How to Improve Cognitive Skills [Definition, Examples, & Tips]

To improve cognitive skills and unlock your brain’s full capacity, you should understand what cognition actually entails, what role it plays in your everyday life, and how each skill manifests itself in your everyday life.

We’ve consulted our experts to gain a deeper insight into cognition and its different aspects, as well as ask for some tips on boosting memory, reasoning, attention, decision-making, and other cognitive skills.

Here is what they’ve shared with us.

Key Takeaways

• Cognitive skills can be defined as natural mental faculties that allow you to process, reason, make decisions, learn, memorize, and pay attention.
• Examples of cognitive skills include sustained, selective, and divided attention; logical reasoning; abstract thinking; memory; processing; decision-making; and creativity.
• Cognitive skills are crucial for survival and normal functioning and form the basis of your ability to adapt and overcome obstacles.
• Cognition can be improved with exercises for cognitive skills, good sleep, minimizing stress, and staying active.

What Are Cognitive Skills?

Cognitive skills are abilities of the brain that allow you to acquire, process, and manipulate information, as well as apply it in your daily life. They encompass several broad domains, such as attention, perception, learning, memory, and decision-making.

Although cognition peaks in adolescence and young adulthood, infants also possess cognitive skills. For instance, they can recognize their caregiver’s face and voice as early as two months old, which is a crucial skill at this age.

As infants grow into babies, their cognitive skills also develop. Soon, they begin to recognize various objects, communicate with their caregivers, and use their memory for short periods of time.

These cognitive skills keep evolving in toddlers, who gain the ability to store information, focus for longer periods, communicate with language, make comparisons, and solve problems.

Later, in childhood, more complicated types of cognition develop, such as reasoning and symbolic and abstract thinking.

Cognitive skills may develop on their own, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be improved through various activities. In fact, it’s important to challenge your brain at an early age to help it grow.

10 Cognitive Skills Examples

The following examples cover some basic cognitive skills you use almost unconsciously in your day-to-day life when performing various mental tasks.

#1. Sustained Attention

Sustained attention is the ability to focus on a specific task or stimulus for an extended period of time. Usually, it’s divided into two components: vigilance, which allows you to detect a stimulus, and concentration, the capacity to focus on the stimulus.

Without sustained attention, you wouldn’t be able to function in your daily life. It’s precisely this cognitive skill that allows you to complete work assignments, finish chores, or even stay focused long enough to hold a conversation.

However, fatigue, boredom, or frequent distractions can impair your capacity to sustain attention for an extended period of time. In addition, certain mental conditions, such as ADHD, dementia, and Alzheimer’s, may impair your ability to maintain focus.

#2. Selective Attention

Every day, you are exposed to numerous stimuli vying for your attention—traffic noise, the humming and creaking of the house, and the chatter of the people around you. Yet somehow, you can still focus on specific tasks and information without constantly feeling overwhelmed by the input.

That’s because of selective attention, a crucial cognitive skill that allows you to drown out all the background noise and focus solely on what’s important to you. After all, your capacity for processing information is limited, so you need to be picky about the things you focus on.

However, selective attention doesn’t mean you become utterly oblivious to the world when focusing on the task. All secondary stimuli still reach you, and your brain briefly processes their contents to determine their importance. It's just that if these are deemed unimportant, your brain doesn’t deal with these stimuli any further.

#3. Divided Attention

Divided attention is your brain’s ability to process and respond to multiple stimuli at the same time. In other words, it’s a cognitive skill that plays a crucial role in multitasking and living more efficiently.

When we speak about multitasking, we don’t necessarily mean juggling two complex tasks at once. Sometimes, multitasking can refer to something as simple as chatting with your friends while watching a movie or washing dishes while simultaneously listening to music.

In all of these examples, divided attention is an important factor. However, like any other cognitive skill, it has its limits. If you overburden yourself with tasks, especially mentally demanding ones, you’re likely to make blunders and become less efficient than if you focus on one at a time.

#4. Logical Reasoning

Logical reasoning allows you to form conclusions based on a set of premises by using logical steps to arrive at a solution.

Usually, it’s divided into three types of reasoning:

• Deductive reasoning. Deduction involves a set of general premises from which a more specific conclusion can be inferred. This type of reasoning typically yields the most accurate results.
• Inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning works in exactly the opposite way from deduction—it starts with specific information and aims to form general conclusions based on it. This type of reasoning is useful when forming hypotheses.
• Abductive reasoning. Although it’s less known than the other two types, abductive reasoning may be the one we use most frequently. It infers the most probable conclusion from a premise, which makes it the least accurate type of reasoning.

#5. Memory

Memory is the brain’s ability to process and store specific information, as well as recall it down the line when needed. As such, it’s crucial for learning, making sense of the world, and normal functioning.

Psychologists recognize three broad types of memory: working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Working memory is essential for manipulating information—it allows you to temporarily hold data in your brain to use for decision-making and problem-solving.

However, working memory can’t function effectively without short-term memory, which briefly stores the information needed on the go. For example, you use short-term memory to memorize a phone number before writing it down, but due to its limited capacity, you can only hold that information for about 30 seconds.

Some information doesn’t fade away that quickly, though. When you still remember it for days, weeks, or even years, it is officially committed to long-term memory, which holds all the experiences and knowledge you’ve accumulated.

#6. Abstract Thinking

Abstract thinking allows you to see beyond the obvious and concrete, recognize patterns, analyze ideas, and synthesize information. In fact, the ability to think abstractly is a crucial component of both creative and logical thinking in adulthood.

