5 Signs Your Cognitive Skills May Be to Blame

Did you know that cognitive skills cause most learning struggles? These are the brain skills you use to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention, and they work together to take incoming information and move it to the bank of knowledge.

Need an example?

Think about a team meeting at work. When your boss gives a PowerPoint presentation, you likely use:

• sustained attention (to focus for the duration of the meeting)

• selective attention (to tune out the voices outside the meeting room)

• divided attention (to pay attention to the presentation while taking notes)

• visual processing (to “see” the images)

• auditory processing (to “hear” and process what your boss is saying)

• memory (to later recall the information)

• logic & reasoning (to form ideas from the presentation and solve problems)

• processing speed (to read, understand, and memorize information on a slide before your boss moves on to the next one)

Of course, these cognitive skills aren’t just for the workplace. We also use them in school, when we play sports, during leisure reading, cooking meals, driving a car, etc. These foundational tools are vital to everything we do in life, and when these brain skills are strong, learning is easier and faster.

But when even one of these skills is lower than the others, it can create problems at work, school, or other aspects of our lives. You’ve probably seen it manifest in a student who struggles to pay attention or an elderly relative whose memory, visual processing, or processing speed has weakened over time, preventing them from driving safely.

So, how do you recognize when your cognitive skills are hindering you?

We’ve put together five examples that we frequently see in adults who come to LearningRx for personal brain training.

1. Memory

As we age, our memory begins to decline. Although it’s a natural part of aging, it doesn’t have to be inevitable. You may notice that you have greater difficulty remembering names, passwords, pin numbers, birthdays, or even why you went into the kitchen in the first place! And while things like good nutrition, exercise, socializing, reading, and learning new things can help, one-on-one brain training is designed to target and train weak cognitive skills, such as memory.

2. Attention

There are three types of attention:

• Sustained attention enables you to stay focused and on task for a sustained time.

• Selective attention allows you to stay focused on a task despite distractions.
• Divided attention allows you to remember information while doing two things at once.

Many people mistakenly assume that attention struggles always come with hyperactivity, but that’s not always the case. ADHD is now an umbrella term covering multiple types of attention struggles, including inattentiveness. Understanding ADHD reveals why boys—whose attention struggles are accompanied by hyperactivity—are more frequently diagnosed with ADHD than girls, whose attention struggles tend to manifest more as “zoning out.” Because hyperactivity is likely to disrupt the class, boys will be more likely to stand out for their attention-related struggles and therefore are more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD than their female peers.

If you find yourself “spacing out” more frequently, struggling to multitask like you used to, or getting more frustrated when distractions pull you away from the task at hand, it could be that your attention skills have lessened over time.

3. Processing Speed

As we age, our processing speed tends to slow down. In elderly adult drivers, for example, their reaction times may be slower than younger drivers. It may also take longer to process incoming information when learning new things, reading, or simply watching a movie. A slower processing speed isn’t necessarily a reflection of intelligence or education but rather a cognitive skill.

4. Visual Processing

This cognitive skill helps us think in visual images. When it’s weak, you may have trouble understanding or remembering what you just read, following directions, or simply reading a map.

5. Auditory Processing

There’s a difference between our ability to hear (which also tends to diminish with age) and the strength of our auditory processing (which enables us to analyze, blend, and segment sounds). The difference is particularly evident if you begin to find yourself struggling with reading more than you did when you were younger. If you’re noticing that your reading fluency or comprehension has decreased with age, it’s possible that your auditory processing has decreased.

Luckily, there’s good news in understanding cognitive skills and addressing them.

A Brain Skills Assessment can tell you which cognitive skills are strong and could use a boost. The test only takes about an hour and can give you great insight into your brain skills, whether you’re 7 or 97.

Using the results of the Brain Skills Assessment, LearningRx can create a personal brain training program to target and train any cognitive skills in need of strengthening. Our programs pair each client with a personal brain trainer for the duration of their program, and the results can be life-changing!

To hear from adult and senior clients about how personal brain training helped change their lives, visit www.StudentShoutouts.com.