What Is Cognitive Ability? — The Ability to Understand

Seeing something is not the same as understanding it

We tend to feel that simply opening our eyes lets us see the world as it is. But even when two people look at the same thing, the information they take from it can be very different.

When people walk through a park, one person may notice only “trees,” “flowers,” “grass,” “birds,” and “bugs.” Another person may pull out far richer information—cherry trees, zelkova trees, cuckoos, larks, cicadas, bell crickets, and more.

Even on the road, if you do not know traffic signs, they look like nothing more than red and blue patterns. But if you know map symbols, weather charts, prefectural emblems, family crests, semaphore flags, or circuit symbols, you can extract a great deal of information instantly.

People who can use English naturally take in information from English signs around town without even trying to read them. They do not have to go looking for information—the information comes to them automatically. That is a major advantage when acquiring a foreign language.

What we can take in from the world depends on how much we know. The same scene can become a completely different world depending on what concepts and knowledge we already have.

We rarely notice what we do not know

Even if you tell a child, “Look carefully,” that alone will not suddenly help them see more. If they do not know what to look for, they cannot extract it as information even when it is right in front of them.

For example, one child may look at the sky and think only, “There are clouds.” A child who knows what cumulonimbus clouds are may realize, “It might rain.” A child who can distinguish the calls of different kinds of cicadas will also pick up more information than a child who only hears, “A cicada is buzzing.”

Perception is not simply about the eyes or ears receiving stimulation. It is the ability to extract information from that input and recognize, “This is what it is.”

Vocabulary raises the resolution of the world

This is why vocabulary and knowledge matter.

Expanding vocabulary is not mainly about getting more answers right on word tests. It directly deepens the way children perceive the world. When they know words such as “lonely,” “frustrated,” “anxious,” “embarrassed,” and “jealous,” they can identify their own feelings with much greater precision.

When children know words such as “heavy,” “light,” “long,” “short,” “fast,” “slow,” “wide,” and “narrow,” they also become more likely to notice relationships between things.

Knowing words means having mental categories for sorting the world more precisely. As knowledge grows, the amount of information a child can draw from the world also grows.

Understanding means a situation comes alive in the mind

Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rashomon begins with a sentence like this:

“It was at dusk on a certain day. A servant was waiting for the rain to stop under Rashomon Gate.”

When we understand this passage, we are not just recognizing the meanings of individual words such as “dusk,” “servant,” “Rashomon Gate,” and “rain.” We form a single scene in our minds: in Kyoto at sunset, in the rain, one man is sheltering beneath Rashomon Gate, waiting for the rain to stop.

Knowing each word one by one is not enough. We also have to organize how those words relate to one another and build them into a meaningful mental representation.

Able to read aloud, but unable to understand

Some children can read a passage aloud but still do not understand what it means. In those cases, they may be able to convert letters into sounds, but they have not yet built a sufficiently meaningful scene beyond that step.

Remembering information and grasping meaning are different

After reading a folktale or fable aloud to children, try asking what it was about. One child may repeat the sentences almost exactly. Another may answer, “It was a story about not forgetting to appreciate ordinary things.”

The first child has remembered the surface information well. The second child has understood the whole story as a single, abstract meaning.

Both abilities matter. But “remembering” and “understanding” are not the same thing. When thinking about jiatama, what matters is whether a child can turn remembered information into meaning.

From what we perceive, we think about what is not yet visible

Cognitive ability is not only about understanding what is right in front of us. Once we grasp what is happening now, we can connect it with prior knowledge and experience and think about what may happen next.

For example, imagine the western sky glowing red in the evening. Rather than stopping at “What a beautiful sunset,” we may predict, “Tomorrow might be sunny.” If the sky is red at dawn, we may think, “The weather may turn bad later.”

If a contrail lingers for a long time, the air high above may be humid and the weather may be changing. If there is a halo around the sun or moon, thin clouds may be spreading overhead and rain or snow may be approaching. If only one part of the road is wet, perhaps it was not rain at all—maybe someone splashed water there. If water droplets appear on a cold glass, the water may not have leaked out; instead, moisture in the air may have cooled and condensed.

