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6: Cognitive Learning Theories - Coggle Diagram
6: Cognitive Learning Theories
Information-Processing Model
Information-Processing Theory
a cognitive learning theory that describes the processing, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in the mind. (pg. 128)
Three main components
: register, working memory, and long-term memory. (pg. 128)
Stimuli from the five senses come into the
sensory register
, where most are immediately forgotten. Those that matter to us for any reason are then passed on to working memory, where we evaluate the new stimuli in light of what is already in our long-term memories. (p.128)
Working memory
is where thinking takes place. It is the most active part of the memory system, where we try to make sense of new stimuli and link them to what we already know. (pg. 129)
a storage system that can hold a limited amount of information for a few seconds. It is the part of memory in which information that is currently being thought about is stored. (pg. 130)
Working memory is believed to have a capacity of five to nine bits of information. (pg. 131)
Long-term memory
is the components of memory in which large amounts of information can be stored for long period of times. And then, if new information is determined to be useful, we store it in our long-term memory, possibly forever. (pg. 128)
thought to be a very large-capacity, very long-term memory store. (pg. 132)
Divided into three parts: episodic memory, semantic memory, and procedural memory.
Episodic memory
is our memory of personal experiences, a mental movie of things we have seen or heard.
Semantic memory
contains the facts and generalized information that we know; concepts, principles, or rules and how to use them; and our problem-solving skills and learning strategies.
Procedural memory
refers to “knowing how” in contrast to “knowing that.” (p. 133)
Information in episodic memory is stored in the form of images that are organized on the basis of when and where events happened. Information in semantic memory is organized in the form of networks of ideas. Information in procedural memory is stored as a complex of stimulus–response pairings. (pg. 133)
levels-of-processing
theory, which holds that people subject stimuli to different levels of mental processing and retain only the information that has been subjected to the most thorough processing. (pg. 135)
However, there is a phenomenon called
flashbulb memory
in which the occurrence of an important event fixes mainly visual and auditory memories in a person’s mind. (pg. 134)
Link Title
dual code theory
of memory, which hypothesizes that information is retained in long-term memory in two forms: visual and verbal. (p. 136)
Executive Processing
Determines what a person is interested in putting into long-term memory, and then it determines how hard the person will think about the stimuli and information in long-term memory to form new and lasting memories. (pg. 130)
Sensory Register
Sensory registers receive large amounts of information from each of the senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) and hold it for a very short time, no more than a couple of seconds. (p. 130)
The existence of sensory registers has two important educational implications. First, people must pay attention to information if they are to retain it. Second, it takes time to bring all the information seen in a moment into consciousness. (pg. 130)
Perception
Perception of stimuli is not as straightforward as reception of stimuli. Instead, it involves mental interpretation that is influenced by our mental state, our past experience, our knowledge, our motivations, and many other factors. (p. 130)
First, we perceive different stimuli according to rules that have nothing to do with the inherent characteristics of the stimuli. Second, we do not perceive stimuli as we see or sense them but as we know (or assume) they really are. (p. 130)
Your life experience (in long-term memory) tells you how to interpret stimuli and which stimuli to pay attention to. (pg. 130)
Attention and Gaining Attention
Attention
is active focus on certain stimuli to the exclusion of others. (pg. 130)
There are several ways to gain students’ attention, all of which fall under the general heading of arousing student interest. (pg. 130)
Cognitive Teaching Strategies
They need to know how to identify what they already know about a topic, along with what they need to know, and they need to have a strategy for extracting the relevant information. (pg. 156)
In a world awash in data, knowing learning strategies such as the use of graphic organizers, outlining, and organizing information in hierarchies is essential. (pg. 156)
advance organizers
to orient students to material they were about to learn and help them recall related information that could assist them in incorporating the new information. (pg. 156)
Advance organizers seem to be most useful for teaching content with a well-organized structure that might not be immediately apparent to students. (pg. 156)
The use of advance organizers is a valuable strategy in its own right, but research on advance organizers also illustrates a broader principle that is extremely important: Activating prior knowledge enhances understanding and retention. (pg. 156)
Like advance organizers, explanatory analogies (comparisons or parallels) can contribute to understanding by linking new information to well-established background knowledge.
Analogies
can help students learn new information by relating it to concepts they already know. (pg. 156)
Cognitive psychologists use the term
elaboration
to refer to the process of thinking about material to be learned in a way that connects the material to information or ideas that are already in the learner’s mind. (pg. 157)
Students may be asked to think of connections between ideas or to relate new concepts to their own lives. (pg. 157)
One strategy that helps students learn from written texts, lectures, and other sources of information is the insertion of questions requiring students to stop from time to time to assess their own understanding of what the text or teacher is saying. (pg. 159)
Another means that you can use to help students comprehend complex topics is the introduction of conceptual models, or diagrams showing how elements of a process are related to one another. (pg. 159)
A knowledge map graphically shows the main concepts of a topic of study and the links between them. (pg. 159)
Graphs, charts, tables, matrices, and other means of organizing information into a comprehensible, visual form have all been found to aid comprehension, memory, and transfer. (pg. 160)
Remembering/Forgetting?
