Blue question mark on pink background.

Arrowsmith Program Exercises

Click an exercise to see the cognitive function it strengthens.

These are the 19 cognitive areas tested in the cognitive testing.

  • Motor Symbol Sequencing is Involved in:

    • automatic flow of ideas from one’s mind into writing 

    • writing and copying material quickly and accurately 

    • legibility of writing  

    • completing timed written tests, assignments, homework, and projects within the allotted time 

    • spelling words 

    • reading quickly and accurately

    • spoken communication

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • the writing process being experienced as laborious requiring significant effort so writing is often avoided

    • writing is slow and it takes significantly more time to complete written assignments

    • being unable to fully express their thoughts or demonstrate what they know in writing - the individual may have elaborate and detailed ideas, however very little of this content gets translated into the written word

    • spelling not being automatic so a word may be misspelled in different ways on the same page

    • errors occurring in written work, from copying the wrong line from a book or miscopying a math question

    • messy handwriting and often individuals with this difficulty prefer to print rather than handwrite

    • problems with eye-tracking in reading resulting in words being misread or skipped over and missed altogether in the reading process 

    • speech being hesitant and oral expression not being fluent

  • Symbol Relations is Involved in: 

    • cause and effect reasoning

    • understanding the ‘why’ of things 

    • grasping concepts across all academic disciplines

    • comprehension of what is read or heard

    • making rational and considered decisions

    • understanding the world, oneself, and others

    • fluid reasoning and flexibility of thought

    • logical grasp of mathematical concepts

    • understanding jokes, irony, metaphor, analogies

    • processing speed

    • insight

    • semantic grasp of language necessary for comprehension and vocabulary development

    • perspective taking which involves considering other points of view

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to Problems in:

    • understanding concepts

    • grasping logic in mathematics 

    • reading comprehension 

    • processing ideas quickly

    • understanding why events happen

    • needing to read material repeatedly to try to grasp meaning

    • a sense of uncertainty about whether the intended meaning (while reading or listening) has been correctly understood

    • considering alternative approaches to a problem which at times may lead to stubborn or rigid behaviour 

    • understanding grammar and doing grammatical analysis

    • learning how to read an analogue clock 

    • understanding relational concepts or puzzles such as ‘Sally is shorter than Jane who is taller than Mary. Who is the tallest?’  

    • understanding jokes, grasping irony, metaphors, analogies

    • understanding and communicating their own thoughts and feelings which may lead to feelings of frustration, anxiety and depression

    • letter reversals and difficulty learning to tell time in early grades are associated with a problem in this function

  • Memory for Information and Instructions is Involved in:

    • remembering instructions 

    • retaining factual information 

    • acquiring information through listening

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to Problems in:

    • retaining instructions

    • remembering facts, for example dates in history or that important anniversary date

    • following and remembering information from extended discussions, lectures, or conversations

    • acquiring information through listening

    • building up a bank of general information and knowledge

    • being seen as irresponsible, lazy or undependable as the individual often forgets what they have been asked to do so requested tasks don’t get completed 

    • remembering what the homework assignment is or what has been assigned in a work project

  • Predicative Speech is Involved in:

    • using internal dialogue to actively rehearse information to solidly retain it

    • using internal dialogue to guide one’s behaviour by rehearsing actions prior to acting

    • being able to put information in one’s own words 

    • learning steps in procedures such as mathematics

    • understanding and applying syntax (the order and organization of words in a sentence) for clear expression of ideas

    • understanding the meaning of words by how they are used in sentences which supports the learning/acquisition of vocabulary 

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • difficulty in speaking and writing in complete and grammatically correct sentences with resultant awkwardness in expression 

    • frequent misuse of prepositions 

    • problems restating information in one’s own words 

    • trouble learning the sequence of steps in math procedures 

    • difficulty learning vocabulary from context

    • problems in using inner speech to recode and retain information  

    The individual may be seen as lacking foresight, for example, carrying out an action prior to working out the necessary sequence of the steps in the action. This occurs because there is a problem with sequential logic and rehearsing information using internal speech prior to acting.

  • Broca’s Speech Pronunciation is Involved in:

    • learning to pronounce and read words through sound symbol correspondence. This is the phonetic aspect of reading. An example is easily learning and remembering what sounds are associated with different letter combinations 

    • learning the spoken component of a foreign language

    • ease and fluency of oral communication

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • problems in learning the sounds of letters and letter combinations

    • trouble learning to read phonetically (by sounding out words)

    • having a more limited spoken vocabulary as opposed to visual silent reading vocabulary. The individual knows the meaning of more words than they can use in speech.

