Cognition is the brain’s ability to process sensory input through our experiences to help us learn, remember, think, and make decisions. Cognitive impairments can result in poor memory, problem-solving skills, decision making, and attention.

To create an appropriate plan of care for your child, your therapist will complete a thorough evaluation. Depending on your child’s age, communication abilities, and support needs, this could include a structured standardized assessment, play-based observation, and/or parent interview.

Once the evaluation has been completed and your speech therapist has created a plan of care (list of long and short-term goals) for your child, weekly treatment sessions will begin. Sessions may include structured tasks to improve your child’s cognitive skills. For those with difficulty remembering, therapy may include teaching a variety of compensatory skills that can improve your child’s ability to answer questions about stories they read at school, recall multi-step directions, and more. If solving problems is a challenging task for your child, therapy may include visual prompts, social scenes, inferencing work, and more. The goal is to help your child participate in all of their settings as easily as possible, gain confidence in their skills, and gain more independence.

Therapy will likely use multi-sensory activities to help your child improve their cognitive skills. Using a variety of auditory, tactile, and visual cues is the best way to make a positive difference for your child!