Understanding Cognitive Abilities And Cognition

Your brain process many new information during a normal day. Your brain is also the center of your cognition. So do you know what your cognitive abilities and skills are? Basically they are function of the brain that controls some of the most important functions of our body. Cognitive skills are skills that are critical for learning and without them our brain would not be nearly as powerful and efficient. We use many cognitive skills in our daily life. While active, the brain is always turned on processing new stimuli and deciding how to respond best.

The first of the cognitive abilities is being able to pay attention. If you are not able to pay attention this makes everything in your life difficult. You can not learn or focus if you cannot pay attention which can make it more difficult to remember new information. The second of the cognitive abilities is memory. Cognitive memory is the ability to store and recall information on command. This can be the big things like remembering the answers for the test or even the little things like remembering where you last placed the car keys. This includes both short term, contextual and long term memory.

Your cognitive abilities also control your logic and reasoning. The ability to reason makes it so you can solve problems. Solving problems is crucial to having a good and healthy life. Life is messy and has problems if your cognitive abilities are sharp you can work through them much quicker. The next cognitive abilities you rely on are auditory and visual processing.

Your cognitive abilities gather the information on everything you see and hear and process it in a way the brain and your cognition understand it and you can ultimately act on it. If these two things are not sharp it can affect school work for kids, real work for adults and the ability easily do math problems or read a book. For kids in school these are very serious problems.

Lastly cognitive skills affect your brain processing speed. Depending on how sharp your processing skills are this will determine how easily you can solve problems or process information to make informed decisions. People with ADD or ADHD usually have slower processing speeds which is one of the things that make it harder for them to excel at certain things.

The good new is that all of you cognitive abilities can be trained and improved upon. Using these skills and exercising them is the best way to keep them sharp. Your brain needs constant stimulation and challenge to be the best it can be. The more of these types of brain training activities that you do the better your brain will be able to work for you. Try to do something different everyday and play with scientifically validated brain training tasks. These tasks can help you assess, maintain and improve your overall cognition and cognitive skills.

Your cognitive abilities need to be kept in shape just like your body and your heart and everything else important to your health.