MENTAL AGILITY
Mental agility is a function that enables us to adapt quickly to the environment around us, to a situation or to a stimulus. It’s thanks to mental agility that we can cope with different situations and know what to do depending on the context and the people we’re with.
Our brains are able to memorize the effects of our actions, and can predict which behavior will have the best result depending on the situation, making the task flow smoothly, quickly and efficiently.
What is mental agility?
Mental agility is the ability to modify one’s behavior or thinking by adapting to the context. This skill is linked to the speed of our thinking. Indeed, when faced with a situation, we must not only find the right strategy, but do so as quickly as possible.
During our lives, we learn how to handle situations, what words to use or what behavior to have in certain contexts, and we memorize strategies for solving problems.
Mental agility enables us to explore all the knowledge we have, and choose the best resources to use. So we need to be able to quickly find the best strategy and implement it. Finally, we need to be able to modify our strategy and behavior according to feedback, to see whether the chosen strategy is effective or not.
This skill makes it easy to adapt to new situations.
Mental agility disorders
When we talk about mental agility disorders, we’re talking about slow processing speed. This can be caused by pathologies or developmental disorders, such as ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia or auditory processing disorder.
These difficulties can cause learning difficulties in children, or difficulties in planning goals, solving problems with logical strategies, or ultimately reducing the possibility of modifying one’s thoughts and behaviors.
Processing speed also coexists with autism spectrum disorders, and with other pathologies such as dementia (Alzheimer’s) or illnesses such as schizophrenia, where processing speed is greatly affected.
Mental agility disorders can occur at any age. That’s why it’s so important to train this cognitive function.
Exercises to train and improve mental agility
To improve mental agility, and therefore your speed of reasoning, it’s important to develop your own strategies.
The first thing to do is to strengthen the connections in the brain. To do this, it’s important to try and make logical connections in everyday situations. For example, when you go shopping, you can think of the best route to take according to your experience (last time you went for the eggs first, but it’s better to take them afterwards), or a recipe made with the ingredients you see.
When faced with a problem, try to think of all possible solutions, even the most absurd ones. This exercise helps you to find other solutions, and not just focus on one strategy.
- The musical ear
- Colormind
- The musical ear
- Colormind
- The musical ear
- Colormind
Mental agility enables us to adapt to situations through 4 mechanisms:
1. Fluidity in task accomplishment
When we do something, our brain must be able to foresee the effects of our actions. What’s more, we need to know what we’re going to do, so that we don’t stop at every step. This allows us to act knowing what we want to achieve or do, and therefore being ready for the next action.
Noah’s Ark
Drag the animal pairs to the ark.
Here, there are several animals on the screen, so you’ll have to choose which animal to start with, and select its double, as we know that’s the task required.
What’s more, as you slide the second animal into the arch, you already know which animal you’re going to pick up next.
To make the exercise as smooth as possible, we start with the animals in the foreground, where we can directly identify the peers.
2. Response time
Response time is the time between receiving a stimulus and responding to it.
It’s the speed with which we process information, think of a solution and put it into practice. Response time does not include the time it takes us to finish a task, but the time it takes us to find the right strategy to follow. This mechanism also enables us to avoid dangers, for example, if there’s a ball coming towards us, we can dodge it if we have a good response time.
Simili
In this game, you have to find the duplicate image.
Here, you have to analyze all the images and find the duplicates as quickly as possible.
3. Automating a task
Once a task has been performed several times, it can be automated.
This means that you can do it without paying attention, and therefore with greater ease, since you don’t have to think about how to act, or what strategy to use. There are many tasks that we automate in the course of our lives, from the simplest, such as walking or tying our shoelaces, to the most complex, such as driving.
Suite Infernale
In this game, the player must press the button when the numbers presented form a sequence. Recognition of numbers and sequences can be automated when you don’t need to count or think hard about which numbers are needed to form a sequence.
4. Stimulus recognition speed
In the environment in which we live, we receive many different stimuli. So it’s important to recognize them quickly, to know which ones are important. Stimulus recognition also enables us to get our bearings, and better understand the situation, possible difficulties and the help we can get.
Mole invasion
In this game, you have to tap the moles that appear on the screen, but you don’t know when or where they’ll appear.
The moles are not all the same, so the player has to recognize them to know which action to take: the normal mole to tap once, the mole with the helmet to tap twice, and the mole with the glasses not to touch.
Moles are differentiated by small details, so it’s important to be able to analyze images quickly before they disappear.
COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES
A version for children aged 5 to 10
CLINT
A preventive version for seniors
SCARLETT
An easy-to-use version for seniors
