Thinking Skills

Part of the process of growing up is developing an understanding of how the world works.  This requires the ability to attend to the world, and to understand how the parts of it work together.  Here, we are discussing software that helps the user understand many of the basic interactions of the world.

• In order to understand how things change over time, a person must learn to maintain attention on a specific task over time.  This type of software rewards sustained attention for those that are easily distracted.
• Most things in life do not happen randomly.  They are the result of other things happening.  We call this relationshipo "cause and effect."  Cause and effect software can be as basic as "pressing a button makes noise" to much more complicated relationships.
• In order to understand change over time, a person must be able to remember what the past was like, to compare to the present.  Memory development software can be simple "'concentration" games, or much more elaborate.
• A basic part of understanding the world is to recognize that things continue to exist when they are out of sight.  Object permanence is slightly different from memory, in that the seen object is not just like the one experienced in the past, it is the same object!
• Pattern recognition is an awareness of relationships between objects and events.  The ability to recommend patterns means that a person seeing an object or event is alerted to the likely occurance of other parts of the pattern.
• Much of the world can appear as a puzzle.  The relationships between events and objects are hidden, and a person must solve the puzzle to understand and move forward.  Problem solving software often starts with simple relationships and moves to more complex relationships that are what are found in daily life.

What component of thinking skills are you looking for?