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COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY (Factors that influence learning (Cognitivism,…
COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY
What is cognitivism?
Cognitivism is the study in psychology that focuses on mental processes, including how people perceive, think, remember, learn, solve problems, and direct their attention to one stimulus rather than another.
Cognitivist learning theory
Cognitive theories stress the acquisition of knowledge and internal mental structures and, as such, are closer to the rationalist end of the epistemology continuum (Bower & Hilgard, 1981).
Learning is equated with discrete changes between states of knowledge rather than with changes in the probability of response.
Cognitive theories focus on the conceptualization of students’ learning processes and address the issues of how information is received, organized, stored, and retrieved by the mind.
Knowledge acquisition is described as a mental activity that entails internal coding and structuring by the learner. The learner is viewed as a very active participant in the learning process.
Factors that influence learning
Cognitivism, like behaviorism, emphasizes the role that environmental conditions play in facilitating learning.
Instructional explanations, demonstrations, illustrative examples and matched non-examples are all considered to be instrumental in guiding student learning.
emphasis is placed on the role of practice with corrective feedback
Cognitive theories contend that environmental “cues” and instructional components alone cannot account for all the learning that results from an instructional situation.
Learners’ thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and values are also considered to be influential in the learning process
What is the role of memory?
Learning results when information is stored in memory in an organized, meaningful manner.
Teachers/designers are responsible for assisting learners in organizing that information in some optimal way.
Designers use techniques such as advance organizers, analogies, hierarchical relationships, and matrices to help learners relate new information to prior knowledge.
Forgetting is the inability to retrieve information from memory because of interference, memory loss, or missing or inadequate cues needed to access information.
How does transfer occur?
transfer is a function of how information is stored in memory (Schunk, 1991).
When a learner understands how to apply knowledge in different contexts, then transfer has occurred.
Prior knowledge is used to establish boundary constraints for identifying the similarities and differences of novel information.
Not only must the knowledge itself be stored in memory but the uses of that knowledge as well.
The best types of learning for cognitivist
Usually considered more appropriate for explaining complex forms of learning (reasoning, problem-solving, information-processing) than are those of a more behavioral perspective (Schunk, 1991).
Knowledge can be analyzed, decomposed, and simplified into basic building blocks. Knowledge transfer is expedited if irrelevant information is eliminated.
For example, trainees attending a workshop on effective management skills would be presented with information that is “sized” and “chunked” in such a way that they can assimilate and/or accommodate the new information as quickly and as easily as possible.