Identifying and Treating Cognitive Skills Deficiencies

By Dr. Vernard T. Gant,
Director of ACSI Urban School Services

Two children who sit in the same classroom and who are taught by the same teacher are given the same amount of building materials and instructions and the same amount of time to build. At the end of the day (grading period, school year, and so on), one child has built an academic mansion, whereas the other child has only managed to erect an academic shack. To remedy the situation, the low-performing child is given more building materials, more instructions, more support, and more time to build. However, despite all the additional tools, information, support, and time, the child still manages to build only a shack—one that is perhaps a little bit more elaborate, but a shack nonetheless.

Formal schooling, by design and by default, simply builds on a child’s learning foundation. This foundation is primarily established by the parents before a child starts school. A child with a low or weak learning foundation typically yields low academic performance; a child with a strong or high learning foundation typically yields high academic performance. The diagram below illustrates.

The premise is that what happens above ground academically is determined by what’s available below ground cognitively. Most struggling students do not possess the cognitive skills or learning foundation for effective learning. Many educators ignore the role that the learning foundation plays in a child’s education because they either do not know about it or do not believe that there is anything that can be done about it. Moreover, attempts to build an academic mansion on a learning foundation that can accommodate only a shack are basically exercises in futility unless something is done about the foundation. This is a primary reason that children fail to comprehend what they have read, retain math facts, recall events, or even pay attention.

Urban, minority, and low-resourced children often start school behind their high-resourced peers. This fact simply reflects that they start school with a weak learning base that is due to inadequate cognitive stimulation. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom explain (2003, 130–136):

From a third to half of black and Hispanic pupils entered kindergarten already testing in the bottom quarter of students in reading, math, and general knowledge….

Something about the lives of these children before they entered school shaped their intellectual development….

In sum, black (and to some extent Hispanic) students are substantially behind their white and Asian classmates when they start kindergarten. They rank below others in tests of cognitive skills.

Ruby Payne adds (1996, 88–89):

In order to learn, an individual must have certain cognitive skills….

Traditionally in schools we have assumed that the cognitive strategies are in place….

The truth is that we can no longer pretend this arrangement works—no matter how well or how hard we teach. Increasingly, students, mostly from poverty, are coming to school without the concepts, but more importantly, without the cognitive strategies.

She concludes: “The true discrimination that comes out of poverty is the lack of cognitive strategies. The lack of these unseen attributes handicaps in every aspect of life the individual who does not have them” (107; italics in original).

The fact that 46 percent of children enrolled in the nation’s public schools are from low-income families (Southern Education Foundation 2007) represents an educational challenge of unparalleled magnitude. The following is from a report released by the Southern Education Foundation (Suitts 2007, 8):

Today, for the first time in more than 40 years, the South is the only region in the nation where low income children constitute a majority of public school students. At the same time, low income students have become a substantial proportion of public school enrollment across the nation. Forty-one percent of the public school students outside the South were from low income families in the 2006–2007 school year. In the West, the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch stood at 47 percent.

These resource-deficient children throughout the nation now represent nearly every other child in public schools. Again, they start school behind other children because of a lack of proper cognitive stimulation and development during their preschool years. Their parents do not possess the resources to secure the diagnoses and treatment to repair the children’s cognitive deficiencies. At the same time, their schools do not assume the responsibility or possess the wherewithal to address this area. As a result, these children prevailingly experience struggle, underachievement, and ultimately failure as they matriculate through school. This explains why the vast majority of these children perform at and below the basic level in their core academic subjects. It also explains why only about half of them ever graduate from school.

An article in the spring 2005 issue of The Future of Children describes a study that relates the connection between low resources and low achievement (Noble, Tottenham, and Casey; 75):

So far this research has documented a strong and persistent connection between socioeconomic status—most commonly measured using education, occupation, and income—and childhood cognitive ability and achievement as measured by IQ, achievement test scores, and functional literacy.