Most forgetting occurs because information in working memory was never transferred to long-term memory. (pg. 143)
Interference
which happens when information gets mixed up with, or pushed aside by, other information. (pg. 143)
occurs when people are prevented from mentally rehearsing newly learned information. In one classic experiment. (pg. 143)
Information or skills may exist in long-term memory but take so much time or so much mental effort to retrieve that they are of limited value when speed of access is essential. (pg. 145)
Automaticity is required—that is, a level of rapidity and ease such that a task or skill involves little or no mental effort. (pg. 145)
Automaticity is primarily gained through practice far beyond the amount needed to establish information or skills in long-term memory. (pg. 146)
Another form of interference is
retroactive inhibition
, which occurs when previously learned information is lost because it is mixed up with new and somewhat similar information.(pg. 143)
Sometimes previous knowledge interferes with learning later information. A classic case of
proactive inhibition
.(pg. 144)
the possibility that the ability to focus on key information and screen out interference is at the heart of cognitive performance. (pg. 144)
It should also be noted that previous learning can often help a person learn similar information, in what is called
proactive facilitation
. (pg. 144)
Retroactive Facilitation
is increased comprehension of previously learned information because of the acquisition of new information. (pg. 144)
The tendency to learn the first items presented is called the
primacy effect
(pg. 145)
the tendency to learn the last elements is called the
recency effect
. (pg. 145)
Retrieval Practice
Simply stopping from time to time while reading to recall the content is one effective study strategy. (pg. 146)
Is it better to practice newly learned information intensively until it is thoroughly learned, a technique called
massed practice
)pg. 146)
is it more effective to practice a little each day over a period of time—
distributed practice
. (pg. 146)
Massed practice allows for faster initial learning, but for most kinds of learning, distributed practice is better for retention, even over short time periods. (pg. 146)
Everyone knows that we learn by doing. It turns out that research on
enactment
supports this commonsense conclusion. (pg. 146)
It has long been known that practice is more likely to lead to long-term retention when students create something using the new information, rather than merely rehearsing the existing information
Metacognitive Skills
The term
metacognition
means knowledge about one’s own learning or about how to learn. (pg. 152)
Thinking skills and study skills are examples of
metacognitive skills
(pg. 152)
Another metacognitive strategy is the ability to predict what is likely to happen or to tell what is sensible and what is not. (pg. 152)
Self-questioning strategies
are particularly effective. In self-questioning, students look for common elements in a given type of task and ask themselves questions about these elements. (pg. 152)
Students can be taught strategies for assessing their own understanding, figuring out how much time they will need to study something, and choosing an effective plan of attack to examine or solve problems. (pg. 152)
The Brain
The human brain is 3 pounds of mystery. It controls everything we do, everything we perceive and feel. (pg. 137)
The
brain stem
is the part of the brain that controls the most basic functions common to all animals. (pg. 137)
The next layer above the brain stem is the
limbic system
. It has four important components. The
thalamus
is where information from the senses (except for smell) goes. The
hypothalamus
controls the release of hormones to keep the body in balance.The
hippocampus
it controls the transfer of information from working memory to long-term memory. The
amygdala
regulates basic emotions, such as fear, anger, and hunger. (pg. 139)
The
cerebral cortex
, carries out the highest mental functions, especially in its outermost layers. Within it, the
cerebellum
coordinates movement and also plays an important role in thinking. The two hemispheres of the brain are connected by the
corpus callosum
, which helps to coordinate functions throughout the brain. (pg. 139)
A
neuron
is a long cell. At one end are
dendrites
, which have thousands of tiny branches. The spaces between these branches are called
synapses
Neurons receive stimuli from the environment, translate them into electrical impulses, and pass them on across the synapses to other neurons or to the brain. Axons at the end of the neurons pass information to other cells. (pg. 137)
automaticity, or seemingly effortless performance made possible by extensive experience and practice, in the development of expertise. (pg. 139)
Although the left and right hemispheres of the brain appear to participate together in most cognitive tasks, the brain is not entirely a general problem solver well adapted to all sorts of different challenges the person might encounter. (pg. 141)
Learners are, in fact, neural works in progress, altering themselves with every new activity, every engagement, and every new skill acquired and fact learned. (pg. 141)
Content learned in both visual and auditory ways is better retained than content learned in only one way. (pg. 143)
Memory Strategies
Verbal Learning
is learning of words or facts expressed in words. (pg. 147)
Paired-associate learning
involves learning to respond with one member of a pair when given the other member, usually from a list of pairs to be memorized. (pg. 147)
Serial learning
involves learning a list of terms in a particular order. (pg. 147)
