Human beings are entities whose nervous system allows us to carry out a large number of mental processes, which in turn allow us to have a large number of cognitive skills that we adaptively use in order to adapt and survive.

Of this enormous quantity of capacities some are more fundamental to us than others. Throughout this article we will refer to some of the most important cognitive skills.

The most important cognitive skills.

There are many skillful cognitives that we have and that we use constantly to survive, mostly even unconsciously. Some of the fifteen most important are the following.

1. Attention.

One of the most basic cognitive skills, attention allows us to focus our cognitive resources in such a way that we can operate and work with them.

Within her attention we can include abilities such as sustaining, dividing, moving away from previously perceived stimulation to save cognitive resources. Also included are the orientation responses to outgoing stimuli, allowing us to activate and react to possible threats.

2. Memory.

Being able to codify, amanecar and recover information is fundamental in order to generate learning experiences that allow us to acquire a specific ability or ability to operate mentally with information or even generate memories that will be part of our history.

They include working memory (fundamental for any information processing), declarative (including episodic) and non-declarative, both short and long term.

3. Self-awareness.

Curiously little considered when we think about cognitive abilities, it is a fundamental capacity without which we could not have an identity.

It is about the fact of being able to recognize themselves, to consider themselves to be independent of the rest of the environment. It also allows us to be able to have and self-manage a personal story and set and make learning meaningful.

4. Reasoning.

This ability has always been considered extremely important, to the point that in the past it was considered to be what separated us from other animals.

The ability to reason allows us to draw conclusions from the observation of reality and act accordingly. We can include inductive reasoning (moving from particular cases to general axioms), deductive reasoning (deducting from the general what the behavior of particular cases will be like) and hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

5. Motivation and goal setting.

The motivation allows the human being to acquire and feel the energy and the impulse necessary to initiate and maintain a determined course of action, allowing us to actively set and pursue our goals and objectives. The total absence of motivation could even make us not look for food or water to survive.

6. Association capacity.

Being able to establish relationships between different events is a fundamental capacity not only for the human being but for any type of living being with the capacity to learn. In fact, it is the basis of any type of learning.

7. Cognitive flexibility.

If we always kept our perspective and vision of things we would not be able to learn not to face something contrary to our way of understanding reality. Being flexible allows us to be able to adapt to the new conditions and modify our schemes depending on what the experience dictates.

It also allows us to be able to assume different perspectives and understand the motivations and thoughts of others, being of great help for socialization.

8. Troubleshooting.

Deeply linked to the previous one, the ability to use the acquired knowledge, organize it and link it to the search for a solution to the problems we face.

9. Creativity and lateral thinking.

Generating new strategies beyond the information and methods that we have prepared so far has allowed us to evolve the human being, for example, contributing to generate new technologies, techniques and procedures that allow us to achieve our objectives or solve a problem in the most efficient.

10. Perception.

The capacity for perception is something we usually take for granted, but the truth is that we can consider it one of the essential cognitive skills. It is the ability to transform the signals from the senses into information with which our brain is able to work to perceive in a coordinated way, for example, the different information that constitutes an image or what a person is telling us.

11. Inhibition and behavior management.

It is as important to do something as the fact of being able to not do it, or to inhibit our behavioral patterns already initiated to face new information or to change strategies in case they are not being effective. It allows us to save time and effort, when not directly avoiding dangers and being able to adapt to the environment

12. Anticipation and planning.

The past is important, but it is the ability to plan and anticipate results which allows us to start establishing plans and the appropriate actions to achieve our objectives. It also allows us to assess risks and benefits, as well as the possible consequences of our actions.

13. Symbolization and interpretation.

Something fundamental for the human being is the ability to generate elements that allow an idea to be represented, as well as the ability to assess what a particular action or symbol implies. This allows us, for example, to communicate with our peers and socialize, something peremptory for a gregarious species like ours.

14. Language.

Although more than a cognitive ability could be considered an activity or product of this, the truth is that language is a fundamental capacity when it comes to relating and transmitting information. We do not speak only of speech but also of literacy, gestures or expressions.

15. Metacognition.

A cognitive ability of great relevance is the fact of being able to value and think about one's own cognition. Metacognition allows us to take into account our abilities and knowledge, analyze, for example, the type of information we lack to understand a situation or optimize and improve our capabilities.