Monday, September 26, 2011

Cognitive Skills And Their Relation To Brain Fitness

Cognitive skills are a set of important ways in which we learn. They are an essential part of any learning process and greatly impact how we learn and what we learn and what is our level of brain fitness. Let’s review some of these important cognitive skills and describe them in further detail.

1.Attention Skills – This relates to the ability of a person to focus on certain information and screen out and ignore as much as possible information or distractions which have little to do with the primary task. There are sub skills related to these attention skills which are as follows:

a.Sustained Attention – This relates to the ability to remain focused and on task. It also relates to the amount of time we can remain focused.

b.Selective Attention – This relates to our ability to remain focused and on task while being subjected to distracting sensory input.
c.Divided Attention – This relates to our ability to remain focused on a particular and then apply similar focus to another task at the same time. Another simple way to look at it is multi tasking.
2.Memory – These skills relate to our ability to store, organize and retrieve information. There are several kinds of memory as follows:
a.Long Term Memory – This relates to our ability to recall information which was initially stored some time previously. Long term memory is a critical part of learning since it is used to remember facts and other information. People with weak long term memory can easily forget important information like names and phone numbers and tend to do poorly on tests.
b.Short Term or Working memory – This type of memory is used to hold information in our immediate awareness while performing another mental task.
3.Logic and Reasoning – This relates to our ability to perform critical thinking, formulate concepts, and solve problems using new information or new processes.
4.Auditory Processing – This is the ability to analyze, blend and differentiate sounds. It is a critical skill necessary for learning to read.
5.Visual Processing – This skill allows us to perceive, analyze and perform critical thought using images. It helps us to picture something in our mind and is a critical skill used for following directions, reading a map or performing a variety of mathematical problems.
6.Processing Speed – This relates to our ability to process information in an efficient manner. The faster we can process information, the faster and more effective we can be at improving the other cognitive skills.

Training your cognitive skills can help you get to optimal brain fitness. This is very important as you use your cognitive skills in many of your daily activities and you want to ensure these are well trained for you to enjoy a better quality of life.

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