    • mispronouncing words

    • challenges in learning how to pronounce words in a foreign language 

    • one’s speech being flat and monotone with a lack of rhythm and musical intonation

    • speaking requiring extra effort as energy is spent on recalling how to pronounce words that the individual knows the meaning of but is unsure of how to pronounce 

    • sometimes losing one’s train of thought when speaking due to the extra effort expended on remembering how to pronounce words

    • preferring to use a prepared script when giving a lecture or presentation so they can use words they are familiar with, rather than speaking ‘off the cuff’

    • being seen as shy or quiet in situations that involve speaking with people and getting drowned out by people who find it easy to speak

  • Non-Verbal Thinking is Involved in:

    • perceiving and accurately interpreting non-verbal information such as facial expression, body language, tone of voice

    • actively surveying a situation to obtain a full picture of what is happening before acting

    • using non-verbal cues and feedback from others in order to modify one’s behaviour 

    • empathy and emotional intelligence

    • registering, interpreting, and reflecting on one’s own emotions

    • planning, strategizing, goal setting and mental initiative in social situations to create a desired outcome 

    • focused attention in social situations

    • developing good negotiating skills

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • challenges in social interactions and building positive social relationships 

    • misapplying the social skill rules they are taught as they can’t discern where or when it is appropriate to apply them   

    • struggling in the classroom to read their teacher’s reactions or in the workplace to read their employer’s reactions so often don’t know if their actions are meeting with approval or not

    • difficulty in modifying one’s behaviour based on the non-verbal signals people are sending them 

    • acting inappropriately to mask difficulty - they may be shy in social situations hanging back from interacting or they may become the ‘clown’ acting out inappropriately to get attention  

    • struggling with interpreting and understanding their own emotions and the emotions of others and may over or under react in social situations  

    • ‘leaping before looking’ as the individuals don’t take in all the relevant information in a situation before acting and run into problems as a result because they are operating on incomplete and/or inaccurate information 

    • behaving impulsively in social situations 

  • Narrow Visual Span is Involved in:

    • how much one can see in a single visual fixation

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • eye strain in reading as the individual must take many more visual fixations than average to read given they see a narrow amount of print in any one fixation  

    • eye fatigue limiting the amount of time in one sitting that the individual can read 

    • feeling like their eye is getting a physical workout when reading

    • slow reading speed due to the extra time required by the increased number of visual fixations

    • slow reading may be experienced as feeling jerky

    • reading errors because the eyes become fatigued and miss fixations

  • Object Recognition is involved in:

    • recognizing and remembering the visual details in the physical world, for example of places, objects, and faces

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • taking longer to recognize and locate objects when shopping or looking for something in the refrigerator or recognizing landmarks in one’s neighbourhood.  

    • difficulties in using landmarks for navigation 

    • trouble recognizing and remembering faces 

    • missing details in facial expressions which create social challenges  

    • difficulty in visualizing in meditation as the individual can’t conjure up visual imagery in their mind’s eye 

    • avoidance of games that rely on recollection of visual details 

    • experiencing the visual world as flat and uninteresting

  • Spatial Reasoning is Involved in:

    • navigating in space using physical and mental maps

    • assembling objects from a 2-dimensional plan into a 3-dimensional construction, such as building a bookcase from a diagram or sewing clothing from a pattern

    • creating mental maps to organize space

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • problems in creating and using spatial maps – either mental or physical

    • struggles with creating a map of how to get from one place to another

    • getting lost with some frequency or taking longer to arrive at one’s destination 

    • losing objects because one can’t create a mental map of where they were placed

    • workspaces having material stacked in piles, within line of sight, since it is challenging to create a mental map of where something is once it is filed in a cabinet or placed in a drawer

    • difficulty following assembly instructions when translating from a 2-dimensional diagram to construct a 3-dimensional object, such as sewing from a pattern or building a bookcase from a diagram

    • struggling with geometry due to its spatial relationships

    • avoidance of games requiring spatial planning such as chess

    • difficulties in navigating in a crowded space or in driving a car as the individual has trouble spatially mapping a series of moves while anticipating the moves of others

  • Mechanical Reasoning is Involved in:

    • understanding how machines operate and how their parts interact with one another

    • understanding physical principles such as force, momentum, gravity and how these operate in everyday life

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • challenges in understanding how machinery operates

    • difficulties in constructing or repairing machinery, or taking something apart, such as a bicycle, and being able to reassemble it

