COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY

Cognitive theory is a learning theory of psychology that attempts to explain human behavior by understanding the thought processes.

Since the 1960's cognitivism has provided the predominant perspective within which Learning Research has been conducted and theories of learning have evolved. 

History of and assumptions of cognitivism:

Edward Tolman proposed a theory that had a cognitive flair. He was a behaviorist but valued internal mental phenomena in his explanations of how learning occurs.

Some of his central ideas were:

Behavior should be studied at a local level.

Learning can occur without reinforcement.

Learning can occur without a change in behavior.

Intervening variables must be considered.

Behavior is purposive.

Expectations of fact behavior.

Learning results in an organized body of information.

Based on his research of rats, Tolman proposed that rats and other organisms develop cognitive maps of their environments. They learn where different parts of the environment are situated in relation to one another. The concept of a cognitive map also called a mental map has continued to be a focus of research.

Gestalt psychology:

Gestalt psychologist emphasized the importance of organizational processes of perception, learning, and problem solving. They believed that individuals were predisposed to organize information in particular ways.

The basic ideas of Gestalt psychology are:

1. Perception is often different from reality. This includes optical illusions.

2. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. They believed that human experience cannot be explained unless the overall experience is examined instead of individual parts of experience.

3. The organism structures and organizes experience. The German word Gestalt means "structured whole." This means an organism structures experience even though structure might not be necessarily inherent.

4. The organism is predisposed to organize experience in particular ways. For example, the law of proximity is that people tend to perceive as a unit those things that are close together in space. Second example: similar people tend to perceive as a unit those things that are similar to one another.

Problem-solving involves restructuring and insight. It was proposed that problem-solving involves mentally combining and re-combining the various elements of a problem until a structure that solves the problem is achieved.

Piaget's developmental theory

Besides psychology, Piaget was interested in epistemology. Piaget used something he called the clinical method. This was research in which he gave children a series of tasks or problems, asking questions about each one. He then tailored his interviews to the particular responses that each child gave. His follow-up questions varied from child to child. This methodology was very different from the methods of contemporary behaviorist research.

Piaget's ideas about human learning:

People are active processors of information. Instead of being passive respondents to environmental conditions, human beings are actively involved and interpreting and learning from the events around them.

Knowledge can be described in terms of structures that change with development. Piaget proposed the concept of schema. As children develop, new schemes emerge, and are sometimes integrated with each other into cognitive structures.

Cognitive development results from the interactions that children have with their physical and social environments. As a child explores his world, and eventually they began to discover that they hold a perspective of the world uniquely their own.

The process through which people interact with the environment remains constant. According to Piaget, people interact with their environment through to unchanging processes known as assimilation and accommodation.

In accommodation, an individual either modifies an existing scheme or forms a new one to account for the new event.

In assimilation an individual interacts with an object or event in a way that is consistent with an existing scheme.

People are intrinsically motivated to try to make sense of the world around them. According to this view, people are sometimes in the state of equilibrium, they can comfortably explain new events in terms of their existing schemes. However at times they can encounter events they cannot explain our make sense of this is called disequilibrium, a mental discomfort. Through reorganizing thought people are able to then understand the previously un-understandable and return to equilibrium.

Cognitive development occurs in distinct stages, with thought processes at each stage being qualitatively different from those and other stages.

Piaget's four stages:

1.        Sensorimotor stage:

2.        Preoperational stage:

3.        Concrete Operations:

4.        Formal Operations:

5.         

Sensorimotor stage: from birth until about two years of age. At this age children are only aware of objects that are directly before them, thus the saying, "out of sight, out of mind."  (Example: The game of "peek-a-boo" is enjoyed only by infants.  Their joy in this game comes from their "finding" the adult -- who"hides" by blocking the child's view and thus "disappears" and "re-appears" as the child experiences it.)

Preoperational stage: emerges when children are about two years old until they are about six to seven years old. This is the stage of language development. Expanding childrens’ vocabularies reflect the many new mental schemes that are developing. This stage is characterized by a logical thinking, but not according toadult standards. A classic example is how young children cannot understand conservation of liquid. They will usually think that a taller glass has more water than a short glass even though both have been demonstrated to have the exact same amount of water.

Concrete operations: this  third stage of cognitive development appears when children are six or seven years old and continues until they are about 11 or 12 years old. Children begin to think logically about conservation problems and other situations as well. However, they typically can apply their logical operations only to concrete, observable objects and events.

Formal operations: the fourth and final stage usually appears after children are 11 or 12 years of age and continues to evolve for several years after that time. During this time the child develops the ability to reason with abstract, hypothetical, and contrary-to-fact information.

[It must be noted that some recent research does not confirm Piaget's four stages in their entirety.]

Vygotsky's developmental theory:

This Russian psychologist conducted numerous studies of children's thinking.

Some of his most influential ideas are:

1. Complex mental processes began as social activities.  As children develop, they gradually  analyze these processes and can use them independently of those around him. Vygotsky called this process of social activities being internalized as mental activities "internalization."

2. Children can often accomplish more difficult tasks when they have the assistance of other people more advanced and competent than themselves.

3. Tasks within the zone of proximal development promote maximum cognitive growth. This is the zone of learning for a child where he can learn something with the assistance of others. Without such assistance he would not be able to learn the subject.  

4. The idea of scaffolding learning comes from Vygotsky's zone of proximal development theory. Scaffolding refers to learning situations in which adults and other more competent individuals provide some form of guidance or structure that enables students to engage in learning activities within their zone of proximal development.

Reference: http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~Lynda_abbot/Cognitive.html