Four Cognitive Skills for Successful Learning

The term”cognition” is defined as”the act of knowing” or”knowledge.” Cognitive skills therefore refer.

It needs to be noted that there’s nothing any human being knows, or could do, he has not heard. This obviously excludes natural body functions, such as breathing, as well as the reflexes, by way of instance the involuntary closing of the eye when an object approaches it. However, apart from that a human being understands nothing, or cannot do anything, he has not learned. So, all cognitive abilities have to be TAUGHT, of

CONCENTRATION

Paying attention must be distinguished from concentration. Paying attention is a body feature, and consequently doesn’t need to be taught. However, paying attention as this is a function that’s quite useless for the act of learning, as it’s just a fleeting occurrence. Attention usually changes very quickly from something or one thing to the next. The child should first be taught to keep his attention also to concentrate his attention on something. When a person concentrates his attention for any length of time, then we refer to it.

Concentration rests on two legs. It cannot take place and is an act of will. It is also a skill, and consequently has to be taught.

Although learning disability experts acknowledge that”the ability to focus and attend to a task for a lengthy time period is necessary for the student to get required information and complete specific academic activities,” it seems that the ability to focus is considered as a”fafrotsky” — a term coined by Ivan T. Sanderson, also standing for”items that FAll FROm The SKY.” After which sustained and regular practice can one’s proficiency which concentration must be taught.

PERCEPTION

The phrases”processing” and”perception” are often used interchangeably.

Before one can learn whatever, perception must take place, i.e. one has to become aware of it via one of those senses. Usually one has to see or hear it. One has to interpret whatever person has heard or seen. In essence then, perception means interpretation. Naturally, lack of experience can cause a individual to misinterpret what he has heard or seen. To put it differently, perception represents our fear of a current situation concerning our past adventures, or, according to the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804):”We see things as they are as we are.”

The next situation will illustrate how perception contrasts with adventure:

Suppose while continuing to look back at it, a person left his car and walks away out of it. It is going to appear to him as if his car is becoming smaller and smaller as he goes further and further off from his car. In this kind of situation none of us, however, would gasp in horror and cry out,”My automobile is shrinking!” We don’t interpret size is changing, although the sensory perception is that the car is shrinking rapidly. Through past experiences we’ve learned that items don’t grow or shrink as we drift away from them. You have learned that their actual size remains constant. When one is five blocks away from the car of one and it seems bigger than the fingernail, an individual would interpret it as that it is one’s car and it has changed size. This heard perception is referred to as size constancy.

Pygmies who live deep in the rain forests of Africa, are not often exposed to horizons and broad vistas, and don’t have enough opportunities to find out size constancy. One Pygmy, removed from his surroundings, was convinced that he saw a swarm of insects if he was actually looking at a distance at a herd of buffalo. When driven toward the animals he was afraid to observe that the pests”grow” into buffalo and was convinced that some kind of witchcraft was at work.

A individual needs to INTERPRET phenomena, and this may be done on the grounds of experience of exactly the same, related or similar occurrences. Skill, hence, heavily depends on the quantity of experience and perceptual practice that the topic has appreciated. This implies that perception is a skill that may be improved tremendously through experience and favorable practice.

MEMORY

A number of memory problems are evidenced in the learning handicapped. Some major categories of memory functions

Memory: This refers to the ability to note the features of a stimulus to have the ability to recognize it at a later time. The child who has responsive processing problems invariably fails to recognize visual or auditory stimuli such as the sounds or shapes related to the letters of the alphabet, the number system, etc..

Memory: This refers to the ability to recall stimuli in their order of observation or presentation. Most dyslexics have poor visual memory. This will impact their ability to read and spell correctly. After all, every word contains letters in a particular sequence. In order to read one has remember what phrase is represented with that arrangement of letters, and to perceive the letters in order. By simply changing the order of the letters in”name” it could become”mean” or”amen”. Some also have poor sensory memory, and therefore may be not able to replicate longer words without obtaining the syllables in the incorrect order, such as words like”preliminary” and”statistical”.

Rote memory: This refers to the ability to learn information as a habit routine. The child who has problems in this region is not able to recall with ease these answers that should have been automatic, such as the alphabet, the number system, multiplication tables, spelling rules, grammatical principles, etc..

Short-term memory: Short memory lasts from several seconds to a minute. When you are attempting to recall the substance of the comments just made by a teacher in class, the name or a phone number that has been heard several seconds before, you’re calling on short-term memory. You will want this kind of memory to retain ideas and thoughts when composing a letter, since you must have the ability to maintain the last paragraph while you write the following. When you work on problems, you need this kind of memory. Suppose a problem required that we first add two numbers together (step 1: add 15 + 27) and following split the amount (step 2: split amount by 2). If we did this difficulty in our minds, we’d need to retain the outcome of step 1 (42) momentarily, although we apply the next step (divide by 2). Some distance in our memory is necessary to retain the results of step 1.

Memory: This refers to the ability to retrieve information of objects learned before.

Until the learning handicapped in recalling information develop skills, they will continue to handle each learning situation as though it is a new one. If the ground has to be covered repeatedly since the child has forgotten no progress could be achieved by the child or the instructor. It would appear that the crucial requirement the learning disabled have would be to be helped to develop an effective processing platform for recalling, as without it their functionality will always remain at a level considerably below what their abilities indicate.

Strangely, though, while memory is considered a skill to learning that is successful, attempts to replicate its procedure from the learning handicapped are few, and fewer still are methods to improve it.

LOGICAL THINKING

In his book”Brain Building” Dr. Karl Albrecht claims that logical thinking is not a magical procedure or a matter of hereditary endowment, however, a learned psychological procedure. It is the procedure in which one uses justification constantly to come to a conclusion. Problems or situations that involve logical thinking involve structure, for connections between details, and also for chains of reasoning that”make sense.”

The basis of all logical thinking is sequential idea, ” says Dr. Albrecht. This procedure involves taking the essential ideas, details, and conclusions involved in a problem and organizing them in a progression that takes on a significance in and of itself. To think logically would be to believe about measures.

Thinking is also an important skill of math. “Learning math is a highly sequential procedure,” says Dr. Albrecht. “If you dont grasp a particular idea, fact, or procedure, you may never hope to grasp others that come later, that depend upon it. As an instance, to know fractions you have to understand division. To understand simple equations demands you to know fractions. Solving word problems depends on knowing how to set up and control equations, and so on.”

It has been shown that special instruction in logical thinking processes can make people”smarter.” Logical thinking allows a child to reject quick and easy answers, such as”I dont understand,” or”that is too difficult,” by enabling him to delve deeper in his thinking procedures and understand better the procedures used to arrive at a solution.