Grub Ahoy! & Monkey Trouble

Understanding the Games

These games are spatial location working memory training exercises. The student sees a visual pattern appear onscreen – suggested by the path of a mischievous monkey or a group of pirates asking for grub to eat. After the path, or sequence, is shown, the student is prompted to repeat the pattern shown. If they get the pattern correct, they repeat the exercise with a longer pattern. If they fail to remember the correct pattern, the pattern grows shorter. Eventually the patterns will run in reverse – the student will need to be able to match the correct pattern in reverse.

Core Cognitive Capacities Engaged:

Monkey Trouble and Grub Ahoy focus specifically on spatial working memory. Spatial memory is a cognitive process that enables a person to remember different locations as well as spatial relations between objects. It is the part of memory responsible for recording information about one’s environment and its spatial orientation. If you think of working memory as the sketch-pad of the mind, where a person can list out directions in their mind, you can think of spatial working memory as the ability to use that mental sketch-pad to draw out a map representing visual-spatial information. If working memory is a list in your head, spatial working memory is a map in your head. Additional core cognitive capacities engaged include sustained attention and cognitive flexibility as the patterns grow longer and then reverse in more advanced levels.

Principles of Coaching:

Create a 2-person team, you and the player. You provide skills the player does not have.
Gradually and deliberately, pass more and more of the job onto the child, monitoring what they are able to do. What was a two-person process gradually becomes an internal process within the child’s own mind.
Find out what is making it difficult for the child to stay on task. Allow the child to explore their own solutions for staying on task, collaborate and problem solve.
Provide expectations for every session. Be clear on what is expected.

Some specific techniques:

Ask the child if you can sit next to him/her while they play.
Ask the child to explain what he/she is supposed to do in the game they are playing. If the answer is correct, ask them to show you by playing. If the answer is incorrect, then explain the rules.
Quietly ask the child what he or she is looking while playing (for example , which color jewel in the Treasure Trunk). Encourage the child to keep saying it out loud quietly.
As the child gets better, suggest he/she say it to themselves silently inside their heads.
Point out to the child how he/she does better when you are sitting there (if that's the case!). Ask the child why that is.
Reinforce how many points they are earning.
Set achievable immediate goals together – “how many in a row can you get correct?” offer encouragement and count out loud and on your fingers each one he or she gets correct.
For some children who have are having great difficulties, you can move the mouse and ask them to tell you when and what to click on. Then take turns with the child, and gradually have the child do more and more.
For younger kids make it fun for them when they get a task correct (wiggle their chair, do a jig together, etc.). Their success will improve as long as they can stay engaged.