    • challenges in understanding how physical principles operate, leading in some cases to accidents

  • Abstract Reasoning is Involved in:

    • learning steps in tasks that require a specific order to be followed for success, such as cooking, computer programming, sewing

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • difficulty in learning the steps in a process such as in a computer program, preparing a complex recipe, or programming the PVR

  • Primary Motor is Involved In:

    • the speed, strength, and control of one’s muscle movements

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • awkward and less-articulated movement often with slower reflexes

    • general muscle weakness or low muscle tone  

    • challenges in sports requiring muscle strength and quick reflexes

  • Quantification Sense is Involved in:

    • sense of number, magnitude, and quantity 

    • understanding number related to time, distance, money, and various units of measurement

    • understanding place value, for example 10, 100, 1000

    • learning how to count

    • sensing ‘how much’ of a quantity is required for a task, for example, how much money for a purchase, how much gas for a specific distance, how much food for a specific number of people

    • retaining numbers in one’s head and doing mental calculations

    • calculating change

    • learning math facts

    • time management

    • budgeting

    time signature in music

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • trouble in developing a sense of number and quantity

    • problems in simple counting, calculating change, and learning the addition and multiplication tables

    • running late 

    • struggling with estimating how long a task will take to complete

    • running out of money

    • being unsuccessful in planning or following a budget

    • struggling with modifying the measurements in a recipe based on the number of guests

    • difficulty in doing mental math calculations

    difficulty in time signature in music

  • Auditory Speech Discrimination is Involved in:

    • clearly discriminating spoken words in listening situations such as a discussion, conversation, or lecture

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • more effort is required when listening to speech in order to discern which words are being spoken, so listening is tiring

    • there can be misinterpretation of what is being said as the listener mistakes one word for another 

    • it is challenging to listen and accurately hear speech sounds when someone is speaking with an accent 

    • more effort is needed when listening to audio content without seeing the speaker, such as over the phone or a radio broadcast, because the listener can’t use lip reading cues to support speech discrimination

  • Symbolic Thinking is Involved in:

    • critical thinking

    • generating strategies to solve problems

    • mental initiative

    • goal setting

    • task execution

    • using feedback to improve performance

    • quickly grasping the ‘main idea’ of what is read or heard rather than being lost in the details

    • maintaining focus and attention on tasks to completion

    • self-organization

    • focused attention 

    • being self-directed in the learning process

    • self-regulation

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • ‘hitting the wall’ - the individual struggles to generate solutions to problems so is frequently getting stuck and may need to rely on others to solve their problems  

    • difficulty in starting a task - when presented with a task (say an essay or a work project) the individual often doesn’t know where to start and so does nothing, experiencing inertia

    • a challenge in maintaining focus - attention frequently wanders and it is challenging to maintain focus on a task to successfully complete it 

    • lack of self-directed organization so the individual is often disorganized 

    • difficulty in self-reflection and learning from mistakes 

    • limited consequential thinking as the individual struggles with thinking through a plan of action and the various outcomes or consequences that might occur and then embarking on the plan that will generate the most positive outcome 

    • difficulty in planning 

    • being seen as impulsive or scattered and disorganized

  • Symbol Recognition is Involved in:

    • visually recognizing and remembering words 

    • reading accurately and quickly 

    • spelling accurately and visually recognizing spelling errors

    • remembering visual symbol patterns such as math formulae and chemical equations

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • difficulty in learning sight words resulting in errors in reading words and slow reading speed 

    • difficulty in recognizing and reading words correctly even if the same word has been seen and read multiple times 

    • an impact on the visual aspect of the reading process

    • low word recognition level (words that one can see and say immediately) 

    • difficulty in editing and correcting errors in written work

    • challenges in learning spelling patterns, so spelling is incorrect

    • difficulty in visually remembering math formulae and chemical equations as all learning and retention of visual symbol patterns is impacted

  • Lexical Memory is Involved in:

    • remembering the names of things

    • remembering vocabulary

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • trouble remembering the names of things such as days of the week, the names of colours, and the names of people

  • Kinesthetic Perception is Involved in:

    • perceiving where your body is in space

    • regulating the amount of physical pressure applied

    • mapping sensation to specific areas of the body

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • misjudging how close one’s body is to various objects, such as a door frame, another person, or the edge of the table, leading to bumping into things 

    • difficulty in sports requiring quick and accurate awareness of body position

    • applying too much or too little pressure in physical activities such as giving a massage, typing on a keyboard, or closing a door (sensory feedback provides information on how much pressure is being applied)

    • applying uneven pressure to the page when writing, if the problem occurs in one’s writing hand 

    • writing wandering off the line if one is not paying attention to where the hand is positioned 

    • feeling pain but not immediately registering the location of the pain on their body

    • being seen as clumsy and uncoordinated

    One may compensate for this problem by using visual cues rather than sensory feedback to determine where one’s body is in space and the location on the body of physical sensation.

