Cognitive Learning Styles

Cognitive Learning Styles – Cognitive Skills and Effective Learning
Cognitive skills are the essential but often overlooked fundamental tools of effective learning. Learning is not about how much you know, but how effectively you process or handle the information you receive. Cognitive skills are the mental mechanisms that process incoming information.

Mental Skills, Not Academic Subjects
Cognitive skills are not the subjects taught in classrooms at schools. Those are academic skills or disciplines. Academics consist of an accumulation of knowledge, rules, and systems concerning different subjects like algebra, history, spelling, and foreign language.

People are often unaware that there is a difference between cognitive and academic skills. Actually, the difference is very significant. Cognitive skills are the individual mental capabilities needed to successfully learn and use academic disciplines such as geometry, social studies, and science. Cognitive skills are the underlying tools that enable you to successfully think, prioritize, plan, understand, visualize, remember, create useful associations, and solve problems. The importance of cognitive skills are summed up in the following points:

  1. When cognitive skills are strong, academic learning is fast, easy, efficient, and even fun.
  2. When cognitive skills are weak, academic learning will be a struggle or even impossible.
  3. Therefore, cognitive skills are the essential tools for effective learning.

Cognitive Learning Styles – Identifying Weak Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills are not easy to see or recognize through casual observation. They function behind the scenes as you process the information received from every possible source -- sound, touch, sight, and even information received from yourself when you are thinking, speculating, or recalling. Because of this "behind the scenes" nature of cognitive skills, an appropriate assessment test is essential for the identification and treatment of weak cognitive skills.

A person's cognitive skill set is made up of several cognitive skills including auditory processing, visual processing, short and long term memory, comprehension, logic and reasoning, and attention skills. Each of these can also be divided into identifiable sub-skills. For example, auditory processing is made up of sub-skills such as sound discrimination, sound analysis, sound segmenting, and sound blending. Memory consists of short-term, long-term recall, and working memory. Each of these skills and sub-skills play a specific and necessary role and must work in concert before an individual can learn effectively. Weak skills result in a diminished capacity to learn.

Cognitive Learning Styles – Cognitive Skills Can Change
For over 40 years, science has continued to confirm that cognitive skills can be developed and strengthened. At LearningRx, we embrace the idea that intense, focused training can strengthen weak skills. We have developed specific programs and exercises that specialize in identifying and strengthening weak cognitive skills.

If you, or someone you know, struggles to learn or read, weak underlying cognitive skills are most likely the reason. If this is the cause of the learning and reading problems, it can be corrected and you can experience a lifetime of faster, easier learning and reading. Use the LearningRx Center Locator to contact the nearest LearningRx Center and learn more about cognitive training and how it can improve your life.

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