Due to its complexity, this cognitive skill is undeveloped in children. According to developmental psychology, abstract thinking begins developing in 11-year-olds and continues to expand throughout adolescence. Before that stage, children mostly think in concrete terms and occasionally use symbols.

#7. Visual Processing

Visual processing refers to the brain’s ability to gather and interpret visual information obtained from the environment.

When you look at an object, the light reflected off it enters the eye, where it’s converted into an electrical signal. These signals are then sent to the brain, which transforms them into images that you actually see.

However, that’s not all visual processing is. The next step—interpreting the visual stimuli—is crucial for actually understanding the world around you. In this step, the brain assigns meaning to the images you see using higher cognitive faculties, accumulated knowledge, and memory.

Visual processing plays an essential role in reading, learning, understanding facial expressions, and communication. When impaired, it can affect all these abilities, as well as memory, motor skills, and spatial awareness.

#8. Auditory Processing

Similarly to visual processing, auditory processing involves gathering and interpreting information from your surroundings, except the data can be heard, not seen. This cognitive skill encompasses processing conversations, music, sounds, and other auditory stimuli.

It’s important to distinguish between auditory processing and hearing, as these two are related but separate abilities. Specifically, people with auditory processing disorder can still hear but may have difficulty understanding what they’ve heard.

#9. Creativity

Creativity is the ability to generate ideas and approach problems from a new angle to find more effective solutions. Due to their capacity to visualize different outcomes, creative thinkers tend to thrive as problem-solvers and decision-makers.

Many people believe that creativity is something you are either born with or not, and there’s nothing you can do to improve it. However, neither of these beliefs is correct—everyone has the capacity to be creative to some extent, and that capacity can definitely be expanded.

For example, if your job demands that you regularly come up with solutions and ideas, you’ll need to be creative consistently. As a result, your creativity will grow, and you’ll find it easier to be innovative than people who aren’t in your position.

#10. Decision-Making

Decision-making involves visualizing and evaluating several potential outcomes of a choice using the available information, previous experience, and imagination.

As is the case with other cognitive skills, everyone has an innate ability to make decisions. However, some people are naturally better at it than others and usually make excellent leaders, managers, and CEOs.

Naturally, decision-making doesn’t operate on its own—it’s tightly intertwined with memory, attention, perception, and logical reasoning. As a result, this complex skill is highly developed only when all others are.

Wondering how reliable IQ tests are in measuring cognitive skills? Discover the insights in our article 'Are IQ Tests Reliable?' to learn more.

The Importance of Cognitive Skills

Cognitive skills are crucial for our functioning and survival in the world. Without cognition, you wouldn’t be able to learn from past experiences, nor would you be able to effectively focus on any stimuli.

In fact, cognition is the basis of the human ability to overcome challenges and adapt to new circumstances. It allows us to solve problems, make decisions, comprehend information, and understand different viewpoints. In a way, cognition plays an important role in our ability to empathize with and connect with others.

So, even though cognitive skills naturally develop in childhood, it’s important to encourage their evolution. You can do that through activities that target cognitive skills or healthy lifestyle choices that benefit the brain.

To further understand the role of cognitive skills in relation to IQ, check out our article 'Is IQ Important?'.

3 Ways to Improve Your Cognitive Skills

Some ways to improve your cognitive skills are getting enough sleep, reducing stress, and exercising.

Let’s explore all these methods in more detail below.

#1. Get Proper Sleep

The beneficial effects of proper sleep on physical and mental health are well documented, but did you know that it also boosts your cognition? A well-rested brain has an easier time focusing, processing, memorizing, making decisions, and generating ideas.

Although the brain doesn’t actually become inactive as you sleep, it gets time to recharge, remove toxic waste byproducts, and consolidate memories and information accumulated during the day. As a result, your mind feels refreshed and ready for another day of input.

On the other hand, without sleep, your brain doesn’t have the time to process information in peace. Consequently, it can start rejecting new input, leading to a decreased ability to memorize, process, and reason. That’s why a lack of sleep can cause you to feel overwhelmed and unable to keep up with your surroundings.

Want to learn more? We dive deeper into the topic in our "IQ and Sleep" post!

#2. Reduce Stress

Small amounts of stress can boost your cognition and improve your ability to concentrate, reason, and problem-solve. That’s why some nervousness before an exam or speech can actually benefit your performance.

However, consistent, long-term stress is never good for your body, mind, or cognition. In fact, it can put a significant strain on your brain, causing impaired memory, focus, and cognitive flexibility.

To keep your cognition intact, you should try to minimize your exposure to stress or, if that’s impossible, look for ways to relieve it. For instance, meditation, socializing, and maintaining a good work-life balance can all do wonders for your mental health and, in turn, cognition.

Discover how meditation can help manage stress and enhance cognitive function in our article on IQ and meditation.

#3. Be Active

One of the best ways to relieve stress and boost your cognitive skills is to exercise regularly. After all, exercise increases the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain, resulting in better performance overall.

Aside from this temporary effect, exercising can also have a more long-term impact. Specifically, it may increase the volume of the hippocampus, which is responsible for thinking and memory, among other things. As a result, people who consistently work out are less likely to experience cognitive decline with age.

Did you know that being bilingual can also enhance cognitive abilities? Learn more about it in our article that discusses the cognitive benefits of being bilingual.

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Final Thoughts

Regardless of your age or profession, developing your cognitive skills should be a priority. After all, it’s precisely your cognition that allows you to understand and interact with the world successfully, so the more developed it is, the better.

Developing cognitive skills doesn’t have to be a difficult task. In fact, even making small changes to lead a healthier lifestyle can do wonders for your brain as well as your overall health.