Think, Read, Learn, Remember, Reason...
What Are Cognitive Skills?
Cognitive Schmognative -- What's this all about??
Cognitive skills are the essential mental abilities your brain relies on to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and stay focused. Together, these skills help you take in information, make sense of it, and store it so you can use it in everyday situations-whether at school, at work, or in daily life.
If even one of these skills isn't working as well as it should, it can affect how easily you understand, remember, and apply new information. In many cases, learning difficulties can be traced back to one or more weaker cognitive skills. First, let's take a look at how information gets processed in your brain.
Now Let's Look At Cognitive Processes Within Those Regions
Take a moment and look at where the olfactory senses are and where the automatic processes are. Now look at the internal processes related to higher thinking. Between automatic processing and higher thinking is where the inputs to your primary cognitive skills can be seen. Attention. Working memory. The speed at which you process what you are seeing and hearing.... and the decisions that get made as a result of these processes. The efficiency of these cognitive skills has a massive impact on how we learn. If we can't take in the information efficiently..... the information isn't learned and stored in the ways that the brain can easily retrieve or use it (now or later!).
We are born with some of these skills in our cognition. Other skills are developed and honed by our neurological maturation. Our environment impacts how well that development goes. Our nutrition underwrites the coding of almost every single process involved. How we are nurtured and parented further drives change. Without the proper, ordered, and sufficient inputs and growth -- we can be left with tangles in our cognition and weaknesses in learning.
It's all connected. How easily we can approach and navigate daily life, understand what we experience, remember what we need to recall later, and apply new information is not just up to a genetic lottery! We have a say in how our brain works and we can change and mold it. That's the general concept of neuroplasticity.
Now Let's Look At Each Individual Cognitive Skill
Take a moment and hover over each of the different colored brains below to see a brief description of each of the core cognitive skills involved in our neurocognition. Using the map above on how information is taken into the cognitive processes, imagine how a weakness in any one skill can impact all of the processes around it.
Efficiency in all of the skills is what makes perceiving and learning easy. When even one skill is lower than the others -- even in high functioning, very gifted people -- there will be a deficit in the cognitive output, retention, or recall of the information that was taken in.
In plain terms, we usually have an awareness of where these weaknesses are because the tasks that feel the most frustrating are directly in the pathway between those skills.
So What Is The First Step To Identifying A Cognitive Problem?
The first step to identifying possible cognitive issues and getting the help you need is taking a cognitive assessment. Not just any test will do. Here's a short video from one of our experts to explain a bit more:
Thinkable Learning Centre offers one-on-one brain training designed to strengthen the key cognitive skills that support learning and performance. Built on more than 40 years of research, our approach focuses on improving how the brain processes information. We have supported individuals facing challenges such as reading difficulties and dyslexia, attention issues including ADHD, memory concerns, learning differences, and more.
Brain training simply makes all this processing faster and easier.
For the struggling student, these automatic processes often let them down. The ease of understanding new information that should have been normal becomes difficult and awkward. Learning that should have been easy is a frustrating effort. Reading that should have been effortless is a slow, embarrassing trial.
Brain training can change all that. A cognitive assessment can show you how. If you're in or near Dublin, we can help!
Weak Cognitive Skills Are Associated With Many Different Conditions, Situations, & Stages of Life
Three Steps. That's All It Takes. Our expert team guides every student (and their parents/partners!) through a three-step process: Assessment, engagement about the Results, and then Training for Strength. Each step is entirely personalized and crafted to the student's specific learning needs as identified by our world-class assessment. This process allows us cater to individual cognitive skill combinations that are unique to each individual. The outcomes our students enjoy as a result of completing our brain training programs include: increased processing speed, memory, attention, and all aspects of the cognitive learning process -- benefits that group work and private tuition can never meaningfully offer. Most students also get the secondary advantage of a measurable increase in reading proficiency!
So How Does It Work?
Step One
Assessment is key. We evaluate every student's auditory, visual, memory, attention, language, & critical thinking skills. The cognitive skills results will outline their core strengths and areas for improvement (qualitatively & quantitatively), often validating concerns in specific & measurable ways.
Step Two
Programs are personalized. What you need -- nothing less, nothing more. Once skill differences are identified, we customize the brain training program that can target learning challenges. Interactive sessions keep students motivated and engaged, slowly building confidence in their new abilities.
Step Three
Train the brain! Repetition and intensity are the key to achieving a neuroplastic effect from brain training. Our trainers work with a singular focus of creating lasting outcomes by using the best neurocognitive methods available in our programs. Our activities are fun, engaging, and challenging.
