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11 Most Effective Cognitive Skills to Accelerate Learning

 11 Most Effective Cognitive Skills to Accelerate Learning


Introduction


Learning how things are done in the right way and mastering them is what greatly contributes to empowering yourself as a person and being competitive in the areas where you care about excellence. However, when it comes to absorbing and understanding information, we often have a problem following what we are trying to learn, distracting us, and even having great difficulty getting around certain topics.


Sometimes, it's as if what we're trying to follow wasn't meant for us because it's simply hard to tell. In this case, there are different cognitive skills that we can work on in our lives that can help us become better learners, and if we take our time to improve ourselves in these areas, we can have a fairly easier time absorbing information and application. Where we need it.


Maintain Reading:


  1. Selective attention
  2. Sustained Attention
  3. Divided Attention
  4. Logic and Reasoning
  5. Processing speed
  6. Visual processing
  7. Auditory Processing
  8. Working memory
  9. Long-term memory
  10. Fluid Intelligence 
  11. Crystallized Intelligence

Here are the top 11 effective learning acceleration cognitive skills that we encourage you to think about for a better and more rewarding learning experience in the coming weeks, months, and years.

11 Most Effective Cognitive Skills to Accelerate Learning


1. Selective attention


Selective attention is a cognitive skill that allows you to draw your attention to a particularly important task at a given time and avoid other distractions that may tempt you to engage in it. 


When you are in a noisy environment, many things can catch your attention. It may be fun to subscribe to most of these things, but they take you away from why you're in that environment. Now, through selective attention, you have to remain focused on why you are in that environment and follow the tasks that got you there.


For example, if you and your friend are in a restaurant located in the heart of a city where there are cars hunting, sounds from other missiologists in stores adjacent to the restaurant, drunk people arguing and fighting, and more, you must hear most of those sounds.


However, the main reason you're here is to have a conversation with your friend while you're eating, and selective attention helps you focus on this task and keep your attention to it until you're done.


There are two types of selective attention: selective visual attention and selective auditory attention.


Selective visual attention is largely visual selective attention. Here, you can focus on things that are a high priority amid many other visually attractive things.


Selective auditory attention is selective attention based on your hearing senses. Using your example of you and your friend in the restaurant, you can block out other sounds and focus on what your friend is saying.


By improving selective attention, you can improve your learning abilities as this helps to draw your attention and keep it in your study for a long time without allowing yourself to distract with other shiny and tempting things and sounds. 


To improve your selective attention, it would be good to make an effort to meditate on focusing attention, going to fairly noisy places, and trying to focus on some of the things or sounds that were chosen for a long time. By doing so often and making it more difficult as you progress and get used to a certain limit, you'll be able to sharpen your attention.



2. Sustained Attention


Continuous attention also referred to as attentive attention, is a cognitive skill that helps you commit to one project and continue to work on it until you complete it. Through constant attention, you become a long-term person when it comes to your work or learning.


If you decide to take a book you want to read on a topic you care about, you commit to it every day until you have finished reading it, after which you can now read another book.


Improved continuous attention is developed through long focus periods where you focus on what you learn and then take time to identify the things you've learned in detail.


For example, while reading, you can get another paper of plain paper where you can write down the things you learned in detail after about 30 minutes to one hour of focus. When you finish the book, you include the knowledge you have gained from the first chapter to the last.


It also helps you listen to audiobooks and watch long videos of what you learn. Moreover, following fun periods of activities with long learning periods gives a positive boost to your attention.


3. Divided Attention


While focusing attention on one thing is good, the opposite is also useful. Divided attention is to attract your attention to more than one project or task at the same time. This may seem counterproductive, but it really isn't. 


Think of different units you take in your educational institution or different classes in one unit. There are times when you find yourself in a place where you are about to complete one chapter, but you also have to take the next chapter or are about to finish the last page of one unit while you also have to keep in mind that you have another unit that you urgently need to start.


Finalizing one thing while preparing and planning for something else in common, and splitting attention in such cases can be so useful that even while you're testing two different units a day, you can still keep their information without struggling.


Divided attention, also called multitasking, requires the active use of short-term memory for some. While this is the case, it is also important to aim to store information in long-term memory through continuous repetition because it helps in the long run.


Understanding what you are supposed to learn and how to learn goes a long way in increasing divided attention.



4. Logic and Reasoning


Logic and inference cognitive skills pave the way for problem-solving skills and ideas that help make your learning useful in the real world.


Most of what we learn is explained in the simplest possible way, but some aspects require you to think deeply about the information you get and how it works so that you can apply it safely and effectively in the required areas. 


For example, during tests and tests, the examiner expects you to use what you have learned to solve the problems in the test, and since the questions are somehow twisted to measure how well you understand the subject being tested, you may need to think from outside the box to get them right. This is where logic and logic come to the rescue.


