Introduction

Here are some questions to ask yourself to better understand a person’s cognitive abilities, needs, and strengths, including their ability to understand and respond to you and their environment. These questions are based on brain functioning and specific cognitive skills. However, you do not need to know anything about the brain or cognition to ask them. These are a few of many possible questions.

These questions address the five phases of cognitive processing that all of us (healthy or not) must go through in order to understand and respond to our environment and other people. The phases are Sensory, Comprehension/Perception, Executive, Expressive, Motor.

The questions should be answered with a particular person in mind since each person has different needs, strengths, and desires. These questions should also be answered frequently enough to identify changes in this person’s needs, strengths, and desires.

Your answers to these questions can suggest effective intervention strategies (that is, support strategies) that might modify the environment, task, or communication with this person. These intervention strategies can help this person think, understand and respond to their environment and other people, feel comfortable, and successfully perform a task. The strategies do this by meeting this person’s cognitive needs, as well as relying on and building on this person’s cognitive strengths.

Note that in addition to cognition, it is important to carefully consider this person’s current emotional, physical, and medical status. The questions here focus on cognitive abilities.

The “CAIS Cognitive Abilities Questions to Ask: Four Point Response Format” and the “CAIS Cognitive Abilities Questions to Ask: Yes/No Response Format” are two options to use for answering these questions. They each have the same questions. Choose the response format you prefer or that best fits the situation.

Suggestions of intervention strategies (that is, support strategies) tailored to your responses to these questions can be found in the Cognitive Abilities and Intervention Strategies (CAIS): Cognitive Intervention Strategies.

Please note: The pdf versions of the two response formats (the Four point and the Yes/No formats) offer more detail in some of the Cognition questions. These questions are identified in the Cognition instructions.

The complete CAIS Questions to Ask and the CAIS Intervention Strategies including all four parts (with the titles: 1. Cognitive Abilities; 2. Environment; 3. Communication; and 4. Task and Daily Routines), are available in this interactive format and as downloadable and printable pdf documents. These along with more detailed instructions, resources, and other information about the CAIS and related topics are on the Improving MI Practices website at https://improvingmipractices.org