Packet #33

This exercise primarily targets concentration, working memory, and executive functioning skills. These cognitive skills are heavily used when we are problem solving. Because your client must use some degree of trial and error, they must remember which attempts were successful as well as which ones were not. They must then devise strategies that help them remember the category of each drawer and what words correspond to each category. We use these skills when we have to organize items in our home in a way that makes them accessible to us and presentable.

Primarily, this task exercises your client’s sustained attention and concentration skills. Attention is the essence of focus. Your client will need to focus on looking for a specific target and ignore other visual information that could distract them.

Situations such as casual conversation or instructions from a doctor’s appointment require us to pay attention to the words we see and hear and assign relevant meaning to them. In this exercise, your client must memorize and correctly place the location of several words pictured on a grid. While abstract, this exercise challenges your client to develop strategies to assign meaning to incoming information in order to apply it for use at a later stage.

Can you scan a space for relevant information? Using visual scanning and verbal memory, look at a matrix of random letters to find a hidden word pertaining to a theme. This can be done timed or untimed.