Cognitive skills

BASIC HUMAN COGNITIVE SKILLS include perception, thinking, learning, and problem solving. These skills depend upon and make use of these essential functions:

• ATTENTION - sustained focus, filtering of stimuli, and divided attention (moving from one focus to another, while maintaining some memory of both).
• EXECUTIVE FUNCTION - temporarily retaining and working with information, moving through various information sets while maintaining a central focus and intention, and selectively responding to information.
• MEMORY SYSTEMS - brief retention of perceived information, selective retention of declarative (overt) and procedural (implicit) information,
• LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND GENERATION - processing of sounds and meaning, with context awareness, in both receptive and expressive modes, in verbal and written contexts.
• REASONING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING - working with both concrete and abstract information to draw valid conclusions, so that novel challenging situations may be adapted to by means of complex decision-making.