You can think of cognitive skills as the tools you bring to an activity. Whatever you want to do, read a book, play ball or build a house—each of those activities requires certain tools for us to participate in that activity. The more efficient your tools (think of a typewriter versus a computer), the better and more efficient you will be at your task.
Cognitive skills are your child’s tools—attentional skills, memory skills, phonemic awareness skills and so on. How good you are at things is dependant on your cognitive skills. That’s why you can give the same instruction to two kids of the same age, and one of them can do the activity in 15 minutes while the other child is still sitting there an hour later, figuring out what to do. These two kids have different cognitive skills. If your child lacks the basic skills necessary to learn higher level tasks such as reading, then s/he won’t learn to read! If your child has trouble with paying attention, distractibility, organizational skills and/or motor coordination it is certain that he lacks some of the cognitive tools required of him. Cognitive skills, such as memory, logic and reasoning skills, auditory processing skills and attentional skills can be improved dramatically!
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