Wait! Brain Training and Tutoring Are Two Different Things?

Brain training and tutoring are often confused, and understandably so. Both help facilitate learning—just from different angles. Learning requires both strong educational content and the cognitive ability to learn and apply this content. When someone is dealing with learning challenges, it’s necessary to assess the root cause so you know what kind of help to seek. In this post, we’re going to explain the differences between tutoring and brain training to help you navigate the process.

Tutoring: A focus on content

Tutoring is an excellent way to enforce or reinforce content. For example, if your student missed many days or weeks of school due to illness and needs help catching up, tutoring is a logical choice. If your student is having a difficult time grasping a concept because the teacher isn’t doing a good job of explaining it, they may benefit from someone else’s explanation, hence, a tutor. Tutoring, however, deals exclusively with content. It’s a content-centric approach. It doesn’t address any underlying causes of a person’s difficulty with learning.

Brain training: A focus on cognitive skills

Brain training, on the other hand, doesn’t focus on delivering or re-delivering content. Instead, brain training helps enhance a person’s cognitive skills which ultimately improves their cognitive abilities.

• Have you or your student tried tutoring and yet continue to struggle?
• Does this struggle relate to multiple disciples or school subjects?
• Is reading comprehension a constant challenge?
• Do you feel like you need to work harder than your peers to get good grades or understand new concepts?

Brain training focuses on seven core cognitive areas: attention, long–term memory, working memory, logic & reasoning, auditory processing, visual processing and processing speed. It acknowledges that these cognitive areas are the backbone of learning and if they are weak, learning is a struggle. Let’s take a closer look:

Attention: This skill is important for accomplishing individual tasks, participating in activities and holding conversations. The ability to focus is dependent on one’s attention span. When a person has a good attention span, they can focus for an extended period of time. When attention is weak, a person is easily distracted.

Working and Long–Term Memory: Memory is a skill that helps a person build on previous knowledge. It allows a person to recall past information and apply it to a current task. When memory is weak, test-taking can be difficult and a person will easily forget names or other information they used to know. They may also have a difficult time following step-by-step instructions.

Logic and reasoning: Logic and reasoning helps a person solve problems or brainstorm new ideas. As a student, these skills help you solve math problems or present a well-crafted argument to your parents about why they should let you use the car or go to a party. As an adult, these same skills help you solve complex problems or brainstorm ideas for keeping your young kids busy with engaging activities during the long winter months. When logic and reasoning skills are weak, a person may frequently ask what to do next or express frustration because they feel stuck or overwhelmed.

Auditory Processing: Auditory processing is what happens when your brain recognizes and interprets the sounds around you. This skill enables you to analyze, blend and segment sounds. When someone struggles with auditory processing, learning to read, reading fluency and reading comprehension can be affected.

Visual Processing: Visual processing is what our brain uses to make sense of what we see in the world around us. This skill enables you to think in visual images. When a child is behind in visual processing skills, they may have difficulty understanding what they read, remembering what they’ve read, following directions, reading maps and doing word math problems.

Processing speed: Critical for performing tasks effectively and in a timely fashion, processing speed allows a person to process both visual and auditory information. When visual processing skills are weak, a person may have difficulty reading maps, remembering what they just read or working out word problems in math. When auditory processing is weak, a person can have difficulty reading or comprehending what they read. You may hear a child who struggles with auditory processing complain, “I don’t like to read.” Generally speaking, tasks are arduous and take a long time to complete.

When we help adults and children boost their cognitive skills, we target the specific parts of the brain that are weak to help stimulate them. Brain training makes processing and responding to content easier and more enjoyable and creates a more positive learning experience.

Knowledge is power. Now that you understand the difference between tutoring and brain training and have a more comprehensive idea of what we do at LearningRx, you probably have a better idea of how to proceed. If you’re still unsure whether you or your child could benefit from brain training at LearningRx, we put together a Brain Quiz that we think will help. Take our free Brain Quiz or contact us here!