Brain Training Program Riveting and “Cool” for Kids

Another reading tutor, Kate Carter, who is an English major at Yale and works in one of the elementary schools in New Haven, added, “We see a lot of kids who haven’t developed the mental rigor to organize lists of things in their heads, or have the mental discipline to remember that ‘this is the list of stuff I need to do today,’ or are able to sit still and focus on something really hard for 15 minutes. The need for that type of mental exercise underscores the value of the C8 program. It develops a child’s attention span and ability to focus. It gets children to multitask in a way that’s fun and helps them learn categorization, pattern recognition and inductive thinking.”

C8Kids computer programs are based on the pioneering research done by Yale professor and senior research scientist Bruce Wexler, MD in his neurocognitive research lab. The computerized programs are designed to improve cognition in all children and help children who have learning problems like ADHD, by leveraging the brain’s ability to rewire itself through neural activity stimulated by the environment.

C8 programs adjust their difficulty up and down every 10 seconds to maintain the optimum challenge for each child. They not only know when a child makes a correct response or a mistake, the programs figure out what kind of mistakes they’re making through online error diagnostics. If a child makes the same mistake repeatedly, the computer program gives them suggestions on how to avoid that mistake. This provides individualized teaching for every child.

“There’s memory involved in doing the program,” Berger explained. “When you have the two-ball piece, you have to remember the ball that came before. There’s categorization in the butterflies. And when you get to a certain higher level, you’re not just doing one thing you’re doing two things. And you need to focus on everything, especially as it speeds up.  When you start hitting them right, the program speeds up and goes extremely fast at times, which gets other pieces of thinking. ‘What Comes Next’ makes you look at the pattern, figure out what the pattern is, and do it relatively quickly. If you jump ahead to a much higher level, it’s extremely hard. I can tell you from personal experience. But if you go along and move through the program as it’s meant to be moved through, you can do it.”

Dylan’s older sister Lyandra said, “The coolest thing about the program is all the levels. There are three main program levels: What Comes Next, Catch the Ball and Butterflies.” Her favorite? “Butterflies, because I got to level 102.” How did that make her feel? “Excited.” If she were talking to a friend about the program, what would she tell them? “You should try it, because it’s a lot of fun.”

“Lyandra really loved watching her level go up and being able to say that she got to level 102,” Carter shared. “That is important for her. Whether or not she’s succeeding in school, this shows her that she is good at something and that she has the mental powers to do something cool. The levels work for the kids. They like being able to track their progress.”

Lyandra and Dylan’s mom said she had “absolutely seen a difference at home” in her kids ability to focus and listen.

“That’s such a big piece of the value of this program besides kids learning to think,” said Berger. “There are so many kids we see in the school system that people describe as having attention deficit; whether it’s an actual attention deficit or not I don’t know, but they have real trouble focusing. Whether it’s a language barrier or it really is an attention deficit, if this could help kids in that situation, this is just enormous. It’s huge.”