Graphing and Charting versus Real Life Most people want to become less anxious, or pay attention better, or sleep more effectively, or stop obsessing over things or whatever. If they are showing better average scores in their sessions, but those things aren’t changing, do you really think you can convince them the training is “working”? The problem with using scores is that, depending on what designs you are using, chances are the targets are reset at the beginning of each […]

Identifying Progress I’ve also seen lots of people who got so wound up in the tracking and judging of their “progress” that they got frustrated when they “weren’t making any.” Not all progress is graphable. And it’s not, in my experience, necessary to cognitively interact with a process to have it be beneficial. Meditation, for example, goes the other direction and has many of the same effects. For my money, a client who starts the walking program and finds pleasure […]

More Thoughts on Measuring Progress Two women start jogging together. One keeps track of miles run, average speed, calories burned, graphing the results from day to day. The other just goes out and runs alongside her friend. Which one gets in shape faster? Which one better? It is perfectly possible and valid for someone to do something with a specific goal in mind. It’s also possible to do something and SEE what happens. Since my instructions are “don’t think, don’t […]

Measuring Progress with So-Called Objective Tests Speaking of “objective” measures like the TOVA or IVA: I tried both, meaning that I bought them and charged my clients for my use of them for several months one time and a bit less than a month the second time. I’ve thrown the TOVA away twice. The first time occurred when, after spending 22 minutes in a darkened room with a kid who did everything but climb up on the table and was […]

Reassessing at the End of Training If you need an assessment to tell you if the training is working…it’s not. If you are hoping to prove that the training worked with the EEG, you’ll probably be disappointed. The assessment or the QEEG could be done several times over a period of a couple days and come up looking quite different depending on whether it was done early in the morning, after lunch, late afternoon, during the school/work year, during summer […]

Tracking Changes So many people hear the stories of miracle responses to neurofeedback and assume that’s the norm. The reality is that consistent work over time is what tends to produce lasting results, not miracle reactions. It’s always important to remember that the training is for the brain–not the trainer, and not the trainee’s mind. The brain is getting the feedback, which in many cases the mind can’t make head nor tail of–much less the trainer. When you do psychodynamic […]