  • Kinesthetic Speech is Involved in:

    • using sensory feedback for clear speech articulation

    A Difficulty in This Cognitive Function Leads to:

    • speech being slurred or muffled as words are not clearly articulated

    • the individual being labelled as a ‘hard listen’

  • Imagine you brain is like the hard drive of a computer and it can’t read the software installed no matter how many times you press enter or okay it just doesn’t register. The Arrowsmith Program supports cognitive growth, like installing the correct software for the job, by creating new neural pathways that help you process information.

  • Absolutely, yes! Like any new skill we learn if you put the work in you will definitely see results. Sometimes it’s not as fast as people expect and obviously results differ from person to person. One client I had said the first thing he noticed was how much more confident he was speaking in public, his nervous stuttering stopped. This is a prime example of one of the changes for this client and how important that was to him.

  • No, the benefits don’t stop. Where you used to shut down because you couldn’t process the information you now actually want to learn. You become more inquisitive and confident to ask questions or research independently. One of my clients never asked questions about anything and then one day he came to class and asked “How do you make magnets?” This was a huge turn around, he was actually not only improving academically but he was thinking about things that interested him and looking for answers.

  • Testing identifies 19 different cognitive areas and depending on each persons results and the cognitive areas that need strengthening (some cognitive areas take longer than others) and the commitment of the individual to their program. At the end of each year testing is done to see the progress made during the year and what areas have met the prescribed benchmarks. It does take time and from my experience the 3rd year of a full-time program really starts to show the most significant cognitive changes. That is not to say that it doesn’t happen more quickly for some individuals. The most important thing to remember is the end result is well worth the time and effort. It wont happen overnight but it will happen.

  • Tutoring focuses on content.
    Cognitive training focuses on the brain skills needed to access that content.
    If the brain can’t yet process efficiently, more practice can increase frustration rather than progress.

  • Intelligence and cognitive efficiency are different.
    A student can be bright and curious while still finding learning exhausting if processing, memory, or attention skills are under strain.

  • Anxiety is often the result, not the cause.
    Repeated learning difficulty can teach the brain that effort equals stress.
    When the underlying learning load is supported, anxiety often reduces.

  • In our experience, most children are already trying very hard.
    When effort doesn’t lead to success, the brain learns to protect itself through avoidance or shutdown.
    This is usually a capacity issue, not a motivation issue.

  • Every child is different.
    Progress is gradual and cumulative, with small gains building into meaningful change over time.
    We focus on sustainable growth rather than quick fixes.

  • Absolutely yes!
    Teens often find great relief in understanding why learning has felt hard and real empowerment in knowing their brain can change.

  • Progress starts smaller than you think. When kids experience real success, even briefly, the brain rewires its expectations.
    ‘I can’ replaces ‘I can’t.’
    That’s when momentum begins.

    Success changes the brain.

  • When children, or anyone for that matter, struggle with learning, we often assume motivation is the issue. But most of the time , it’s a processing problem, not a willingness problem. If learning feels too hard at the brain level, motivation naturally disappears.

    That changes the kind of support needed for success.

  • Being smart doesn’t mean learning is easy. Some of the brightest people struggle the most because their brains are working inefficiently. They are thinking harder, longer and with more effort to keep up and that can be exhausting.

  • At Master Your Mind, we warmly welcome clients with ASD. We’re committed to understanding each individual’s unique strengths and needs, which is why eligibility for the program is assessed on a case-by-case basis. Our goal is to ensure that the Arrowsmith Program is the right fit and can truly support your growth. We genuinely want you to be part of this empowering experience. your success and well-being matter deeply to us.

  • • Our clients Range in age from 6 years and upwards, you are never too mature to master your mind!

    • Clients often work on strengthening combination of cognitive abilities or one time depending on their schedule

    • We offer flexible class options to suit busy lives. Online or onsite, or a combination of both.

    • We are based in Charters Towers, QLD but our clients are from all around Australia, the NT, Cloncurry, Cairns, Townsville, Bundaberg and Brisbane to name a few…distance is not an issue! Online is just as effective as onsite!

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