What matters is not simply guessing the future correctly. What matters is thinking, “Why is this happening?” “What might happen next?” and “Could there be another possibility?”

What we can see now ＋ what we already know and have experienced → a prediction about what comes next

That is reasoning. The more knowledge we have, the more information we can draw from the same scene. And by connecting that information, we can think even about what is not yet visible.

Reading requires many kinds of processing

When we read text, the brain performs several kinds of processing at once.

First, we look at a string of letters and convert it into sound through phonological encoding. From there, we recognize words, extract meaning, and connect sentence to sentence in order to understand the content.

Children who are not yet fluent readers use a great deal of working memory just for this phonological encoding step. As a result, they may be able to read aloud but still fail to understand what the text said.

That said, when reading, the words remain on the page in front of them. If they lose track of the meaning, they can go back and read the previous sentence again.

When we listen, spoken language disappears moment by moment

Listening is different. It does not require converting written letters into sound. But the spoken words disappear one after another as they are heard.

Because children cannot look back at previous sentences with their eyes, they must temporarily hold what they hear in working memory, extract meaning on the spot, connect it to what came before and after, and continuously build mental representations.

When children “understand what they hear,” they are carrying out a continuous chain of processing: listen → hold it in mind → extract meaning → build a mental representation.

Listening comprehension also helps exercise working memory, because children must hold information in mind while processing meaning at the same time.

When looking at a child’s understanding, it is important to ask not only, “How much can they read?” but also, “How much can they understand when they listen?”

After reading aloud to a child, you can ask questions such as “Who appeared in the story?” “Why did that person get angry?” and “How did it end?” Their answers reveal how much meaning they can build and retain from spoken language that has already disappeared.

Once the foundation of “understanding by listening” is firmly in place, and reading skill is built on top of it, children can grow into “understanding by reading.”

Do not look only at the result; grasp the situation

In math, it is not enough to look at numbers by themselves. Children need to understand how the numbers relate to one another.

Imagine a highway sign that says, “Traffic jam for 5 km from here, 10 minutes to pass through.” Now imagine another one that says, “Traffic jam for 10 km from here, 5 minutes to pass through” (which, of course, would never actually happen).

If you focus only on the word “traffic jam,” you might think, “I see, there is congestion ahead.” But if you can move 10 km in 5 minutes, the average speed is 120 km/h, which is not a traffic jam. If it takes 10 minutes to move 5 km, the average speed is 30 km/h, which really is congestion.

What matters is not just the word “traffic jam” or the number “10 minutes.” Children need to picture the situation itself. They need to combine distance and time and imagine how fast things are actually moving.

The same is true in everyday life. “500 yen” may feel like a lot as pocket money for an elementary school child, but very little as the cost of dinner for a family of four. “1 liter” of water feels like a great deal in a cup, but it hardly changes anything in a bathtub.

Numbers do not carry meaning by themselves; they take on meaning through their relationship with other quantities and with the situation around them. Understanding math is not just about calculating numbers. It is about reading real-world situations through the relationships among numbers.

Numbers are nothing more than symbols for quantity

Numbers are incredibly useful. But the numbers themselves do not literally exist in the real world.

Before the symbol “100g,” there is the felt weight of actual meat in the hand. Before “500m,” there is the distance you sense when you walk it. Before the quantity “30 minutes,” there is the bodily sense of time passing while you wait or play.

This bodily sense of real-world quantity that exists before the number is called kasa.

Division has two meanings

Even the expression “8÷4” can mean two different things in the real world. Sharing 8 pears equally among 4 people—“8 pears ÷ 4 people = 2 pears per person”—is fair-share division. By contrast, dividing 8 pears into groups of 4—“8 pears ÷ 4 pears = enough for 2 people”—is measurement division. The calculation looks similar, but the order of the quantities that appears in the mind is different.

This difference becomes even clearer with fraction division. If we think of 2÷1/2 as measurement division, it means, “How many one-halves fit into 2?” Since 4 groups of 1/2 make 2, the answer is 4.