The authors conclude (81):

Recently, however, M. R. Rueda and colleagues showed that four-year-olds who attended seven sessions of attention training showed significant improvement on abstract reasoning skills relative to children who received a control intervention of watching videos. Furthermore, during a cognitive control task administered after their training was complete, the children showed brain activity that was more adult-like than that of the control group. These preliminary results suggest the possibility of designing broader educational interventions that specifically target cognitive control, which a recent study found to be the single best predictor of resilience among high-risk children, even controlling for age, gender, negative life events, chronic strain, abuse, nonverbal IQ, self-esteem, monitoring, and emotional support.

This study simply reveals that a child’s academic achievement is very much a matter of the resources available to the child because the availability of resources makes an impact on the child’s intellectual development. In particular, seven kinds, or areas, of resources both influence a child’s cognitive development and largely determine the child’s academic outcomes.

1. Cultural resources: The amount of information about the norms (beliefs, customs, practices, and rules) of a social group and exposure to them that is available to the child. Determined by the following:
   1. The marital status of the parents
   2. The neighborhood in which the child starts out and grows up
   3. The family support structure in place for the child
2. Emotional resources: The amount of encouragement and the number of affirmations resulting in feelings of sufficiency and self-determination available to the child. Determined by the following:
   1. The emotional stability and maturity of the primary caregivers
   2. The stressors being brought to bear on the child and the household
   3. The emotional buffers and options available to the family
3. Financial resources: The number of material goods available to the household. Determined by the following:
   1. The family income
   2. The employment status and employability of the parents
   3. The spending habits of the family (reflecting their emphases and values)
4. Intellectual resources: The amount of mental stimulation, information, and education available to the child. Determined by the following:
   1. The education level of the parents
   2. The amount and degree of early language experience (ELE) and informal pre-education (IPE) the child receives (cognitive stimulation)
   3. The IQs of the parents
5. Physical resources: The number of healthcare practices that contribute to the healthy development and well-being of the child. Determined by the following:
   1. Healthcare available to the child
   2. The child’s diet and physical activity
   3. The child’s sleeping patterns
6. Social resources: The number of relationships and contacts that contribute to the public development and well-being of the child. Determined by the following:
   1. The child’s race
   2. The racial climate of the child’s primary communities and the racial attitudes of the child’s caregivers (including teachers and administrators)
   3. The social networks available to the child
7. Spiritual resources: The number of belief structures that promote the bases for purpose, morals, values, discipline, and self-worth available to the child. Determined by the following:
   1. The spiritual life of the primary caregiver or caregivers
   2. The church environment
   3. The practice of biblical values in the home

In summary:

• A child’s learning foundation (or cognitive skills) determines how easily and effectively the child can learn.
• Most urban, low-resourced, and minority children have weak or anemic learning foundations.
• Learning foundations are malleable, as opposed to being set in concrete.

The latter point is the good news. Weak cognitive skills can be strengthened. As a matter of fact, if they are not treated and strengthened, learning will be difficult, if not impossible. The first step, of course, is to properly identify the deficient or weak cognitive skills. One such tool for doing so is the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ-III). This is a one-on-one assessment that is administered by a trained diagnostician. The cost and resource requirements limit how many children can be tested. The Gibson Cognitive Skills Test (GCST) is a newly developed, computerized cognitive skills assessment. The GCST was developed by Dr. Ken Gibson to provide an easier and much less expensive assessment tool. This assessment will be standardized during the spring semester of 2008.

Dr. Gibson has identified the cognitive skills that are most important for academic success. In his book Unlock the Einstein Inside, Dr. Gibson cites the cognitive skills and the learning tasks they enable (2007, 48–50):

Attention

• Sustained Attention enables you to stay on task for a period of time.
• Selective Attention enables you to stay on task even when a distraction is present.
• Divided Attention allows you to handle two or more tasks at one time.

What to watch for: The inability to stay on task for long periods of time, to ignore distractions, or to multitask will limit the student’s other cognitive skills—which will impact all academic areas.

