Parents' Introduction

As a lab, we study children's abilities and their levels of cognitive functioning, which can be described as our brain's ability to use information gathered from the environment (i.e. visual, audible, etc.) and use them for action. This may range from something as simple as a green traffic light being an indicator for you to go... to more complicated actions like looking at your grocery list and planning the most efficient order to grab everything. Every action, regardless of how small it seems, is a product of small cognitive steps. In everyday instances of cognitive functioning, the complexity of our actions may seem pretty simple. However, the ACN Lab takes the small steps in everyday thinking and puts them in a more controlled and experimental environment. We test them with standard tests of cognitive functioning, and map out these processes so that we know where and when to intervene in a child's academic, emotional, and interpersonal lives.