Cognitive Development Programs for Learning Disabilities

♥ Can teaching and learning improve intelligence? Cognitive development programs?

The most defining and distinctive characteristic of people with intellectual disabilities is the cognitive deficit; hence the importance of cognitive education for these individuals (Helina, S., 2002). A person may have a language deficit, but that does not mean they have a cognitive deficit.

The sciences of psychology, logic, and pedagogy are now in a position to provide teachers with the technical resources to support intellectual development (Landa, 1988).

It is clear that if a child has a learning disability, there is a school teacher with difficulty. (Wedell, 1988)

Programs come in response to cognitive development.

Concept of Cognitive Processes

We must relate this to the concept of intelligence that emerged after the mid-twentieth century, in which:

• Intelligence is more than conscious intellectual faculties; it involves operative processes and speech-related capabilities.
• It is not sufficient to measure only intellectual capacity; we must evaluate learning potential.

Two Sciences

1. The psychology of learning.
2. Didactics (special education, compensatory education).

Both are responsible for the teaching and learning of groups of people with difficulties.

Processes

A process is the act or series of regular activities that occur or are carried out in a defined form, which lead to the fulfillment of a result — a continuous operation or series of transactions.

Cognition

Cognition is the ability of individuals to process information and produce a response. For example, seeing two identical objects with different shapes yet recognizing they represent the same concept demonstrates cognitive assimilation.

Psychology has described a series of interdependent steps that define different stages of processing.

Simple and Complex Cognitive Processes

Simple (basic) cognitive processes:

1. Feelings
2. Perception
3. Attention and concentration
4. Memory

Higher (complex) cognitive processes:

1. Thought
2. Language
3. Intelligence

Classes of Cognitive Processes

The three authors Luria (neurological functions), DAS (cognitive processes), and Feuerstein (cognitive functions) describe types of processes in different ways. Despite their differing terminology, they roughly group processes into:

• Collection (gathering information)
• Processing (transforming and organizing information)
• Response/Decision (producing an appropriate behavioral or cognitive output)