What are basic and superior COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS?

The brain is the main organ of our body since it is responsible for regulating most of the functions of the body and mind. Among these functions we would find the cognitive functions that are responsible for receive, select, store and process information from the environment that surrounds us. Therefore, thanks to them we can relate to others and to objects in our environment.

These functions are continuously activated and helping us to carry out any type of activity, such as reading, writing, talking to someone, listening to music... There are many types of these functions that, although they are different from each other, in many cases overlap and they depend a lot on each other, that is, if we have an altered function, it is possible that the others are affected also.

Next in Psychology-Online we will see what are basic and higher cognitive functions and we will explain them so that we can understand more about our brain and cognitive abilities.

Index

1. Basic cognitive functions
2. Higher cognitive functions
3. What do we use executive functions for?

What are basic cognitive functions? In this group are those types of functions that help us to capture and filter information which will then be treated by the rest of the brain's cognitive functions. Next we will see what the basic cognitive functions are:

Attention

Through this process we select the information and we separate the one that is useful to us from the one that is not. With attention we can be alert to dangers, we can also be concentrated for long periods of time, listen to a conversation ...

There are different types of care:

• Targeted attention: to be alert.
• Sustained attention: be focused on something.
• Selective attention: choose something to focus on, omitting the rest of the stimuli around us.
• Alternating attention: move from one focus of attention to another.

Visuoperceptive and visuospatial functions

With these cognitive abilities we can recognize and classify stimuli. Thanks to them we recognize faces or distinguish a dog from a cat. That is, it helps us interpret the information.

Memory

Memory is the cognitive process of storing information. In the future, we can also recover said information, thus facilitating our anticipation of certain attentions. For example, if you have had a car accident from looking at your mobile, in the future you will surely not look at it again since you remember what happened the last time you did it. There are many memory types. Depending on the temporal space we would have:

• Short term memory.It can be of 2 types. On the one hand, the immediate memory: remember something when it happens. On the other hand the work memory: the one more focused on the storage of information in the short term and the work of it. Example, memorizing a phone number until we find a piece of paper to write it down.

• Long term memory. Store information for long periods of time. Depending on the type of memories, we find two types of long-term memory. On the one hand, the declarative memory which is the most conscious memory that allows us to evoke memories the moment we decide to do so. For example, remember our wedding day. On the other hand, the non-declarative memory, that most unconscious memory like remembering how to ride a bike every time we ride one.

Next we will see what are the higher cognitive functions and examples.

Executive functions

They are the most complex group of cognitive processes since they are responsible for the control of cognition and regulation of thoughts and behavior. Therefore, they cover all kinds of brain functions. such as choosing where to direct our attention, our capacity for planning, motivation, checking and regulation of our actions, awareness of ourselves, the ability to consider different points of view and consider future alternative. Ultimately, in this group are all more conscious and more elaborate functions related to reasoning. Thus, we could divide them into the following subgroups:

• Goal formulation: here we would meet the motivation, self-awareness and way of perceiving our relationship with the world.
• Strategy planning and stages to achieve objectives: ability to abstract, develop alternative thoughts and evaluate different possibilities.
• Execution of conduct: Other higher cognitive functions are the ability to initiate, maintain and sequence behaviors in an orderly and integrated way.
• Effectiveness: among the higher cognitive functions there is the time control, the use of feedback and self-regulation of behavior.
• Reasoning: Within the higher cognitive functions we would find, therefore, with reasoning, which in turn, can be divided into several types. On the one hand, the argumentative reasoning, which is related to the linguistic ability to give arguments. And on the other hand the logic reasoning, which is the ability, upon receiving an argument, to be able to question the validity and the possibility or not that there is a different hypothesis. There are several types, deductive reasoning would be completely logical and inductive, which would include conjecture.

Language

This cognitive function is the ability to communicate and relate to other people. In addition, thanks to it our thoughts are structured. Logically it has two phases, the language interpretation phase, that is, what others tell us, and the language production phase, in which we are the ones who transmit information to the the rest.

As you may have deduced, we are constantly making use of several of the brain's cognitive functions, both basic and higher cognitive functions. Behind the most everyday acts there are infinite types of processes that allow us to carry out the action. For example, when cooking, we are using a alternating attention between the various food preparations. In addition, we are employing several memory types Y executive functions on many occasions in order to be able to decide if, for example, more salt is needed.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What are basic and higher cognitive functions, we recommend that you enter our category of Neuropsychology.

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