Brain training for Children

Brain training for Children


Parents may wonder is brain training suitable for children and students
to help improve IQ or to assist them in their education. The idea that
our Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is an inherited trait that is fixed for
life is a common but mistaken one. The RaiseYourIQ intellectual skills
intervention is called SMART training (Strengthening Mental Abilities
with Relational Training). We do not teach children and students
anything that they can use in their examinations (e.g., how to multiply,
the capital of Canada). Instead a RaiseYourIQ course will teach the
foundational reasoning skills crucial to vocabulary acquisition and
mathematical reasoning. In effect, we are giving kids, students and
adults the tools to learn more effectively. Moreover our training
re-mediates deficits in these skills bases that cannot be taught at
school efficiently without extensive one-to-one assistance, plus SMART
can even help children to catch up to and even surpass the population
average in intellectual ability. The SMART brain training course can
act as a springboard from which future learning occurs across all age
groups.

A Social Selling Guide for Sales Leaders – The Bitter Business

A Social Selling Guide for Sales Leaders – The Bitter Business

A social selling strategy starts at the top. If sales
management and senior executives are suspicious about social media – if they
only see risk, their people wasting time clicking “Like” buttons and employees
posting funny pictures, then they would be right to draw down the shutters and,
in the process, cut off the opportunity social media presents.

If, on the other hand, they want to become a social business
and prepared to invest in training to optimise its potential and reduce risk,
to reconfigure operations so that departments work together digitally, not in
silos. Then social selling could be the key to unlocking the data insights into
customers and prospects. Where do they engage, digitally? What language do they
use? How active are they? What external content do they share? There is a mountain
of social data out there if a business knows how to mine it.

Some 62 per cent of Irish companies said they used social
media platforms as their primary method for connecting with customers, up from
58 per cent and 46 per cent in 2014 and 2013 respectively.   (Compiled by CSO December 2015)

So how many of our companies have formal social selling
programs, policies and KPI’s in place?

The social networks allow us to interact with other human
beings in meaningful ways online. Social Selling is an evolutionary step
forward making the sales process more productive and meaningful. It is not about
using social media to shout at, stalk, or spam people digitally. It is not
about employing the social channels to replace cold calling/sales outreach or
replacing the telephone with Twitter and LinkedIn.

The reality is that integrating social media into your
team’s selling process is a must if you expect your salespeople to break
through the competitive clutter and reach buyers who are better informed and
more digitally connected than ever before.

A well planned social selling program will see sellers will
use the online channels at the front end of the sales cycle to be useful, to network,
build their online brand, and be found, demonstrate credibility, generate leads
and conduct presales customer engagement. Social channels can and should also
be used to nurture existing customer relationships and as part of account based
management

To turn your sales organisation into a social selling
machine, you need to do these things:

Accept that buyer behaviour and the buyers journey has
changed. Sales management must shift their mindsets. The selling world is
different than it was five or ten years ago. Some if not most of the sales
tactics that worked when a business was building its customer base, are not
working for sales teams today. Saturated with sales approaches, buyers ignore phone
calls and emails from people they have never heard off. It takes so much more
effort to break through the noise these days. Sales people must alter their
sales approach.  The role of sales
leadership is to help them learn how to do it.

Develop a social selling strategy. Engage both the marketing
and sales teams as part of the planning process.  Be careful not to head straight for social
selling training without having thought through items like culture, change,
KPI’s, content and making social selling a consistent activity. Heading
straight to tactics without executive sponsorship and a well developed plan is
a recipe for failure.

Establish social etiquette and social media guidelines. Sales
people need to know what is expected of them from their actions online. Sales
people present themselves PLUS the company brand. Remember what is posted online
stays there is forever, while mistakes are bound to happen a business can
reduce any risk by ensuring that all the sales teams understand the art of
communicating online. As important is to teach them what is and is not appropriate
to say and do on behalf of your company when they are using social networks as
part of their selling activities. Less than 26% of sales people know how to use
social media correctly as part of their sales activities.

Include social selling training into the bigger sales training
plan. The digitally connected buyer means that sales behaviours have to change
and sales people need to understand how to strategically use the social
networks in the right way. If a company or sales people just view social
channels as a vehicle to spam prospects with vanilla sales pitches, a huge
opportunity will be wasted, and the company brand is put at serious risk. Social
training should be ongoing and not just a one-time event at the end of
induction training.

