Research has shown that cognitive abilities are a determining factor in an individual’s ability to learn. Cognitive abilities are mental abilities that are used in the process of acquiring knowledge; according to Oxfordlearning.com, the skills that “separate good students from average students”. In essence, when cognitive skills are strong, learning is quick and easy. When cognitive abilities are weak, learning becomes a struggle.

Many children get frustrated and find school work difficult because they don’t have the cognitive skills to process information correctly. Many employees find themselves trapped in dead-end jobs that don’t realize their true vocational potential due to weak cognitive skills. In the last years of life, the lack of cognitive abilities (poor concentration, inability to concentrate and memory loss) is a common problem that accompanies us.

It should be noted that regardless of age, cognitive abilities can be improved with proper training. Weak cognitive abilities can be strengthened and normal cognitive abilities can be improved to increase ease and performance in learning.

The following cognitive skills are the most important:

CONCENTRATION

Concentration is the ability to focus attention on a single thought or subject, excluding everything else from the field of consciousness. It is one of the most important skills that one must possess, as nothing great can be achieved without it.

Students must concentrate and focus on completing an assignment, project, or test review to excel in school, learn subject matter, and get good grades. Athletes must focus on performance, execution, and strategy to do their best and outplay their opponent. Entrepreneurs need to focus on all the factors involved in starting a new business and promoting their product or service. They need to do this to get their idea off the ground and turn their company into a profitable entity. Business leaders need to focus on their company’s mission, vision and strategies, as well as the job at hand, to stay ahead of their competitors. Workers need to focus on their jobs and meet their supervisor’s goals to complete projects and advance in their careers.

Improving the ability to concentrate allows a person to avoid the problems, embarrassment and difficulties that occur when the mind wanders. Better concentration facilitates study and accelerates comprehension. It allows you to take advantage of the social and business opportunities that arise when people are totally in tune with the world around them. It helps one to focus on one’s goals and achieve them more easily.

PERCEPTION

Sensation is the input of information by our sensory receptors, for example, the eyes, ears, skin, nostrils, and tongue. In vision, the sensation occurs when light rays are collected by the two eyes and focused on the retina. In hearing, sensation is produced when the outer ear picks up pulsating air waves and transmits them through the middle ear bones to the cochlear nerve.

Perception, on the other hand, is the interpretation of what is felt. Physical events transmitted to the retina can be interpreted as a particular color, pattern, or shape. Physical events captured by the ear can be interpreted as musical sounds, a human voice, noise, etc.

Lack of experience can cause a person to misinterpret what they have felt. In other words, perception represents our apprehension of a present situation in terms of our past experiences or, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) put it: “We see things not as they are but as we are.”

Deficits in visual perception can hinder a person’s ability to make sense of information received through the eyes, while deficits in auditory perception interfere with an individual’s ability to analyze or make sense of information received. through the ears.

A classic example of a deficit in visual perception is the child who confuses letters such as b, d, p, and q. Many adults find that their reading speed is inadequate as a result of underlying perceptual deficits.

By improving the accuracy and speed of perception, one can absorb and process information accurately and quickly. Reading speed will also improve and reading problems can be overcome.

MEMORY

Memory is probably the most important of all cognitive functions.

In general terms, sensory registration refers to memories that last no more than a second or two. If you were shown a line of print very quickly, say, for a tenth of a second, all the letters you can see for a brief moment after that presentation constitute the sensory record.

When you’re trying to recall a phone number heard a few seconds earlier, the name of a person you’ve just been introduced to, or the substance of a comment a teacher just made in class, you’re tapping into short-term memory. or working memory. This lasts from a few seconds to a minute; the exact amount of time may vary somewhat. You need this type of memory to retain ideas and thoughts while working on problems. When writing a letter, for example, you need to be able to remember the last sentence as you compose the next one. To solve an arithmetic problem like (3 X 3) + (4 X 2) in your head, you must take into account the intermediate results (that is, 3 X 3 = 9) in order to solve the whole problem.

Poor short-term memory can lead to difficulties with processing, comprehension, and organization. By improving short-term memory, one is better able to process, understand, and organize incoming information.

Long-term memory is the ability to store information and then retrieve it, and it lasts from a minute or so to weeks or even years. From long-term memory you can recall general information about the world that you learned on previous occasions, memory of specific past experiences, specific previously learned rules, and the like.

Research has shown that, on average, within 24 hours one forgets 80% of what they have learned. By improving long-term memory, schoolchildren and students can store and retrieve information more effectively.

Visual memory is a person’s ability to remember what they have seen, while auditory memory is a person’s ability to remember what they have heard. Various researchers have stated that up to eighty percent of all learning takes place through the eye. It goes without saying that improving visual memory will have a tremendous effect on a person’s learning ability. The same goes for improving auditory memory.

LOGICAL THINKING

Logical thinking is a learned process in which one consistently uses reasoning to reach a conclusion. Problems or situations that involve logical thinking require structure, relationships between facts, and chains of reasoning that “make sense.”

According to Dr. Albrecht, author of “Brain Building,” the foundation of all logical thinking is sequential thinking. This process involves taking the important ideas, facts, and conclusions involved in a problem and arranging them in a chain-like progression that takes on a meaning of its own. Thinking logically is thinking in steps.

The ability to think logically enables a person to reject quick and easy answers, such as “I don’t know” or “this is too hard”, by allowing them to go deeper into their thought processes and better understand the methods used to arrive at a solution. Training in logical thought processes has been shown to make a person brighter.