Cognitive Skills

We explain what cognitive skills are and what they are for. Also, what types of cognitive skills exist and some examples.

a child smiles
Cognitive skills are fundamental for learning and everyday activities.

What are cognitive skills?

Cognitive skills are the human abilities related to information processing from its collection to its storage and use. That is, they involve the use of perception, attention, memory, creativity and abstract or analogical thinking.

Human thinking is the result of a complex series of processes and includes all types of mental activities, such as solve problems, make decisions, reflect and set goals. Cognitive abilities have a lot to do with the notions of intelligence, learning and experience, thanks to which an individual can learn and perform complex tasks or foresee future situations in relation to what they have experienced.

Cognitive abilities constitute a central topic in the study of human life. have been crucial for the survival and evolution of the human species as it allowed him to adapt to his environment, find food, resolve conflicts and communicate effectively. Over time, these skills have developed and sophisticated, leading to significant advances in technology, science and culture.

See also: Emotional intelligence

What are cognitive skills used for?

Cognitive skills correspond to a set of specific intellectual abilities that a person uses to a greater or lesser extent throughout their life. For example:

  • Forecast. It is the ability to evaluate the consequences and implications of an action before performing it. It is necessary to decide whether to carry out that action or not, because it allows you to desist from it if the consequences are inconvenient or, at least, to take them into account. This ability is key to people's survival and integration into society.
  • Planning. It is the ability to foresee the future or mentally anticipate the correct way to achieve an objective or goal. It involves considering the results and is necessary to organize actions.
  • Assessment. It is the ability to judge or measure the convenience or danger of an action, or to know how close one is or is not to achieving an objective. It means being aware of the current situation and correcting behavior to reach the desired point or avoid the unwanted one.
  • Innovation It is the ability to find alternatives or new paths towards a goal, based on past experiences and considering the context. It involves having flexible thinking. It is key to the evolution of creative thinking and to adapt to new circumstances.

Types of cognitive skills

a woman reads a book
Cognitive abilities operate on the information collected by the senses.

Two types of cognitive skills can be recognized, which are complementary: cognitive and metacognitive.

Cognitive skills

Cognitive skills allow the elaboration of knowledge operating directly on the information collected by the senses. They usually consist of the following skills:

  • Attention It allows the capture of details, the exploration and selection of information, and concentration or focus.
  • Comprehension It allows you to translate what is captured into your own language, elaborate what you perceive, classify and synthesize.
  • Elaboration It allows you to form your own thoughts in response to what you perceive, through organizing strategies, such as taking notes, formulating questions and answers or using metaphors.
  • Recovery It allows the memorization of what has been experienced so that it serves as a foundation for future experiences, being able to access the information that is stored in memory.
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Metacognitive skills

Metacognitive skills are those that have as their object the cognitive processes themselves, that is, they allow a person to reflect on their own thinking and learning. They include the ability to monitor, explain and transmit knowledge.

For example, self-regulation allows you to follow a learning process step by step; Reorganization allows strategies to be adjusted or erroneous steps to be modified until the desired objective is achieved.

Cognitive skills are necessary for information processing. Metacognitive skills, for their part, offer information to supervise, control and regulate the progress of the process.

Examples of cognitive skills

a man looks at mathematical diagrams
Logical reasoning is part of the deductive capacity.

Some cognitive abilities can be:

  • Linguistic ability. It is the ability to acquire and use language and representation systems through articulated sound or its physical transcription (writing). For example, understanding and producing words, forming sentences, communicating appropriately according to the context.
  • Attention capacity. It is the possibility of choosing a relevant stimulus, to focus on it for a certain time. For example, concentrating on one stimulus and ignoring others (selective attention), maintaining focus on a task (sustained attention), changing focus between one task and another (alternating attention).
  • Abstraction capacity It is the ability to understand, synthesize or generalize complex information in order to act on it. For example, creating ideas from others, imagining events, interpreting problems and planning solutions.
  • Deductive ability. It is the ability to deduce or infer events from portions of the total information, to imaginatively complete what is perceived or intuit situations. For example, reaching a specific conclusion based on general premises (logical reasoning), organizing or grouping objects according to their common characteristics (categorization), understanding a situation quickly without having to analyze it (intuitive reasoning).
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References

  • Garrison, M. (2004). Psychology. McGraw Hill.
  • Herrera Clavero, F. (2004). Cognitive skills. In J. Gómez Cumpa (Ed.), Cognitive neuroscience and education (pp. 248-260). FACHSE-UNPRG Editorial Fund. https://www.aacademica.org