Welcome to CAIS
None of us has a perfect brain. Each of us, healthy or not, has our own unique set of cognitive abilities; our own set of cognitive skills we do well, and those we don’t do so well; our own set of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. This means we each have our own set of cognitive needs. Most of the time we are not conscious of our cognitive abilities or what our cognitive strengths and needs are. In fact, most of our thinking is not conscious at all. So we each know very little about our own cognitive abilities.
Changes in the brain cause changes in a person’s cognitive abilities. The brain changes change the way a person feels and perceives things. This is also true of someone with an unusual brain or a diagnosis of a brain disorder.
The Cognitive Abilities and Intervention Strategies (CAIS) guide provides a set of questions to ask yourself to help you identify a person’s cognitive abilities, including their cognitive strengths and cognitive needs. Additional questions help you identify how well the environment, interactions with this person, and the structure and timing of tasks support this person’s cognitive abilities. Ideas of possible Intervention strategies are then provided to address this person’s specific cognitive abilities. These intervention strategies modify the environment, communication, and the task and daily routines to increase support of this person’s particular cognitive strengths and needs. These are individualized to a particular person and situation, and are also useful for general education, intervention planning, or program design.
The CAIS is divided into four parts: Cognition, Environment, Communication, and Tasks and Daily Routines. To begin using the CAIS guide, start with one of the four options below.
The CAIS and related materials are authored by Shelly Weaverdyck, PhD. This interactive web version of the guide is sponsored by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. A five module online course on CAIS concepts and strategies, tiled "Beyond Behavior", as well as more detailed instructions and additional resources (including the CAIS manual, downloadable and printable pdfs of all four parts of the CAIS, handouts, and other information), are all available at https://improvingmipractices.org.