Cognitive Abilities and Intervention Strategies (CAIS) - Beyond Behavior Beyond Behavior: The Brain and Cognition
The behavioral health online training course called “Beyond Behavior: The Brain and Cognition” is a part of the “Cognitive Abilities and Intervention Strategies (CAIS) – Beyond Behavior” series that consists of five one-hour modules. This is the first module.
The course focuses on relating to a person with cognitive challenges or distressing behavior. It explores how to reduce distress (including fatigue, frustration, and stress for you and for a person you are interacting with) and distressing situations. It looks beyond a person’s behavior to this person’s cognitive abilities, since changes in a person’s cognitive abilities can frequently cause distress and changes in behavior.
The Effects of Change Regarding Cognitive Abilities
The behavioral health course focuses on the following:
- The effects of changes in the brain on cognitive abilities (for example, the ability to think, imagine, and to understand and respond to your surroundings)
- How changes in cognitive abilities affect a person’s behavior and emotions. It also explores how it affects their ability to communicate and perform tasks, and their sensitivity to the behavior of others.
This training course also provides:
- A structured guide to help you address a specific person’s cognitive abilities by using and relying on this person’s cognitive strengths. It also helps you support, adapt to, or compensate for this person’s cognitive needs.
- Suggestions of possible everyday practical intervention (support) strategies that modify a person’s environment, their tasks and daily routines, and your interactions with this person. The intervention strategies do not require specialized training. Anyone can use them.
Course Modules
The five course modules address:
- Module I: The Brain and Cognition
- Module 2: Cognitive Abilities
- Module 3: The Environment
- Module 4: Communication
- Module 5: The Task and Daily Routines.
This behavioral health training course provides helpful tips and explores the ways each of these concepts affect a person’s behavior. It also addresses how these concepts affect a person’s ability to communicate and perform tasks, and to feel comfortable and competent.
A Guide to Support a Person's Cognitive Abilities
The course introduces the CAIS Questions to Ask and CAIS Intervention Strategies, a guide to supporting a person and their cognitive abilities.
- Modules 2-5 show examples from and the structure of each of the four parts of the CAIS (which address: Cognitive Abilities, the Environment, Communication, and the Task and Daily Routines, respectively).
- The CAIS Questions to Ask is a set of questions to ask yourself to help identify a person’s cognitive abilities, including their cognitive strengths and cognitive needs. Additional questions identify how well conditions around this person (their environment, communication with this person, and the structure and timing of tasks) currently support this person’s cognitive abilities.
- The CAIS Intervention Strategies then suggest practical, concrete, everyday intervention strategies (support strategies) that can address this person’s specific cognitive needs and strengths by modifying their environment, communication, and their task and daily routines.
Who Is This Course For?
This behavioral health training course is for anyone who interacts with a person, assists with a task, or advises (or supervises) someone who does. You do not need specialized expertise or training to use the CAIS or to take the online course.
In Module 1: The Brain and Cognition
- Identify brain changes resulting in changes in cognitive abilities as a major cause of distress and distressing behavior (rather than meanness, manipulation, or intentional agitation).
- Identify changes in specific parts of the brain as the cause of changes in specific cognitive abilities.
- Identify the spread of brain changes (that is, the pathology) across the brain as a cause of the stages that occur in dementia.
- Identify effects of brain changes evident in a person’s cognitive abilities and behavior during a task or during communication.
- List four factors that are key to understanding cognitive abilities and planning support strategies (interventions).
- Identify each of the four factors as the topic of each of the upcoming four educational modules.
Have you wondered…
- Why a person acts the way they do?
- Why a person seems upset?
- How to help a person do something quickly when you and they need to hurry?
If so, this course is for you. It takes a close look at the causes of distress and how to address them. It gives tips on how to respond to or even prevent distressing behavior and situations.
For a person living with cognitive challenges and you who are helping or interacting with them:
- Increase comfort, quality of life, and the ability to communicate and perform tasks
- Reduce distress and distressing situations, including frustration, fatigue, stress, and discomfort
- Address this person’s cognitive abilities by using and relying on this person’s cognitive strengths, and supporting, adapting to, or compensating for this person’s cognitive needs
Shelly Weaverdyck PhD
Shelly Weaverdyck, PhD has specialized in cognition and the brain for nearly 40 years, advising and teaching staff, families, health professionals, and professional organizations about the brain and cognition and how to support a person living with cognitive and/or mental health challenges in a way that improves quality of life and reduces distress and distressing situations. Dr. Weaverdyck for many years presented seminars and trainings in mental health (e.g., on the brain and schizophrenia, on dementia, and on cognitive interventions) for the State of Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). She has also been presenter and long-term consultant to academic, mental health, outpatient, and long-term care residential settings internationally and nationally. Dr. Weaverdyck collaborated in the creation of two innovative residential units in southeast Michigan that focused on cognitive (neuropsychological) intervention for clinical, demonstration, and research purposes, one through the University of Michigan and the other through Eastern Michigan University. At the University of Michigan, Dr. Weaverdyck was also the dementia specialist for 13 years at the Turner Geriatric Outpatient Clinic, taught in the Psychology Department, and was on the research faculty. At Eastern Michigan University, she was director of the Alzheimer’s Education and Research Program for 14 years and was the founder and director of its Alzheimer’s Research program for 12 years before that. In addition to academic and professional articles and chapters in various books and journals, Dr. Weaverdyck coauthored the Bloomer Block Assessment Protocol, a neuropsychological instrument published in 1999 by Western Psychological Services, and in 2005 in collaboration with Nancy Mace and Dorothy Coons, a book called “Teaching Dementia Care” published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Weaverdyck created the Cognitive Abilities and Intervention Strategies (CAIS), a guide for supporting a person and their cognitive abilities with support from MDHHS. A three-volume manual includes the CAIS Questions to Ask, CAIS Intervention Strategies, a curriculum to teach concepts underlying the CAIS, five chapters, and 43 CAIS handouts to elaborate on topics in more depth and the concepts underlying the CAIS. This online course of five modules shows how to use the CAIS with additional tips and concepts to consider.
For more about the author see “How the CAIS was Created” and “About the Author: A Summary”.
Course Progress
Course Content
What People Are Saying
I was happy with my overall experience with the module. It was user friendly and provided multiple instructions on how to access the next needed section."