What matters is not memorizing division as a symbolic procedure, but understanding whether we are “sharing a whole equally” or asking “how many of a certain amount are contained.” When children can see the kasa behind the numbers, they can understand whole-number division and fraction division as the same relationship among quantities.

If the order changes, the result changes

When people hear “logical thinking,” they may picture puzzles or math problems. But logic exists in daily life. Things have an order. We take off our clothes before getting into the bath. We crack the egg before putting it into the frying pan. We build the foundation before constructing what goes on top of it.

Connecting cause and effect

“The ice melted because I left it outside.” “The flowers wilted because I did not water them.” “It flew farther because I threw it harder.” Daily life is full of relationships between cause and effect. By experiencing events like these again and again, children build the raw material for thinking, “Why did that happen?” Logic is the ability to understand and connect relationships correctly—order, cause, conditions, comparison, and more.

Knowledge raises the “resolution” of the world

People sometimes say thinking matters more than memorization. Of course, memorizing things without understanding their meaning is little more than test prep. But without knowledge to begin with, we cannot think at all.

Imagine showing a child a snapshot of a city street. One child may see only “people walking,” “cars,” and “rows of stores.” Another child, who knows about road signs, car models, architectural styles, seasonal plants, clothing, and the words on signs, can extract far more information from the very same photo.

The photo itself is exactly the same. What differs is the knowledge the viewer brings to it.

The more children know, the more finely they can distinguish the world in front of them. In other words, the “resolution” with which they see the world increases. Knowledge is not the opposite of thinking. It is the raw material needed to notice something, understand its meaning, and think beyond it.

What matters is being able to use knowledge

At the same time, simply possessing knowledge is not enough. Children need to use what they know to notice what is in front of them, connect information, understand it, and reason beyond it. When knowledge starts moving in this way, “I know it” becomes “I understand it” and “I can think with it.”

Build an accurate situation in the mind from words

For example, consider a problem like this: “There are 480 yen in your wallet. If you buy something that costs 230 yen, how much change will you get?”

If a child looks only at the numbers and calculates 480−230＝250, they may answer “250 yen.” But a child who can build the scene as a mental representation realizes, “I have 480 yen and I am buying something that costs 230 yen, so there is no change. There will be 250 yen left in the wallet.”

Here, the issue is not simply whether the child can calculate. What is being tested is whether the child can accurately reconstruct the real situation from the words on the page. When children get into the habit of seeing a word problem and immediately hunting for numbers and deciding whether to add or subtract, they may move to calculation before fully understanding the meaning of the sentence.

What matters first is bringing the situation to life in the mind: What is happening? Who has what? What changed? Children need to build a mental representation from the words first, and only then calculate if necessary. Repeating experiences like this changes the way cognition is used—from “I see numbers, so I calculate” to “I understand the situation first, and then I think.”

There is a process from perception to thought

A child’s ability to understand does not suddenly appear out of nowhere.

First, vocabulary and knowledge grow richer. As children know more, they can perceive more information from the world around them. When they connect what they perceive, they can understand it as a single meaningful situation. When they connect what they understand to prior knowledge, they can reason.

From there, comparing, classifying, thinking about cause and effect, and applying ideas to other situations leads into thought itself. Rich knowledge is an advantage. But what matters most is being able to use the knowledge one has.

Notice what is happening. Grasp the meaning. Connect it to what you know. Then think even about what has not been directly stated. That is cognitive ability—the ability to understand.

Cognitive ability is an essential foundation of intelligence. But even if a child has strong cognitive ability, that alone does not complete jiatama. Some children can understand difficult problems quickly, yet avoid challenges because they think, “I do not want to fail.” Others may understand that a friend is in trouble, but whether they feel, “I want to help,” is a different matter. Still others may know what they should do and understand other people’s feelings, yet struggle to notice how they themselves are behaving in the moment.

This is where non-cognition and metacognition come in. If cognition is the power to understand the world, non-cognition is the power to feel it, and metacognition is the power to notice oneself. When these three work together, knowledge and understanding can turn into real-life judgment and action.