Implement and focus on the metrics. Social activity is
not about doing more – make more connections, send more invitations, or do more
demos. Without the right metrics and KPI’s, sales teams can waste a lot of time
hitting like buttons. Without clear goals and objective sales people do not
link their social behaviour to social etiquette, policies or structure. They
commit “random acts of social” where at times self-promotion takes precedent
over company promotion. The quality of sales activities as a result of social
selling is what counts. Using the social networks to attain measurable sales
results is more important than checking off the box that says sales person A
sent 50 connection requests.

Be realistic in your expectations. Using the social channels
is not a quick fix to increasing sales pipeline and revenue. No one who
implemented a social selling plan saw results overnight. No surprise here as this
is no different from any other sales tactics a business may have invested in
for the sales teams. When it comes to the social channels learning how to do
things differently does take time. This is why the planning that goes into providing
the training and coaching that sales people need is vital so these new
approaches bear fruit overtime.

Social selling is an additive process. This is not a
replacement for phone calls and prospecting emails. It is an additive approach,
a prescriptive process like another arrow in the quiver that you should think
about, "How do I apply social to every prospect, every deal, every
account, every single day for no more than 30 to 60 minutes a day.

Forward thinking sales leaders know that social selling is not
some snake oil, nor is it a gimmicky approach to selling. These leaders know
social selling is another set of sales tools and an evolution in how we reach buyers
in the digital era. Social selling is a complement to traditional sales
methods—not a revolutionary approach that replaces them. Social selling, due to
its ability to enhance the customer journey, is an incredibly powerful sales
tool. But, like any tool, its value and utility are ultimately tied to the
skills of the individual employing it.

New Evidence That IQ Can Be Increased With Brain Training

 

A new scientific paper I produced along with Sarah Cassidy and other
colleagues, published in the journal Learning and Individual
Differences, shows that significant increases in general intelligence,
of 28 points on average, can be produced by undertaking online
relational skills training. Furthermore, significant improvements in
overall educational aptitude can be achieved by a few months of
practicing one's relational skills.
Bryan Roche
Source: Bryan Roche



In previous blogs, I have outlined the rationale behind this training
and argued that a Relational Frame Theory (RFT) approach to
intellectual development may hold the key to a functional approach to
brain training. That is, RFT claims to have identified some basic
building blocks of intellectual development, which center around the
ability to understand complex inter-relations among stimuli. For
example, understanding that if something is opposite to two other
things, then those two things must be the same as each other, involves a
relation skill. As another example, if one object is worth more than
another, the second one is worth less than the first. The idea that
these skills not only underlie intelligence, but constitute it, is core
to RFT, a modern behavioral approach, although it sits well with more
mainstream cognitive approaches.



While most of us are relatively proficient in basic relational
skills, we are actually quite deficient in solving more complex
relational problems. To address this deficiency, a form of online brain
training called SMART training (Strengthening mental abilities with
relational training) was developed by Relational Frame Theory
researchers at Maynooth University.



The Cassidy et al. study is the second such study to be published by
the Maynooth University team to show that SMART training can increase
general intelligence as measured by standardized IQ tests, such as the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). This new study,
however, provides additional evidence that scholastic ability, as
measured by a gold standard aptitude test known as the Differential
Aptitude Test (DATs), also increases as a result of this very particular
form of intellectual skills training.



As documented in previous research, the IQ rises cannot be easily
accounted for by practice at the IQ test, because the IQ test was
administered only twice, with a several month interval between
administrations. Furthermore, IQ rises due to practice are usually very
small compared to the rises reported in this latest study. Further
still, the training administered to the sample of 11-12 year old
children employed in Experiment 1 of this study, was dissimilar to an IQ
test. The same applies to the DATs aptitude test. This was administered
only twice, and the increases in scores observed for numerical and
verbal reasoning far outstripped the increases expected by practice at
the test itself. Once again, the online relational skills training did
not in any way teach the items on the DATs test.
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This is the second SMART study to achieve what critics of “brain
training” treat as the benchmark for acceptable brain training; the
transfer of skills from the training to other tasks. In this regard the
Cassidy study provides more evidence that brain training can work to
enhance essential intellectual skills, at least if it focuses on
relational skills, or what RFT researchers call Arbitrarily Applicable
Relational Responding.



