What are cognitive skills?
COGNITIVE SKILLS
To understand the importance of cognitive skills, it is necessary to look at learning as two distinct parts:
- specific academic study – gathering information, knowledge. This requires academic skills.
- a student’s underlying ability to learn – processing the information gathered. This requires underlying cognitive skills.
Cognitive skills are the underlying tools that enable you to think, prioritize, plan, understand, visualize, remember, create useful associations, and solve problems successfully. Cognitive strengths and weaknesses impact the learning process.
Cognitive Skills are every student’s foundation for successful learning.
They are skills we acquire and develop as we grow and can therefore be enhanced and improved with the right kind of comprehensive cognitive training.
The 7 main areas of cognitive skills we train are:
Attention
The initial step in the learning process is reception. Our brains take just fractions of seconds to determine what information is relevant and what to discard. Our brains do this unconsciously by relying on various cognitive skills such as attention, visual and auditory skills.
We train 3 types of attention skills: sustained, selective and divided attention.
Sustained Attention
What it does: Enables you to stay focused and on task for an extended period of time.
Common problems when this skill is weak: A Lot of projects are left unfinished, jumping from task to task.
Selective Attention
What it does: Enables you to stay focused and on a task despite distractions.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Easily distracted.
Divided Attention
What it does: Enables you to remember information while doing two things at once.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Difficulty multitasking, frequent mistakes.
Memory
Memory is an essential part of information processing, manipulation and comprehension. We have to remember something to really say we have learned it. Our memory skills range from immediate (short-term) to long-term.
Memory (Working or Short-Term)
What it does: Enables you to hang on to information while using it to perform a task.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Having to read the directions again in the middle of a project, difficulty following multi-step directions, forgetting what was just said in a conversation.
Memory (Long-Term)
What it does: Enables you to recall information stored in the past.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Forgetting names or classroom routines, forgetting equations and doing poorly on tests, forgetting things you used to know.
Logic & Reasoning
This is one of our brain’s executive functions known as cognitive flexibility.
What it does: Enables you to reason, form ideas, and organize steps required to solve problems.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Frequently asking, “What do I do next?” or saying, “I don’t get this,” struggling with math, feeling stuck or overwhelmed.
Auditory Processing
Also known as phonemic awareness, it is a pathway to the brain that transmits information that we hear.
What it does: enables you to analyze, blend, and segment (break down) sounds. It is a critical skill in beginning to read and spelling.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Difficulties understanding, retaining, and manipulating information and directions in verbal form, struggling with reading, organizing and expressing thoughts verbally and in written form, or reading comprehension.
Visual Processing
This is a pathway to the brain that transmits information that we see.
What it does: enables you to think in visual images.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Difficulties recognizing shapes and patterns, following directions – especially multi-step tasks, reading maps, and doing math word problems.
Processing Speed
What it does: Enables you to perform tasks quickly and accurately.
Common problems when this skill is weak: Most tasks are more difficult. Taking a long time to complete tasks for school or work, frequently being the last one in a group to finish something.
Each of these skills plays a specific and necessary role in effective academic performance. Weak skills result in a diminished capacity to learn and perform.
Symptoms that signal the possibility of a cognitive processing problem include:
- Difficulty paying attention & staying on task
- Problems remembering – forgets instructions or what was read earlier
- Struggling to comprehend
- Taking a long time to complete tasks and avoiding work that seems complicated
- Difficulties sounding out words and spelling
- Problems creating mental pictures, making associations & conclusions
- Making frequent “careless” errors
Check out our Testing and Our Training on Cognitive skills.
