Cognitive brain function and the age of a person
What is cognitive function of the brain? How does the brain function in cognitive processing and learning? What part of the brain is responsible for cognitive function? If you want to know, read our article.
Develop the brain from young age together with Wikium.ru, because cognitive functions are predetermined from the babyhood, when the child first establishes emotional contact with an adult, and then gradually with his help begins to manipulate objects. He discovers their explicit and hidden qualities. Further, in the period from one to three years thinking, memory, and the rest of the cognitive sphere begins to develop quite intensively. The child takes everything in hand, pulls out the most interesting things from the farthest shelves and thus creates great inconvenience for parents. However, he needs it for normal development. Thus, he expands his interactions with the world, explores it, and as a result visual active thinking is formed. He learns to solve the task by real, physical transformation of the situation, interacting with things and objects. An important part of all this, of course, is the ability of the child to walk, which appears at the end of the first year of life and gradual development of speech.
So, then the child reaches the preschool age (3-6 years), where his main activity is a game. It would seem that games are absolutely useless and provide only a carefree childhood; however, this is not true. Children's games are a must for the normal development of a child, both in terms of mastering social relationships and in terms of developing his cognitive sphere. The definition of game is not easy to describe but here we can say that a game is a recreation of human activity that allows a preschooler to learn social norms and rules. One of the main qualities that is developed during the game, which directly affects the further development of cognitive functions, is the ability to make a choice, thanks to which the child is able to plan and regulate his activities in the future.
As for thinking, in addition to the visual active thinking we have visual thinking, that is, the ability to solve the set task by presenting objects and situations, instead of actually manipulating them. In this period of life visual thinking is more important in the life of a child. At preschool age, a transition to conceptual intelligence occurs, the child begins to understand the causes of phenomena, he learns to create reasons. The imagination also develops very actively at this age. What is more, significant changes occur in the structure of the child's memory - he begins to use signs and memory tools, which greatly expands his capabilities. Attention becomes steady. And all this is possible thanks to game. It is very important for parents to pay attention to this and try to develop the preschooler's cognitive abilities with the help of specifically selected games. Then the learning process for the child will be simple and interesting.
As a result, with quite good perception, memory, attention, imagination and speech, a child at the age of 6 is ready to go to school.
The basis of educational activity is the understanding of a system of scientific concepts. During the school life, verbal-logical thinking, arbitrary logical memory (figurative and verbal), voluntary attention, and written speech is formed. A pupil learns to analyze - to isolate parts from the whole. An important milestone in schooling is the development of abstract thinking (the ability to highlight the essential features of objects, not paying attention to their visual qualities), and divergent thinking, i.e. problem solving in the form of generating a set of solutions (which is the basis of creative thinking). Also, an important new element in the cognitive sphere of a teenager is the emergence of a cognitive style, i.e. the formation of sustainable cognitive strategies used in memorizing and thinking.
So, by the end of school, the essential part of cognitive functions is formed. In the future, there is a switch to the professional field of activity, the development of selected individual skills and abilities, the maintenance of the intellectual level.
Our brain is actively developing only until the age of 21, but this does not mean that after this age you should give up and do nothing to develop the cognitive sphere. Give your brain some nutrition. Intense mental activity causes the cells of our brain to work more actively and get involved in the formation of new connections, which contributes to a more prolonged preservation of a high level of cognitive abilities. This is necessary to take into account, because with age there is a decrease in operational-dynamic, fluid intelligence, that is the ability to solve new tasks, regardless of previous experience, to think logically. However, substantive intelligence, which is the ability to use accumulated experience and acquired skills, is increasing. Do not forget that the opportunities for learning and acquiring new experiences are quite high at any age (and even in old age) - that is why you should always pay attention to developing your cognitive functions and cognitive performance.