Our brain is an amazing organ. It can control virtually every part of our body. It also has the unique ability to think and provide cognitive abilities. Let’s discuss more about cognitive skills and explain them further as they are one the essential tool that we use to enjoy our daily life.
Cognitive skills include the following:
1. Attention Skills – This encompasses the ability of a person to comprehend and respond to incoming information. These attention skills can be further broken into:
a. Sustained attention – The ability to remain focused and attentive to the task at hand.
b. Selective attention – The ability to remain focused despite other related or unrelated sensory inputs (otherwise known as distractions)
c.
Divided attention– The ability to remember information and stay focused on something while attending to another task2. Memory skills. This is our ability to store and recall information. Memory encompasses long term memory which is the ability to recall information which was stored in the past. This kind of memory is crucial for many tasks including learning and many other things done throughout the day. Short term memory includes information we recall as needed on a more immediate basis. Both types of memory are an essential part of our cognitive skills.
3. Logic and reasoning – This is our ability to reason out a situation, formulate concepts and solve problems using unique input and parameters.
4. Auditory processing – This includes our ability to analyze, combine and differentiate sounds. It is a crucial skill in learning to read and spell.
5. Visual processing – This encompasses our ability to perceive, analyze and process the world around us in visual images. This also includes the ability to picture something in our minds. This type of skill is important in learning to follow instructions, performing math problems and following directions.
6. Processing speed – The speed in which our brains processes information is critical to performing cognitive tasks quickly and efficiently.
Effective and efficient cognitive skills are essential in improving our ability to learn. Deficiencies in these skills play a big role in learning disabilities. For example weaknesses in auditory processing can create big problems in learning to read effectively.
There are tests to uncover weaknesses in cognitive skills as well as exercises and treatments to improve upon them. As your body muscles, your cognitive skills can be trained with the proper brain training program that specifically target the skills you are interested to improve.
Because of their importance in our daily life, make sure you maintain or try to improve these essential cognitive abilities. You should enjoy a more alert, fulfilling life!
Thomas Manner is a specialist in neuroscience and the brain training field in general.
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