10 COGNITIVE ABILITIES OF THE HUMAN BEING - PSYCHOLOGY

The cognitive skills are the skills related to cognition, ie, faculty, consciously or unconsciously, to take the information received, and process based on previously acquired knowledge.

However, we rarely pay attention to what these cognitive capacities are, how they act and what mechanisms are involved in the many mental processes that our brain performs on a daily basis.

When we talk about skills, we are talking about all those capacities that our brain has to function and work with the information that we acquire from our environment.

What are the most important skills?

Perception

The first cognitive skill that we use to obtain any type of information from our environment is perception. It is the process that has the function of coding and coordinating the various elementary sensations to give them meaning.

And why is perception important?

Because the human being has the need to adapt to the environment.
Because the environment in which we live is complex and changing.
Because perception orders materiality and creates our reality.
Because if we do not perceive things, they cannot enter our mind.

When you read, listen or touch anything, the first function you put in place is perception:

The stimuli reach our receptors.
The receptors send the information to our brain.
Once the information is in our brain, it can begin to process.

This means that the way you see things, perceive them and interpret them, is the starting point to be able to carry out the rest of the cognitive functions, since it modulates the way in which information reaches your brain.

Furthermore, what makes this cognitive ability special is that, unlike other cognitive abilities, it is marked more by internal psychological determinants than by cognitive abilities.

Aspects such as experience, fears, obsessions, desires, expectations or values, modulate perception, so our psychological state plays a very important role in determining the way in which information reaches us. mind.

Attention

Apart from perception, another cognitive function that plays a fundamental role in the entry of information into our brain is attention.

When it comes to receiving information, the way we perceive it is as important as the elements we pay attention to. In other words, attention modulates the components that we will perceive.

Our brain captures numerous stimuli, but only some are conscious, the rest are perceived subliminally. Attention is therefore a process that chooses which stimuli we are going to capture. It is a kind of filter that our mind has to introduce that information that is relevant into our brain.

Attention is an adaptive process, since it allows us to better capture the environment and respond in an effective way.

In addition, as you already know, we can direct the attention. More specifically, care performs 3 processes:

Selective processes: when we must respond to a single stimulus or task.
Distribution processes: when we must attend to several tasks at the same time.
Maintenance or support processes: when we must attend for relatively long periods of time.

We could say that attention, together with perception, are two capacities that human beings possess that act as prerequisites for information to reach our brain, and therefore play a fundamental role in the rest of the cognitive processes.

That is to say:

If you perceive things properly and pay attention to relevant things, the mental processes that you do later will benefit, since they will be working with adequate information.

However, if you perceive things in a distorted way, pay attention to irrelevant stimuli or are unable to maintain your attention on important aspects, your cognitive processes will have an added difficulty, since the information they will have to work will not be adequate.

Understanding

Once the information has reached the neurons of your brain, the next essential element so that the tasks performed by attention and perception are not in vain is understanding.

Understanding, as you well know, refers to "understanding" the information that has just come to us. However, we cannot define understanding as a single process, or a single ability, but rather as a set of them.

Understanding involves a series of processes such as analysis, criticism or reflection, which are articulated by our mind in an interactive way. For example, when you read a news item in the newspaper, to understand its content factors such as:

Your general knowledge (your memory) about the world and more specifically about the subject of the news.
Your perception of the news, the attention you pay to it, and the way you encode it through your working memory.
Your language, which allows you to recover the meaning that you have stored in your neurons about each word you read.

The interaction between these processes will dictate your ability to understand any information you want to be stored in your neurons, that is, any information you perceive and want to pay attention to.

Memory

Once the processed information reaches your brain, the mechanism that starts up is memory (what we remember). But what do we mean by memory? Perhaps as Cofer said:

"If our memories were perfect and never failed in times of need, we would probably not feel the slightest interest in them."

This statement conceives memory as a mere memory, or rather, as a set of memories and stored information, but memory is much more than that.

And you may wonder… If memory is not memory, what is it? For memory is a process or set of processes that allow information to be encoded, stored and retrieved, once it has "entered" our neurons.

To see more clearly everything that memory implies, let's take a look at the different types of memory we have.

Sensory memory

Sensory memory is a very short memory (1 to 3 seconds) that works together with the perception system to process the information that we want to enter our mind.