A common criticism of brain training is that while it may improve
some cognitive skills needed to complete the training, any benefits may
have no practical relevance to daily life. In the current study,
however, a sample of 30 14-15 year old children were tracked across
several months of online training, 2-3 times per week for 30-45 minutes.
Practice at relational skills, increased their numerical and verbal
reasoning abilities, as measured by the DATs (administered and scored by
independent third parties) by a significant degree. Together these
numerical indices are used by educators to assess a child’s overall
“educational aptitude”, which is the child’s ability to perform well in
school across the board. By finding a significant increase in scholastic
ability, the current study suggests that SMART relational skills
training can make a real and measurable difference to the educability of
a child.



While more evidence is always required when such promising results are reported by any new Brain Training
method, the case is mounting that a relational frame theory approach to
intellectual development may indeed have identified some basic building
blocks of intelligence, once thought to be an unchangeable trait.

New Evidence That IQ Can Be Increased With Brain Training | Psychology Today

New Evidence That IQ Can Be Increased With Brain Training | Psychology Today

A new scientific paper I produced along with Sarah Cassidy and other colleagues, published in the journal Learning and Individual Differences, shows that significant increases in general intelligence,
of 28 points on average, can be produced by undertaking online
relational skills training. Furthermore, significant improvements in
overall educational aptitude can be achieved by a few months of
practicing one's relational skills.

Source: Bryan Roche

In previous blogs, I have outlined the rationale behind this training and argued that a Relational Frame Theory (RFT) approach to intellectual development may hold the key to a functional approach to brain
training. That is, RFT claims to have identified some basic building
blocks of intellectual development, which center around the ability to
understand complex inter-relations among stimuli. For example, understanding
that if something is opposite to two other things, then those two
things must be the same as each other, involves a relation skill. As
another example, if one object is worth more than another, the second
one is worth less than the first. The idea that these skills not only
underlie intelligence, but constitute it, is core to RFT, a modern
behavioral approach, although it sits well with more mainstream cognitive approaches.


While most of us are relatively proficient in basic relational
skills, we are actually quite deficient in solving more complex
relational problems. To address this deficiency, a form of online brain
training called SMART training (Strengthening mental abilities with
relational training) was developed by Relational Frame Theory
researchers at Maynooth University.  


The Cassidy et al. study is the second such study to be published by the Maynooth University team
to show that SMART training can increase general intelligence as
measured by standardized IQ tests, such as the Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children (WISC). This new study, however, provides additional
evidence that scholastic ability, as measured by a gold standard
aptitude test known as the Differential Aptitude Test (DATs), also
increases as a result of this very particular form of intellectual
skills training.


As documented in previous research,
the IQ rises cannot be easily accounted for by practice at the IQ test,
because the IQ test was administered only twice, with a several month
interval between administrations. Furthermore, IQ rises due to practice
are usually very small compared to the rises reported in this latest
study. Further still, the training administered to the sample of 11-12
year old children employed in Experiment 1 of this study, was dissimilar
to an IQ test. The same applies to the DATs aptitude test. This was
administered only twice, and the increases in scores observed for
numerical and verbal reasoning far outstripped the increases expected by
practice at the test itself. Once again, the online relational skills
training did not in any way teach the items on the DATs test.

Advertisement

This is the second SMART study to achieve what critics of “brain
training” treat as the benchmark for acceptable brain training; the
transfer of skills from the training to other tasks. In this regard the
Cassidy study provides more evidence that brain training can work to
enhance essential intellectual skills, at least if it focuses on
relational skills, or what RFT researchers call Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding.


A common criticism of brain training is that while it may improve some cognitive
skills needed to complete the training, any benefits may have no
practical relevance to daily life. In the current study, however, a
sample of 30 14-15 year old children were tracked across several months
of online training, 2-3 times per week for 30-45 minutes. Practice at
relational skills, increased their numerical and verbal reasoning
abilities, as measured by the DATs (administered and scored by
independent third parties) by a significant degree. Together these
numerical indices are used by educators to assess a child’s overall
“educational aptitude”, which is the child’s ability to perform well in
school across the board. By finding a significant increase in scholastic
ability, the current study suggests that SMART relational skills
training can make a real and measurable difference to the educability of
a child.


While more evidence is always required when such promising results
are reported by any new brain training method, the case is mounting that
a relational frame theory approach to intellectual development may
indeed have identified some basic building blocks of intelligence, once
thought to be an unchangeable trait.