The Difference Between Brain Training and Tutoring

 One of the most frequently asked questions we get when parents contact LearningRx is, “What’s the difference between brain training and tutoring?” The question comes from both parents who are considering tutoring and those who have tried it with little or no results. We understand! Certainly, no one wants to invest more time and money into a personal brain training program if they think it’s similar to something they’ve already tried.  

The good news is, LearningRx personal brain training is very different from tutoring. That’s because learning is made up of two components: educational content and the cognitive ability to learn and apply that content to school, work, and life in general. 

How Tutoring Works

Tutoring is a resource for delivering or redelivering material that was missed the first time. If a student missed a chunk of school due to an illness, injury, or family move mid-schoolyear, for example, tutoring can help get them “caught up”. 

For students who are frustrated and falling behind in multiple classes year after year, tutoring probably won’t help—or it may provide a temporary fix. Instead, it’s likely that one or more brain skills need a boost to help the student learn, understand, and remember the information the first time. Instead of reteaching the same material in hope that it will “stick,” personal brain training addresses the root cause of the problem by targeting and strengthening the foundational tools that make learning fast and easy.  

How does personal brain training work? 

Our research has found that most learning struggles occur when one or more cognitive skills aren’t as strong as they could be. Often referred to as “brain skills,” these foundational tools include attention, memory logic & reasoning, processing speed, and auditory and visual processing.  

Some of these skills can be broken down into sub-skills. Take memory, for example. While long-term memory enables us to recall information stored in the past and working (a.k.a. short-term) memory enables us to hang on to information while we’re in the process of using it. Likewise, there are three types of attention: sustained, divided, and selective. Sustained attention enables us to stay focused on a task for a sustained period of time. Divided attention enables us to remember information while doing two things at once. Selective attention is what lets us stay focused and on task despite distractions.  

How We Determine Which Skills to Work on

At LearningRx, we start every initial consultation with a discussion about your student’s struggles, a demonstration of personal brain training, and a one-hour Brain Skills Assessment. The latter provides us with results to help us pinpoint which cognitive skills are strong and which can be strengthened more to bring out the student’s full learning potential. 

If you choose to enroll your student in a LearningRx personal brain training program, our team will use the results of the Brain Skills Assessment to create a personal brain training program designed to target and strengthen the skills most in need of a boost. 

Every student is paired with a personal brain trainer for the duration of their program. Why? Because we have found that human-to-human interaction far outperforms training on a computer. Your student’s trainer will use fun game-like mental exercises to challenge specific cognitive skills, strengthen them, and build confidence for learning.

Learn More about Brain Training Options

We also encourage you to download our Results Report and Client Outcomes, which includes brain training results from 21,974 LearningRx graduates collected over a nine-year period. Our programs use 35+ years of research and development to help our clients improve their performance at work, school, and in life. 

To schedule a Brain Skills Assessment, visit www.LearningRx.com and enter your city or zip code to find your nearest LearningRx center. There’s no obligation to sign up for a brain training program and the results of the assessment will likely provide you with a wealth of information to help you determine the next steps to help your student.