Cognitive Learning Theories

These are useful as guides for the students to differentiate the important and unimportant facts. In other words, accurate perception is important in good learning. It is part of the Gestalt principles. Clearly, these principles are useful as guide for teachers as they organize their materials and learning activities. So in this chapter, we will discuss the origin and features of cognitive theory and relate them to cognitive constructivism and meaningful learning.

The “Cognitive revolution” is the name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that began with what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences. It began in the modern context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research. The relevant areas of interchange were the  combination of psychology, anthropology and linguistics with approaches developed within the then-nascent fields of artificial intelligence, computer science and neuroscience. Two of the prominent figures in cognitive psychology are Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) and Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934).

 

The cognitive revolution in psychology was a response to behaviourism, which was the predominant school in experimental psychology at the time. This school was heavily influenced by Ivan Pavlov,B.F. Skinner, and other physiologists. They proposed that psychology could only become an objective cience if it is based on observable behaviour in test subjects. Since mental events are not publicly observable, behaviourist psychologists avoided description of mental processes or the mind in their literature. Psychoanalytic theories on the other hand stress the importance of the unconscious while cognitive theories emphasize on conscious thoughts. 3 important cognitive theories are Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, Vygotsky’s sociocultural cognitive theory and information processing theories, which we have discussed in previous chapter. Cognitive Psychology focuses on the study of how people think, understand, and know. They emphasizes on learning how people comprehend and represent the outside world within themselves and how our ways of thinking about the world influence our behaviour.

From a cognitive learning perspective, learning involves the transformation of informa­tion in the environment into knowledge that is stored in the mind. Learning occurs when new knowledge is acquired or existing knowledge is modified by experience. Among the main issues studied and discussed by cognitive psychologists are:

1.       The cognitive theories present a positive view of development, emphasizing conscious thinking.

2.       The cognitive theories (especially Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s) emphasize on the individual’s active construction of understanding.

3.       Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories underscore the importance of examining developmental changes in children’s thinking.

4.       The information processing theory offers detail descriptions of cognitive processes.