Overview
Cognitive skills are also called brain skills. They are the core skills the brain uses to perform the following functions: think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention.
Brain training compels the cognitive skills the brain uses to think, remember, reason, pay attention, and learn to perform an easy task.
All of our cognitive skills play a vital role in processing new information. That means if even one of these skills is weak, no matter what kind of information is coming your way, grasping, retaining, or using that information is impacted. However, most individual learning struggles are caused by one or more weak cognitive skills.
Examples of Cognitive skills and What it does for you
- To Sustain Attention
What it does is enable you to stay focused and on task for a sustained period.
Common problems when this skill is weak: lots of unfinished projects, jumping from task to task.
- Selective Attention
What it does is to help you to stay focused and on a task despite distractions.
Most common problems caused when this skill is weak is distraction
- Splitting Attention
What it does is to help you to remember information while doing two things at once.
Most Common problems when this skill is weak are: Difficulty in multitasking, frequent repeated mistakes.
- Short Term working
It enables you to hang on to information while in the process of using it.
Common problems faced are: 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.
- Logic and Comprehension
It Helps you to reason, create new ideas, and solve problems.
Most Common problems are: Frequently asking, “What do I do next?” or saying, “I don’t get this,” struggling with math, feeling stuck or overwhelmed.
- Auditory Processing
Helps you to analyze, breakdown or into groups, blend, and segment sounds.
Most common problem faced are struggling with learning to read, reading fluency, or reading comprehension.
- Long Term Memory:
What this does is to enables you to recall information stored in the past. Common problems when this skill is weak: Forgetting names, doing poorly on tests, forgetting things you used to know
- Visual Processing
This enables you to think in visual images.
The challenges faced are difficulties understanding what you’ve just read, remembering what you’ve read, following directions, reading maps, and doing word math problems.
- Processing Speed
This enables you to perform tasks quickly and accurately.
Frequent challenges are that most tasks are seen to be difficult. Taking a long time to complete tasks for school or work, frequently being the last one in a group to finish something.
How to Improve your Cognitive Skills:
Improving your cognitive skills will ensure you perform better at a given task, job, or even at school. It also helps you become an active thinker and listener, which can improve your relationships with your spouse, family, children, and even friends.
Various ways to improve your cognitive skills include:
1. Practice Focusing
Do you know you can actively improve your attention and memory skills by intentionally focusing your mind throughout the day?
For instance, when you are at work, you can find ways to remove distractions and see how long you can remain focused on a task without losing concentration.
While at work, read a customer’s concern out loud, or if you are at home, try memorising a poem or a special passage in a book by reading it out loud continuously.
2. Exercise your brain
Yes! Like every other muscle in your body, you can exercise the brain by finding activities that target and exercise certain areas of the brain. These activities will strengthen your cognitive abilities:
- Reading a book during your break periods at work or before you go to bed at night.
- Find puzzles that you enjoy, like a crossword, dice rolling or Sudoku.
- Playing chess, ludo games or another game that engages your mind.
- Writing a story, or memorising your favorite song.
Challenging mental activities can help you improve your memory, focus, reasoning and processing skills.
3. Practicing Yoga
Consistent yoga practice helps with mental clarity and calmness. It increases body awareness, relieves chronic stress patterns, relaxes the mind, centers attention, and sharpens concentration.
You can practice yoga with these simple meditation techniques by sitting in a quiet place, focusing on your breathing and being mindful of your thoughts.
4. Reducing Stress
Reducing the level of activity you are involved in can help you focus and improve your attention span. Try to remove yourself from stressful situations if you can. If you cannot remove yourself, try stress-reducing activities. At work, you could take a brief walk around your workspace or, if possible, put on some headphones and listen to music to focus your thoughts.
These stress-reducing strategies can improve your ability to concentrate and build attention-related cognitive skills.
5. Caring for your Physical body
Providing care for your physical health can improve your cognitive skills. Drinking plenty of water, eating a balanced diet, and getting at least seven hours of sleep every night can improve your attention-related abilities and help you perform better in the workplace. Also, adequate sleep can drastically improve your memory skills, as sleep helps your brain sort through and store memories.
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