Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Cognitive Skills And Memory

Cognitive skills consist of a range of abilities of the brain that allow it to solve problems, focus butter and these skills are critical for learning. One of the main cognitive skills is memory. The other main cognitive skill is the ability to pay attention which is why this is such an important process for learning. Cognitive skills also encompass reasoning, logic and audio and visual processing.

The memory portion of Cognitive Skills is broken down into two areas. Long term memories and short term memories are the two main types. Long term memory gives you the ability to recall information that was stored in the past. This type of memory is crucial for spelling, recalling facts and comprehension. Short term memory gives you the ability to gather and store information for immediate awareness while you are performing another mental operation.

Short term memory is used for like remembering something until you write it down or remembering multi step directions to accomplish something. This is information the brain needs to complete something else but does not need to hole onto forever.

Cognitive skills are also essential for attention span. Attention is dividing into three areas sustained attention, selective attention and divided attention. Sustained attention is the ability to stay focused until the task is done. Selective attention is the ability to stay focused even when there are distractions around. Divided attention means that you are actually paying attention to more than one thing at once and processing all of the information.

The other thing that is controlled by your cognitive skills is logic and reasoning. Reasoning gives you the ability to work through problems and prove and disprove deductions to come up with an answer. This is the skill used for complex processing and problem solving.

In addition the ones already mentioned your cognitive skills also effect audio and visual processing. They give you the ability to analyze, perceive and segment audio and visual aids. How well tuned your cognitive skills are will also determine the speed with which you can process this type of information.

Cognitive skills can be a learned or sharpened skill. Using your brain daily for activities that help it grow will seriously increase the abilities of your cognitive skills. You can make your problem solving sharper and clearer. You can also increase your memory skills both short term and long term by building up your overall cognitive skills.

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