To improve logic and inference, you can experience different techniques including creating conclusions for different scenarios and then watching how they unfold to see if you have understood them correctly, playing mind games like chess, and discovering the different patterns of activities you are involved in.



5. Processing speed


Processing speed is a cognitive skill that relates to your ability to interpret what you're learning and you have an easy time applying it in the right place to get the kind of results you're looking for. Using this skill, you can improve your productivity rate in one day, thus saving more time to do other things in your daily schedule.


Think about having the ability to sit down within 30 minutes, you've already read and fully understood what a certain aspect of your study is about - such as a topic in the unit you do at school or in an online course -. The best part is that you understand the concept so well that you don't find it necessary to refer to it and reread it and try to figure out what it means and the whole process.


For most people, this may seem out of place, but some people live this experience. Some people argue that this is a capability given to the select few when, in fact, anyone can learn it if they proceed to achieve it.


It is possible to enjoy a great processing speed and make you a sharp person, which also improves your quality of life in the long run.


You can speed up the processing of your information by making sure you regularly participate in aerobic exercises and pushing your mind to understand things faster by reading and interpreting information faster than you normally do, and eating healthy foods. 



6. Visual processing


Visual processing is a cognitive skill that relates to processing speed but focuses only on visual elements.


This skill is useful when you try to understand visual data, such as images, tables, and graphs. We can all admit that at some point in our lives, we had to use these two, and having this skill to see what's going on helps.


The more you use visually representative data, the better you can recognize the patterns used in it, and it's easier for you to decrypt new data provided this way in the future. 



7. Auditory Processing


Auditory processing - just like visual processing - is a relative of the speed of treatment. Deals with audio-based information such as audiobooks.


We are now in an age when advanced technology is used in almost all industries including education. Instead of having to spend two days or weeks reading the coursebook, you can only listen to his audiobook and learn intensively.


If you're good at analyzing, understanding, and linking sound to what you learn about, you have a smoother time reading and progressing your studies. Again, the more you listen to audio recordings, the better your sound processing skills.



8. Working memory


Working memory is where recently obtained information is stored. If you read a booklet for a device you intend to use immediately, you're done reading, and then go ahead and start using it without having to refer to the manual every now and then, your working memory is great.


Working memory promotes understanding, problem-solving, thinking, and planning in education.  Having a good working memory means that you can store enough information in your mind about different elements and their relationships well enough to meet and successfully solve your challenge. 


A good way to improve working memory is to try to flash words, numbers, cards, or even dots for a few seconds and find out what you saw after a few seconds, then check if you're right. You can even take it to a higher degree and try to make some fairly complex calculations using what you see and see if you can hack it.


Listening to sounds and linking them to a deeper level, just as in a flashing brain game, can also give some support to your work memory.



9. Long-term memory


This is the retention of information that has been obtained for a long time. You are ranked among people with the best long-term memory when you can easily retain and recover information about something you've gained for months or years.


If you met someone two years ago and then you had the opportunity to meet him again and you can still remember his name, what he wears and what you talked about the first time I met without difficulty, you may have the above. - Long-term memory.


Some well-known ways to take your long-term memory to the next level are through activities such as continuous repetition (revisiting information in your mind), visualizing what you've learned, and being very focused and attentive when you learn something new.



10. Fluid Intelligence 


Streamlined intelligence is the ability to think, as well as create, modify and use information from our senses in real-time for various reasons including problem-solving. This type of intelligence lets you think abstractly and mind flexibly, usually devoid of learning, education, and experience.


When you have a problem that needs to be solved and you can't rely on previous cognitive and experience, smooth intelligence helps you get the right answers. Liquid Intelligence is thought to decline in late adulthood, although it is trainable and you can always increase it at any time in your life if you choose to. 


One way you can improve your smooth intelligence is to improve your working memory because it's closely linked. 



11. Crystallized Intelligence


Crystallized intelligence can be seen as the opposite of liquid intelligence because this type of intelligence depends heavily on the previous knowledge and experience it has gained over the years. It's based on facts and cognitive, and you get stronger as you age as you gain more knowledge and experience as you progress in life.


Liquid intelligence can later become a crystallized intelligence when you use it to think and think about many issues and then store information in your long-term memory. With crystallized intelligence, the more information you gain, the more new skills you learn, and you have many experiences, the stronger you become for yourself.



conclusion


These are the cognitive skills you should try to focus on to help make new things easier to learn and understand.


Now, mastering these skills is not a picnic in the park, although it is not that difficult either. It may require you to get out of your comfort zone and push yourself a little bit every day so you can improve the strength of your mind. However, the good thing is that you can do it. You are more than capable of mastering these skills and, as a result, you can improve your life.


A small start is a key. Take one skill at a time. Invest your time in sharpening and applying them constantly. Before long, you'll be amazed at how far you've progressed.

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