Three Cognitive Skills Needed for Reading

Three Cognitive Skills Needed for Reading

It has been well documented that Phonemic Awareness, the ability to detect sounds in words, is the foundation for learning to read.  

But what if the student can’t “hear” the sounds or remember the sounds long enough to blend them together?

A closer look into the student’s cognitive skills may provide the answer.

There are three cognitive skills that must be adequately developed, if reading skills are going to improve:  Attention, Working Memory and Processing Speed skills.

Attention

Our Attention allows us to choose which stimulus (thought) to focus on.  If a student has the ability and energy for sustained focus, learning can take place.   However, if a student cannot sustain focus, learning is disrupted.  For many students, sustained focus during learning can be painful.  It is quite easy to understand why students often choose an alternative stimulus (thought) to focus on.

Working Memory

Our Working Memory allows us to hold language and visual stimuli (information) in our minds long enough for us to “work” on the stimulus (thought).   Blending sounds together depend on an effective Working Memory; the sounds (stimuli) are held in working memory long enough to “work” on them. Blending sounds can be challenging when the Working Memory becomes overloaded.

Processing Speed

Processing Speed is the pace at which a student takes in a stimuli (information), tries to make sense of the stimuli and then begins to produce a response.  A student with Slow Processing Speed may see the word ‘cat’ and then slowly begins to “sound-out” the word (/c/…../a/…../t/).  The student must then figure out how to blend the sounds together and then say the word (cat).  If the Processing Speed is slow, it will reflect in the lack of automaticity needed for independent reading.

Training Cognitive Skills

Neurologists have long known that Attention, Working Memory and Processing Speed skills can be improved through “neuro-plasticity,” or making new connections in our brain.  Educators begin looking into recent neurological research to explain learning challenges and soon Educational Neuroscience was born.  As a relatively new science, Educational Neuroscience bridges the gap between neuroscience and education by applying what has been learned in neuroscience to education.

Results

Educational Neuroscience is changing the way teachers are instructing and students are learning.  Just this morning, I re-assessed a 7-year-old student. It was only a few weeks ago, he could not blend two syllables into a word.  Today after training his Attention, Working Memory and Processing skills, he had better focus and was able to blend multiple sounds together with 90% accuracy.  Simply Amazing!

Carleen M. Paul owns Skills for Success Learning, an online educational company providing students with the latest services in Educational Neuroscience. She can be reached at 951.858.1643 or SkillsForSuccessLearning.com