Packet #57

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.

Location, distance, direction, and perspective are characteristics of spatial orientation that affect how we gather, process, and use visual information. This exercise trains your client’s logical, visual, and spatial reasoning skills since they have to mentally visualize different objects in a map from different points of view. Your client must analyze the shapes and the distances between the different elements of the scene that they are observing.

Using knowledge of numerical order, clients must correctly sequence the numbers in either ascending or descending order. This exercise requires clients to scan for information, retain details, and use their knowledge of numbers to correctly order them. These skills are important for activities such as handling money and figuring out the best way to get to a destination.

This exercise is designed to target executive functioning – specifically planning and inhibition. Your client must learn to examine a set of information available to them, the problem at hand, and create a mental plan of how they will attempt to solve it. Rushed or unplanned actions will cause your client to not solve the problem efficiently. This exercise carries over to daily life skills such as booking appointments, taking inventory of needed groceries and household goods to not buy items already in stock, and remembering the steps needed to get out of an assisted moving device such as a wheelchair without falling.