This text-based course is a transcript of the seminar, “Developing strategies for executive function deficits: A group model for patient treatment/parent training” presented by Stephanie Mayer Volker, M.S., CCC-SLP.
Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today on this topic that surrounds the idea of cognitive rehabilitation and compensatory strategies development. Today’s focus is going to be on a group model that we developed in our program to address executive function deficits.
We will briefly review the components of cognitive rehabilitation. I want to give you an overview of the treatment group that we did that was very heavily focused on parent training. Our group used a model of executive skills that are outlined in the book, “Smart But Scattered”, and also “Executive Function Skills in Children and Adolescents” by Peg Dawson, Ed.D. and Richard Guare, Ph.D. I will also discuss case studies and strategies that we developed in the group.
Cognitive Rehabilitation
Does It Work?
Very briefly, we all want to know that what we are doing is evidence-based and there is efficacy out there to support the use of cognitive rehabilitation. It has been proven that it does work for executive function disorders; including impaired self-awareness which is a big component of why so many of the children that we see struggle. They really do not know what is going on. So, we use a lot of awareness building models within our treatment.
Who Can Benefit?
The first question is who can benefit from cognitive rehabilitation? At our program we use the definition of “anyone who has deficits in their thinking or cognitive skills.” While our program was originally intended to serve children coming out of the hospital with a new onset of a neurological disease, disorder or injury we have really grown into treating children with a variety of diagnoses. Some of the cases are acute and some of them are chronic. The chronic group is much broader in that we see children with learning disabilities, Tourette’s syndrome, etc who demonstrate executive dysfunction.
What is It?
In the literature there are a variety of definitions or description of what cognitive rehab is. Some highlights that I like to point out are that it targets improved measurable and satisfying functional outcomes. I want to highlight that “functional outcome” means we are not overly worried about test scores or profiles on a neurocognitive evaluation or anything like that. We want to see these children and their families reporting improved functional gains.
