Instrumental enrichment

This system is based on the belief that apparent low intelligence, or intellectual shortcomings in otherwise gifted children, may be due to the fact that some basic thinking skills which would normally have been passed on by parents or grandparents have, for some reason, not been transmitted. Individuals particularly helped are children whose intelligence has been impaired by cultural breakdown, but experiments have also demonstrated in prison systems where adult offenders analyse their own situations and learn the intellectual control to prevent them committing impulsive criminal acts. The theory is that intelligence is the ability to learn from experience. Skills such as comparison of objects, focusing of attention for reasonable lengths of time, understanding the nature of cause and effect and of space and time are taught sympathetically using instrumental enrichment exercises developed by Professor Reuven Feuerstein. This leads to dramatic increases in intelligence scores. Perceptive faculties are sharpened among children who have never learned to analyse visual and auditory impressions, and who have no strategy or rules to interpret events.