unable to concentrate on the meaning of what they are reading. This paper discusses the underlying cognitive skills needed in order to be able to learn to read, and how those skills can be enhanced.

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