That is, when we perceive any stimulus, our brain already begins to remember, and through this sensory memory, our perceptual system is given just the right amount of time to be able to memorize the element that is entering.

Short term memory

Short-term memory acts as a working memory: when sensory memory has already done its job that has allowed us to perceive information, this short-term memory (lasting from 18 to 30 seconds) comes into play.

This short-term memory keeps available (memorizes) the information that has just been perceived for a few seconds so that it can be stored correctly.

In addition, this working memory also reactivates materials stored in long-term memory, in order to integrate the new information with what was previously possessed.

Long term memory

Once sensory memory and short-term memory have worked, long-term memory appears, "memory in capital letters."

This type of memory is what is popularly known as "memory", and it contains all that information that has already been stored in our brain, it contains our memories.

Language

Closely linked to memory we find language. By language is understood the ability to relate a system of codes, with meanings of objects in the outside world, as well as their actions, qualities and relationships between them.

Language could be considered a special form of memory, which allows us to automatically remember the relationship between a word and a meaning.

Orientation

By orientation we understand the set of psychic functions that allow us to realize, at all times, the real situation in which we find ourselves. In other words, your experiences and memories make it possible for you to be aware of your own person and your situation in space and time.

However, your orientation is not a simple memory, it is the conjunction of multiple memories and knowledge that come together. For example: When you are on a road in a place unknown to you, you may have the ability to orient yourself while driving.

But this orientation capacity is not a simple memory, many other capacities come into play:

It may help that you have looked at the map previously and remember some aspect of the road, it is possible that your knowledge about the country or the region in which you are located also contributes to the orientation, or that your more general knowledge about the typical operation of roads and tracks is key to get your bearings.

The interaction of different parts of our brain and different mental processes allows us to have a general capacity that allows us to orient ourselves both in space, time and in person.

Praxias

Praxis is the ability we have to carry out voluntary, purposeful and organized movements. The ability that allows you to perform any movement with any part of your body is regulated by the specific regions of your brain that make up praxis.

There are 4 different types of praxis.

Idemotor praxias: ability that allows you to deliberately perform simple gestures, such as waving.
Ideational praxias: ability to manipulate objects requiring a sequence of gestures and movements, such as cutting a sheet with scissors.
Facial praxis: the ability to move parts of the face with a goal, such as kissing.
Visoconstructive praxis: ability to plan and perform movements to organize a series of elements in space, such as drawing a drawing.

Executive functions

Executive functions could be conceived as "the glue" of our cognitive abilities. They are the ones who are in charge of starting, organizing, integrating and managing the rest of the functions that our brain has.

Let's take an example:

You want to make yourself a fried egg. In your long-term memory it is perfectly stored that to do it you first have to take a pan, pour oil into it and wait for it to heat up, break the egg and put it on top of the boiling oil.

So far very well, you remember it perfectly. However, without your executive functions you would be unable to do it!

And it is that without them, you would not be able to perceive the situation, make your working memory work correctly to remember that you just picked up the pan, put that information together with your memories of how to make a fried egg or plan those memories properly.

Reasoning

The reasoning would be like "the plus" that our brain contains to be able to perform superior operations. With reasoning we are able to carry out organizing functions related to logic, strategy, planning or problem solving.

Reasoning allows us to integrate the information that we have stored in our neurons, so that we can "acquire new knowledge through what we already know."

With this cognitive ability our ideas, judgments or conclusions appear.

Metacognition

Finally, one last cognitive ability that I would like to comment on is that which goes beyond cognition, metacognition. Metacognitive abilities control, direct, improve, and apply problem solving to cognitive abilities.

In other words, metacognition is what allows us to learn the way our brain works, taking care of things like:

Design the steps to follow,
Self-regulate our actions and our thought processes.
Evaluate how things work,
Acquire ability to anticipate (forward)
Acquire the ability to improve (feedback).

References

Carrol, JB (1993). Human cognitive abilities a survey of factor-analytic studies. University of North California at Chapel Hill.
Herrera, F. Cognitive Skills. Department of Evolutionary Psychology and Education University of Granada.
Watanabe, K. Funahashi, S 2014). Neural mechanisms of dual-task interference and cognitive capacity limitation in the prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience (17), 601–611.

10 COGNITIVE ABILITIES OF THE HUMAN BEING - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025