Learning with Playdough
BrainFit Studio A Review Part 2
Read here for Part 1 of BrainFit Studio A Review
K underwent a 2 hour Cognitive Assessement test at BrainFit Studio to determine his cognitive profiling of his 4 brain pillars of Visual, Auditory, Sensory-Motor and Attention-Memory. So how did he fare?
The assessments in BrainFit’s COGNITIVEMAP assessment test use standardized tests that are tried and tested on large sample of age-equivalent children. Usually, a standard score will range between 85-115 and the results are an approximation of the child’s abilities.
1. Visual
Results : –
i) Non Verbal IQ evaluates his ability to solve new problems by assessing his ability to perceive relationships and complete visual analogies. K’s score at 114 is at a high average
ii) His Visual Sequential Memory, which is his ability to remember the sequence of a series of forms, is above average. I was rather surprisde to see a high average score for this, as I used to think he has a bad memory for a 6 year old, hardly recalls what I tell him!
iii) Visual Motor Integration is the ability to co-ordinate his visual perception skills with his fingers and hands. He was able to draw quite a number of visual patterns quite accurately, even as the patterns became more difficult as he continued in the activity. This could be a result of taking art classes the last 6 months, which I think have been crucial in helping him to improve his overall visual skills.
iv) Eye Control Relative Speed and Accuracy measures the skills required for reading tasks. His eye control is high above average, however accuracy can be further improved. Nonetheless, this is a heartening point for me, as this is an indication that there is definitely hope that his lazy eye condition will continue to improve over time!
2. Auditory
i) Verbal IQ evaluates his word knowledge, general IQ, verbal concept and reasoning ability, his scores were a high average
ii) Fluency of recognition of numbers is high
iii) Phonological Skills, Auditory Memory is low, and Phonological Blending is low on average. I didn’t think this was much of a concern since K is able to read English chapter books fluently. As I sat in throughout the full session of the assessment tests, I found the Phonological skills and blending tests very tough, I couldn’t get the right answers to the questions either!
From these auditory skills assessments, I discovered that his problem was not being able to hear or understand the instructions, but he practices selective listening as he can get easily distracted, which affects his auditory and visual attention spans.
3. Motor
Results : –
i) Manual Dexterity or measurement of his Fine Motor Skills scores is low. Manual Dexterity also gives an indication of body and spatial awareness, which activates the Parietal Lobe in the brain. The Parietal Lobe plays an important role in integrating sensory information from various parts of the body, and it is also involved in symbolic functions in language (especially Chinese characters and Mathematics!!)
ii) Aiming and Catching – K is weak at catching the beanbag, however he has very high accuracy in aiming when he threw the beanbag onto the map. This balanced the test scores to an average for this activity.
iii) Balance – K’s balance is generally poor.
K have showed his strengths in his gross motor skills with his experience in racquet sports at a very tender age, and I am aware that male children generally tend to be slower in fine motor skills development in comparison to female children. However, his previous motor skill development reports from preschool have showed that he does have some issues with balance and he is unable to catch things well (butter-fingers?!?). I am wondering if this is related to his short-fall in his visual depth perception skills? Which is an apparent problem with lazy eye conditions.
4. Attention
Results : –
The feedback that i got from the Brainfit consultant for these results were that K was not impulsive child, who will not ‘act before thinking’. He did not pre-empt the actions from the computer programme, and reacted in tune with the ‘right’ visual and auditory stimuli. The only issue he had was a tendency to miss the visual cues during the evaluation, as he tends to get distracted over longer periods and will become rather fidgety.
I had the impression that K had bad impulse control, so the results from this segment of tests surprised me. As for the part about being distracted and fidgety, that was not a surprise, since I often say this to him, “Do you have ants in your pants?
Brain Fitness Programme Selected
Based on K’s cognitive profile, Brainfit programme consultant Ai Min recommended K attends a total of 80 sessions of classes, which was a combination from each of the specific brain pillars. Read here for the various types of programmes BrainFit offers; SMART Moves, SMART Vision, SMART Listening, SMART Focus, SMART EQ.
Since BrainFit have kindly sponsored 20 sessions of classes for the purpose of this review, I decided to focus on one specific pillar that I felt he had the most short-fall, Sensory-Motor. Instead of experiencing a mix of classes in this 20 sessions for a combination of brain pillars. By taking this approach, I am sure the results from the post-evaluation Cognitive Assessment Test will be more indicative of the progress made from his Sensory-Motor brain pillar.
The other reason why I chose Sensory-Motor pillar, is that I have been intrigued by research done on the brain’s Parietal Lobe. Where it has been written that the Parietal lobe is a core part of the brain that is utilized in reading Chinese characters, and if an individual experienced deficiencies, it will be a cause for difficulties in Math.
Let me put this in simpler terms :
His chinese definitely needs ALOT of help. And I am now even more intrigued to find out if 20 sessions of SMART Moves from Brainfit Studio will help him to exercise his Parietal lobe in his brain. In turn, improving his focus, coordination and fine motor skills, and maybe, even improve his propensity to learn Chinese and Math!
So look out for next post on my review of BrainFit Studio in the next 10 weeks to find out what K did in his SMART Moves programme, as well as the final outcome of the 20 sessions.
Location of BrainFit Centres :
BrainFit Studio, Novena : 193 – 197 Thomson Road Goldhill Centre Singapore 307633 Tel: 6737 3511 Fax: 6737 4533
BrainFit Studio, East : 83, East Coast Road Singapore 428786 Tel: 6346 4386
BrainFit Studio, Serangoon Garden : 74 & 74A Serangoon Garden Way Singapore 555970 Tel : 6281 1343
Disclosure : I was sponsored CognitiveMap Assessment by Brainfit for the purpose of this review. Results of the assessment tests shared in this post are from a cognitive profiling assessment report of K provided by Brainfit Studios, but all opinions are my own.
