Cognitive skills training
Wave Rx: cognitive skills training
Cognitive skills training that strengthens the thinking skills sitting underneath learning and behaviour.
Train the brain behind the behaviour and the learning.
What brings families here
- “He knows it on Monday and it has gone by Wednesday.”
- “She reads the words but cannot tell me what happened.”
- “Instructions have to be repeated three or four times.”
What we work on
Areas Wave Rx covers
Attention and concentration
Staying with a task, filtering out the noise around it, and coming back after an interruption.
Memory
Holding on to instructions long enough to act on them, and keeping what was learned last week.
Processing speed
Taking information in and acting on it without the delay that makes classrooms hard.
Executive functioning
Starting, planning, sequencing and finishing, and switching when the plan changes.
Problem solving
Working out what to do when the answer is not already known.
Cognitive flexibility
Moving between ideas and methods rather than getting stuck on one.
Planning and organisation
Breaking work into steps, ordering them, and keeping track of materials and time.
Visual and auditory processing
Making sense of what is seen and heard, which underpins reading and following instructions.
What cognitive training actually is
Cognitive skills are the tools the brain uses to take information in, hold on to it, make sense of it and act on it. Attention, memory, processing speed, reasoning. They are not knowledge, they are the machinery that acquires knowledge. A child can be bright, motivated and well taught, and still struggle if one of those tools is weak.
Cognitive training works directly on that machinery. It is not teaching. There is no curriculum, no homework and no subject matter. The work is a series of mental tasks done one to one with a trainer, repeated at increasing difficulty, targeting one skill at a time until it strengthens.
It is closer to physiotherapy than to tutoring. A physiotherapist does not teach you about your knee. They load it, repeatedly, at the right intensity, until it does its job.
Why tutoring sometimes does not work
Most families arrive having already tried extra lessons. Sometimes that is exactly right. If a child has missed the content, teaching the content fixes it.
But if the difficulty sits underneath the content, more teaching lands on the same weak skill. A child who cannot hold three instructions in working memory does not need the instructions explained again. They need the working memory. That is why a family can spend two years on tutoring and see the same report card.
The honest version is that both have their place, and the assessment is what tells you which one you are looking at.
Finding out which skill is weak
Nothing starts until we know what we are working on. The assessment measures each of the seven skills separately, because a general impression that a child is struggling is not something you can train.
What comes out of it is specific. Not a label, but a profile: which skills sit where against others the same age, which one is dragging on the rest, and what a training plan would target first. You get that in writing, and you are free to take it and do nothing with it.
What the sessions are like
One trainer, one client, in the room together. The tasks look like games and are not. Difficulty rises as soon as something becomes easy, so the work stays at the edge of what the person can do, which is the point at which skills change.
It is intensive by design. Across the BrainRx programme worldwide, children and teens averaged 77 hours of training. Cognitive skills do not shift with an hour a fortnight, and we would rather say that plainly than sell a package that cannot work.
What it will not do
It will not teach your child the curriculum. If they have missed a year of maths, they still need to be taught that year of maths, and Wave Academy is the right place for it.
It is not a treatment for autism or ADHD, and it does not remove a diagnosis. It works on specific thinking skills, some of which are commonly weak in those profiles.
And it is not a guarantee. The research shows what has happened across tens of thousands of people. It cannot tell you what will happen for one child, and anyone quoting you a number in advance is guessing.
Straight answers
Questions we are asked about Wave Rx
Is cognitive training the same as tutoring?
No. Tutoring teaches subject content. Cognitive training works on the underlying skills used to learn any content, such as attention, working memory and processing speed. There is no curriculum and no homework.
Does my child need a diagnosis to start?
No. The assessment measures cognitive skills directly, so it works from what your child can and cannot do rather than from a label. Many families come to us before any diagnosis, and some never pursue one.
What age can start?
The programme has been used with clients from age four through to ninety-five. What matters more than age is whether the person can engage with the tasks, which is something the assessment establishes.
How long does it take?
It depends on which skills are weak and how weak they are. As a guide, children and teens across the BrainRx programme worldwide averaged 77 hours of training. We give you an estimate after the assessment rather than before it.
Will it improve school grades?
Sometimes, and not always directly. Stronger attention and working memory make teaching land better, which is usually where families notice the change first. If the gap is missed curriculum content, that needs teaching as well.
Is it one to one?
Yes. The training is delivered by a trainer working with one person, because the difficulty has to be adjusted continuously to stay at the edge of what that person can do.
How it works
Three steps, and you can stop after the first
Most families arrive worried they are about to be sold a package. Here is the whole process, so there are no surprises in it.
- 1
Talk to us
A free first conversation, in person or on the phone. You tell us what you are seeing. We tell you honestly whether we are the right people, and what we would look at first. Nothing is booked at this stage.
- 2
Assessment and plan
We look at the specific skills involved rather than the label. You get a written plan with goals we can measure, and you know what each session is for before it starts.
- 3
Sessions and visible progress
Work begins, with data tracked against those goals. You see the progress, you get the strategies to use at home, and the plan is reviewed as your child moves.
The other three
Often used alongside this
Evidence
Forty years of research sits behind this
Brain Wave is a licensed BrainRx provider, and BrainRx has been tested in randomised controlled trials and measured across 27,790 clients. We publish the findings in full, including their limits. See what the research shows.
Start here
Not sure if Wave Rx is the right starting point?
That is exactly what the first conversation is for. Tell us what you are seeing and we will tell you honestly where we would start, or whether another service fits better.