Cognitive Skills Training that Sticks

Brain Training that Sticks

One of the questions we get asked most often when folks look at the dramatic growth BrainWare SAFARI users experience is their cognitive skills is What happens later? In other words, do cognitive skills stick around once we stop using the program or are they there months after we finish the initial training?

The available neuroscience research would suggest that they would stick around. Just as we still remember how to walk, how to ride a bike, how to tie our shoelaces, something we do over and over again until it becomes automatic, is, well  automatic. The pattern of connections is simply there without conscious effort. The same principles should apply to attention and working memory and visualization.

And now we have data from a study in Topeka Kansas that shows this in real life. 150 students at an elementary school used BrainWare SAFARIi four times a week for 11 weeks. They improved their skills on three cognitive tests by an average of 1 year 10 months. Their improved performance on these tests was commensurate with the results on the same tests from previously published research, in which cognitive growth on all measures averaged 4 years and 3 months.

Then the students were tested again 14 weeks later. Even though they had not used BrainWare SAFARI during that time, most of the students continued their accelerated cognitive growth, adding an average of another 1 year 3 months over that time. Three students declined very slightly, maintaining most of their original growth. Overall, on average, the students in this BrainWare SAFARI study grew 3 years 2 months intellectually in less than 6 months.

Seeing theory play out in a real-life setting, for kids who now have skills that can help them for a lifetime, is very rewarding. With the right tool, improvement in cognitive skills can be very sticky indeed!