Related posts:
BrainFit Studio A Review Part 1
Besides having a slight ‘impaired’ vision with his lazy eye problem., K hardly listens to my instructions when he has to complete a task, despite gentle and persistent reminders.
I have realized that gentle does not quite work, since I have to repeat the same thing at least 3-4 times, coupled with a fairly loud and stern voice, until he finally acknowledges and follows through with the instructions. So I have long come to this conclusion that he needed some help in improving his listening skills.
Until he recently underwent an assessment test and I was rather surprised by the results.
I was introduced to the concept of brain fitness by Brainfit Studio and invited to review their programme by testing it out with K for 10 weeks. Part of this programme included this cognitive assessment test to determine the K’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and the results of this brain profiling test will be used to personalize a brain fitness programme for K.
Brain fitness is an unfamiliar concept for me, based on its definition on Wikipedia, ‘brain fitness reflects a hypothesis that cognitive abilities can be maintained or improved by exercising the brain, in analogy to the way physical fitness is improved by exercising the body.’ Rather similar to the concept that high levels of mental activity is associated with less risk of age-related dementia.
So how does Brain fitness work for a 6 year old child? Here is Brainfit Studio take on it. Their proprietary CognitiveMap assessment measures the child’s cognitive skills, and identify areas that can be improved. These are series of standardized tests that are used to measure the areas in the 5 brain pillars of Visual, Sensory-Motor, Auditory, Attention and Memory and Socio-Emotional.
In this first two parts of my review post for the Brainfit programme, I will detail the type of tests that K experienced and the results of his assessment.
1. Visual i) This test of Visual Perception Skills measures the child’s ability to interpret what he sees – Visual Sequential Memory
This test measured K’s ability to remember the sequence of a series of forms.
ii) Developmental test of Visual-Motor Integration
This evaluates K’s ability to coordinate his visual perception skills with finger / hand movements. He was asked to look at visual patterns (got more difficult as he continued) and he had to draw them as accurately as possible, without using a ruler.
iii) Developmental Eye Movement Test
This measure skills required for reading tasks, K had to name the series of numbers in succession as quickly as he could. This test assessed number fluency, eye control speed (reading the numbers from left to right, horizontal then vertical) and measures eye control accuracy. These were useful tests that could determine possible reading difficulties that the child may have.
iv) Handwriting speed test
As K is only 6 years old, the speed of his handwriting was not the key indicator for this test. Rather, other factors like his pencil grasp, print pressure, alignment , sizing and spacing between letters and words were assessed.
According to the report by Brainfit, handwriting may reflect a child’s under-lying sensory-motor skills, cognition, memory, perception and motivation.
2. Auditory
i) The test of Auditory Perceptual Skills assesses the auditory skills needed for the use, development and understanding of language commonly utilized in academic and daily activities.
K was told by the assessor to close his eyes so that he could focus on the series of auditory tests that followed :
ii) Word Discrimination – this measure K’s ability to detect differences in the initial, middle or end segments of one and two-syllable words presented verbally. Phonological Segmentation determined how well he could manipulate phonemes (the smallest unit of sound within words). Number memory (Digits forward and Reverse) measured his rote memory of sequence of verbal information. Word and Sentence Memory measured the number of words in a series (one, two syllable and compound words) that he can recall, and retain details in sentences of increasingly length and grammatical complexity.
3. Sensory-Motor
The Movement Assessment Battery for children evaluates the motor coordination abilities of children that are important for school and social performance
i) Manual Dexterity measures the child’s fine motor skills involving hand and finger manipulation, important for developing handwriting skills.
Key activities that were incorporated to measure dexterity were threading beads, posting coins and drawing a trail.
ii) Aiming and Catching activities measure the child’s hand-eye coordination through throw and catch activities; Throwing beanbag onto mat and Catching Beanbag
iii) Balance evaluates the child’s ability to coordinate the body in balancing tasks
Activities include; One-leg balance, Walking Heels Raised and Jumping on Mats.
4. Attention and Memory
The Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test is a computerized test if attention which measures responses to 500 intermixed visual and auditory stimuli spaced 1.5 seconds apart. The child has to click the mouse when he hears or sees ‘1’ on the screen, and refrain from clicking when he hears or sees ‘2’.
This activity evaluates impulse control, or acting without thinking, and visual and auditory attention.
5. Social Skills
The Social Skills improvement system evaluates a child’s social skills based on a questionnaire that I had to complete. The results were subjective to my assessment of what I knew from K’s behavior, so the results will not be included in this review post.
Through these tests, I realized that there is only so much that a parent can understand from her child’s development through observation, by spending one-on-one time together and with some home-learning experiences with the child. So I was rather surprised with some of the results from this Cognitive assessment test. Stay tuned to read the next post for the results of the assessment test from Part 2 of Brainfit Studio A Review next week.
Location of BrainFit Centres :
BrainFit Studio, Novena : 193 – 197 Thomson Road Goldhill Centre Singapore 307633 Tel: 6737 3511 Fax: 6737 4533
BrainFit Studio, East : 83, East Coast Road Singapore 428786 Tel: 6346 4386
BrainFit Studio, Serangoon Garden : 74 & 74A Serangoon Garden Way Singapore 555970 Tel : 6281 1343
Disclosure : I was sponsored CognitiveMap Assessment by Brainfit for the purpose of this review. Descriptions of the assessment tests shared in this post are from an assessment report of K provided by Brainfit Studios, but all opinions are my own.