Free-recall learning
tasks also involve memorizing a list, but not in a special order. (pg. 147)
Free-recall learning involves assimilating a list of items that need not be remembered in order, such as the names of the Canadian provinces. (pg. 147)
One important aspect in the learning of paired associates is the degree of familiarity the student already has with the stimuli and the responses. (pg. 147)
Many powerful memory techniques are based on
imagery
, which consists of forming mental images to help remember associations. (pg. 147)
Loci Method
the student thinks of a very familiar set of locations, such as rooms in her own house, and then imagines each item on the list to be remembered in one specific location. (pg. 147)
Once the connections between the item and the room or other location are established, the learner can recall each place and its contents in order. (pg. 147)
Pegword Method
student memorizes a list of pegwords that rhyme with the numbers 1 to 10. (pg. 149)
Initial-Letter Strategies
involves a reorganization of information in which initial letters of a list to be memorized are arranged in a more easily remembered word or phrase. (pg. 149)
Study Strategies
A generalization about effective study strategies is that effective methods involve learners in reshaping the information, not just rereading or highlighting without consciously choosing the most important information to highlight. (pg. 153)
Perhaps the most effective study strategy is taking
practice tests
aligned with the real test to come. Test taking, especially when tests require constructed responses rather than multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank responses, causes test takers to engage in high-level processing of the content, thereby enhancing understanding and memory. (pg. 153)
A common study strategy used both in reading and in learning from lectures,
note taking
can be effective for certain types of material because it requires mental processing of main ideas as one makes decisions about what to write. (pg. 153)
Positive effects are most likely when note taking is used for complex conceptual material in which the critical task is to identify the main ideas. (pg. 153)
note taking that requires some mental processing is more effective than simply writing down what was read. (pg. 153)
Perhaps the most common study strategy is
underlining or highlighting
. (pg. 153)
The problem is that most students fail to make decisions about what material is most critical and simply underline too much. (pg. 153)
Sumarizing
involves writing brief statements that represent the main ideas of the information being read. (pg. 154)
Outlining
presents the main points of the material in a hierarchical format, with each detail organized under a higher-level category. (pg. 154)
In networking and
concept mapping
, students identify main ideas and then diagram connections between them. (pg. 154)
One of the best-known study techniques for helping students understand and remember what they read is the
PQ4R method
is a study strategy that has students preview, question, read, reflect, recite, and review material. (pg. 154)
Preview
. Survey or scan the material quickly to get an idea of the general organization and the major topics and subtopics.
Question
. Ask yourself questions about the material before you read it.
Read
. Read the material.
Reflect
on the material. Try to understand and make meaningful the presented information by: 1) connecting it to what you already know, 2) relating the subtopics in the text to primary concepts or principles, 3) trying to resolve contradictions within the presented information, and 4) using the material to solve problems suggested by the material.
Recite.
Practice remembering the information by stating points out loud and asking and answering questions.
Review
. In the final step, actively review the material, focusing on asking yourself questions (pg. 154)
Meaningful Information
Most human learning, particularly school learning, involves making sense out of information, sorting it in our minds until it fits in a neat and orderly way, and using old information to help assimilate new learning. (pg. 149)
Rote learning
consists of the memorization of facts or associations, such as the multiplication tables, the chemical symbols for the elements, words in foreign languages, or the names of bones and muscles in the human body. (pg. 150)
In contrast,
meaningful learning
is not arbitrary, and it is related to information or concepts that learners already have. (pg. 150)
Inert knowledge
This is knowledge that could and should be applicable to a wide range of situations but is applied only to a restricted set of circumstances. (pg. 150)
Usually, inert knowledge consists of information or skills learned in school that we cannot apply in life. (pg. 150)
Many problems in life arise not from a lack of knowledge but from an inability to use the knowledge we already have. (pg. 150)
One of the most important determinants of how much you can learn about something is how much you already know about it. (pg. 151)
Schema Theory
is that information that fits into an existing schema is more easily understood, learned, and retained than information that does not fit into an existing schema. (pg. 151)
It is thought that most well-developed schemata are organized in hierarchies similar to outlines, with specific information grouped under general categories, which are grouped under still more general categories. (pg. 151)
One important insight of schema theory is that meaningful learning requires the active involvement of the learner, who has a host of prior experiences and knowledge to bring to understanding and incorporating new information. (pg. 151)