What Are Cognitive Skills?
The brain is truly amazing in its ability to learn, grow, and change. What are the processes by which this happens? It all goes through cognitive skills. These are the foundational elements of focusing, taking in information, thinking, processing, and remembering. Cognitive skills dictate how your brain processes the world around you, and how you respond in different situations.
For individuals of all ages, the strength or weakness of cognitive skills can greatly impact your success in academic life, vocations, relationships, and more. Let’s dive a little deeper into what these skills are and why they’re so important.
How Learning Happens
Learning is a complex process that involves the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills. It encompasses various factors, including environmental influences, educational methods, and individual cognitive abilities. The key components of how learning happens include:
1. Attention and Focus:
Attention is the gateway to learning, allowing individuals to focus on specific information while ignoring distractions and controlling impulses.
2. Information Processing:
The brain processes information through a series of cognitive functions, including auditory processing and visual processing. These are different from the senses of vision and hearing—these skills are what your brain does with that input. The speed at which this processing happens is also critical!
3. Memory Formation:
Memories are formed through encoding, storage, and retrieval processes. There is short-term memory (just a few seconds), where you hold onto information long enough to apply it and engage with it, and there is long term memory (anywhere from moments to decades).
4. Problem Solving:
Finally, there is the synthesis of information and critical thinking skills that allow you to make connections, draw conclusions, and apply what you’ve learned.
7 Foundational Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills are the mental processes that underlie every stage of learning. They are the “tools” in your brain’s “toolbox” that enable you to think, learn, and process the world. Here are seven foundational cognitive skills that play a pivotal role in learning:
- Working Memory: The ability to hold onto information long enough to use it
- Attention: Focusing on a given task without distraction or disengagement
- Processing Speed: The speed at which the brain processes information
- Logic and Reasoning: Skills for drawing conclusions, recognizing patterns, and thinking critically
- Auditory Processing: The ability to interpret and make sense of auditory information
- Visual Processing: Interpreting and understanding visual information and think in mental images
- Long Term Memory: Holding onto information long term and being able to retrieve it when needed
The Impact of Weak Cognitive Skills
Weak cognitive skills can have profound effects on an individual’s ability to learn and thrive in the fast-paced world we live in. Some notable impacts include:
- Academic struggles like struggling to grasp and retain new information or falling behind peers in key areas like reading, math, or overall academic performance
- Impaired problem solving that reduces your ability to think critically and logically, or struggling to solve complex problems and make decisions
- Attention deficits that make it difficult to stay focused and engaged, leading to distractibility, hyperactivity, disengagement, or frequent errors
- Communication challenges due to lower language development, struggling to keep up with body language or conversational cues, trouble expressing ideas, or slow processing
- Low confidence and motivation due to doubting your own abilities or feelings of frustration at not being able to “get it”
Cognitive Skills are the Foundation of Learning
Having a brain that efficiently and effectively processes the world around you is so important. The great news is that, no matter your age, the brain is capable of change and growth! Whether you’re helping a child learn to read or a senior adult maintain mental sharpness and ward off cognitive decline, building cognitive skills is a good place to start.
