Why Computer-Learning Programs Don’t Always Work

If you’re the parent of a struggling student, you may have tried several methods to help your child or teen turn things around. For some, accommodations at school—such as giving students with learning challenges more time to take tests or private rooms to stay focused—have helped, but they may have left the student feeling isolated or separated from their peers. Other families have tried tutoring or computer-based learning programs and apps in hopes of seeing something change.

Parents may feel frustrated when their methods aren’t improving their student’s situation. The answer often lies in the fact that none of these solutions address the root cause of learning struggles.

Why these methods don’t always work

Although labels—such as “dyslexic” or “inattentive”—might help teachers communicate a student’s learning struggles, they can negatively impact a child or teen’s self-esteem, confidence, and sense of belonging. Likewise, while accommodations at school may help a student’s performance, they can draw attention to their need for extra help.

On the other hand, tutoring can provide more privacy outside of school. While tutoring does have its place—such as getting a student “caught up” after they’ve missed school due to a family move or an extended illness or injury, the method is focused on academic material, not learning skills.

Likewise, computer learning programs and apps may help somewhat. Still, they usually lack the ingredients needed to strengthen weak core cognitive skills at the heart of the learning struggle.

Cognitive skills are the tools we use to learn, read, memorize, and perform. Together, they take incoming information and move it into a bank of knowledge, which we use at work, school, and in daily life. These skills include processing speed, logic & reasoning, visual and auditory processing, attention, and memory. If even one of these skills is weak, the rest can be affected.

Most learning struggles are because of lower cognitive skills, which also helps explain why even intelligent kids can have learning challenges.

So, knowing that cognitive skills are at the root of most learning struggles, what does work?

How personal brain training differs from computer-learning programs

When students come to a LearningRx personal brain training center, we start with a Brain Skills Assessment. It only takes about an hour, and the results give everyone a better idea of which cognitive skills are strong and which could use a boost.

Using these results, we create an individualized program consisting of game-like mental exercises that are challenging but fun. Each client pairs with a brain trainer who works with them throughout the program.

As cognitive skills get stronger, learning becomes faster and easier. In addition, one of the most common pieces of feedback we hear is how students’ confidence soars!

While there are sometimes some shared attributes—such as repetition and increased intensity—in computer-learning programs and personal brain training, there are far more differences.

At LearningRx, we’ve spent decades researching, developing, testing, and refining our programs through trial and error to create the best cognitive skills training program possible. It took 35 years of repeating a formula of “Trials + Results=More Research + More Development” with four contiguous experimental programs to finally get the fast and unprecedented gains we were after in a program.

Our current programs use seven key ingredients that you won’t find in computer-learning programs. These essential characteristics include:

1. Practice: Because brain training builds skills, it can’t be taught in the classroom, and it must be practiced routinely, like learning to play tennis or the piano.

2. One-On-One Delivery: Teaming with an experienced brain trainer provides accountability, motivation, and ultimately, life-changing results.

3. Intensity: Brain training exercises need to be intense, requiring concentrated repetitions to train skills quickly.

4. Targeted: Brain training exercises need to be targeted to address specific weak cognitive skills.

5. Sequencing: Small challenging steps don’t overwhelm the client but rather allow the brain trainer to continually challenge the client incrementally and keep them engaged in the training.

6. Loading: Progressively loading incorporates multitasking and is a fast-track way to take a new skill and make it a more automatic skill.

7. Immediate feedback: For brain training to be effective, brain training requires immediate, accurate feedback, instant, effective reinforcement, and adjustments to keep training focused and intense.

Who can personal brain training help?

LearningRx has helped children, teens, seniors, soldiers, traumatic brain injury survivors, and other adults enhance their lives with one-on-one cognitive skills training. Our personal brain training programs target each client’s specific goals to learn, perform and comprehend better, faster, and easier.

We have helped clients with a wide variety of conditions, including ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia (math struggles), autism spectrum, memory decline, homework challenges, and other learning disabilities. Our programs can benefit each individual based on their Brain Skills Assessment results, and almost anyone can benefit from targeted brain training.

If you’re looking to make 2022 the year that you help your student, yourself, or someone you love lose the labels, boost their confidence, strengthen their underlying cognitive skills, contact your nearest LearningRx personal brain training center.

We’ll schedule a one-hour Brain Skills Assessment to measure each of their cognitive skills. We’ll design a program to target and train any weak brain skills, unlocking the brain’s full potential with those results.

To read our Results Report. Prefer to hear from LearningRx graduates in their own words? Visit www.StudentShoutouts.com.

You have nothing to lose but labels—and you may gain a faster, more confident learner!