Working Memory

• Working Memory is the ability to retain information for short periods of time while processing or using it.

What to watch for: Learning suffers if information cannot be retained long enough to be handled properly.

Processing Speed

• Processing Speed is the rate at which the brain handles information.

What to watch for: If processing speed is slow, the information held in working memory may be lost before it can be used, and the student will have to begin again.

Long-Term Memory

• Long-Term Memory is the ability to both store and recall information for later use.

What to watch for: If the ability to store and retrieve information is poor, wrong conclusions and incorrect answers will result.

Visual Processing

• Visual Processing is the ability to perceive, analyze, and think in visual images.
• Visual Discrimination is seeing differences in size, color, shape, distance, and the orientation of objects.
• Visualization is creating mental images.

What to watch for: When visual imagery is poor, tasks like math word problems and comprehension, which require seeing the concept/object in the student’s mind, are difficult.

Auditory Processing

• Auditory Processing is the ability to perceive, analyze, and conceptualize what is heard and is one of the major underlying skills needed to learn to read and spell.
• Auditory Discrimination is hearing differences in sounds, including volume, pitch, duration, and phoneme.
• Phonemic Awareness is the ability to segment sounds, to blend sounds to make words, to break words apart into separate sounds, and to manipulate and analyze sounds to determine the number, sequences, and sounds within a word.

What to watch for: If blending, segmenting, and sound analysis are weak, sounding out words when reading and spelling will be difficult and error-prone.

Logic and Reasoning

• Logic and Reasoning skills are the abilities to reason, prioritize, and plan.

What to watch for: If these skills are not strong, academic activities such as problem solving, math, and comprehension will be difficult.

These skills are essential to effective learning. The GCST, like the WJ-III, pinpoints cognitive skills deficiencies, thereby equipping the educator with a sort of X-ray of the child’s learning ability and capacity. This assessment provides the first step toward an effective treatment. As in the medical field, a misdiagnosis often leads to mistreatment that leaves both the problem and the symptoms intact. In order to fix what is educationally broken, it is vital that the deficiencies in underlying skills, which are often the cause of learning limitations, be identified in order to administer effective treatment leading to a significant improvement in a child’s ability to learn.

I share this personal experience as an example: My wife, Cynthia, and I had our daughter tested at one of Dr. Gibson’s centers. Our daughter is in the 12th grade. Last semester she had a GPA of 3.9, but we wanted to help improve her test-taking skills for the college entrance exams. She was given the cognitive skills diagnostic test. When we met to review the results of the test, I was absolutely amazed. In one hour, I learned more about our daughter’s academic state than I had in all the years of meeting with her school teachers and administrators. The test results clearly explained everything I had observed as her father and as an educator, but this time—for the first time—we learned how to strengthen her deficiencies. As Cynthia and I were leaving the consultation, I couldn’t help but think about how this test could revolutionize the educational experience of untold numbers of children.

Imagine an educator being armed with a snapshot of the strengths and weaknesses of each student’s cognitive skills. That information alone could help thoroughly inform the approach to teaching each and every child. Now imagine having that information along with a proven tool to help strengthen the weak areas. Can you then imagine what this could do to improve the educational experiences of the children who struggle academically without anyone knowing why they struggle or how to help them? And, as in the case of my daughter, the program even works to improve areas of strengths so that strong students become even stronger.

Heretofore, cognitive skill assessment and treatment was out of reach for most urban schools. Dr. Gibson has formed a new company called BrainSkills to provide an effective and affordable online program. BrainSkills and ACSI Urban School Services are pleased to announce that these online instruments for identifying and treating cognitive skills deficiencies will be made available to eligible students in our member urban schools as a membership service. For more information, read the “News You Can Use” section in the attachment below and be prepared to “unlock the Einstein inside” your students.

All references are available in the attachment below.

The Meantime Volume 7 Number 2