The Cognitive Theory of Learning - Research Paper Example

? Theory of Learning – COGNITIVE Theory of Learning – COGNITIVE Learning is a complex process which depends on several factors like the cognitive abilities and intelligence of the learner, heredity of the learner, environment in which learning takes place etc. It is an invisible process and the ultimate aim of learning would be the behavioral modification of the learner. It is a process in which an individual acquires and develops knowledge, understanding, skills, interests and attitude that are necessary to meet life’s situations. It can be considered both as a product and process. In other words, learning is a never ending process; at the same time it is the product of several life experiences a person undergo throughout his life. In short, learning is a multifaceted process which starts at birth and ends only at the time of the death of a person. Since learning is a multifaceted process, several theories were put forward by prominent scholars, educationalists, psychologists, sociologists etc. Cognitive theories of learning are the prominent theories among other learning theories. It deals with how people understand certain things and their cognitive abilities to learn things quickly and effectively. According to Lisa Fritscher (2011), “Cognitive theory is a learning theory of psychology that attempts to explain human behavior by understanding the thought processes. The assumption is that humans are logical beings that make the choices that make the most sense to them” (Fritscher, 2011). This paper analyses various aspects of cognitive learning theory and the contributions of various psychologists in the development of cognitive theories of learning. Principles of Cognitive theory Some of the Cognitive Processes in Our Information Processing System are: Attention (The Beginning of Information Processing), Perception (Finding Meaning in Stimuli), Rehearsal (Retaining Information Through Repetition), Meaningful Encoding (Making Connections in Long-Term Memory) Forgetting etc (Chapter Outline, Learning Objectives, and Summary, 2010). Since learning is heavily associated with the functioning of memory, most of the principles of cognitive theory cannot be understood without knowing how our memory functions. Based on the ability of our memory to store data, memory can be classified as long term and short term/ working memory. As the name indicates, long term memory stores information for longer periods whereas short term memory stores data for shorter periods only. For example, bitter experiences in human life will be stored in the long term memory whereas simple things happening in our daily life will be stored in the short term memory. Our brain or intelligence analyses all the information received by it before sending these information either to the short term or long term memory. Working memory is fast but limited. It can only handle a small number of data blocks, and the content tends to fade after a few seconds. Long-term memory can hold a huge amount of information—facts, data, and rules for how to use and process them—and the information can be maintained for long periods. Most information in long-term memory is not immediately accessible. Using information from long-term memory requires that it be activated (brought into working memory). Activation of information in long-term memory is productive and associative (Cognitive Principles and Guidelines for Instruction, n. d, p.18). Human memory can be compared to the memories of a computer. Working memory is similar to random access memory (RAM) of a computer whereas the long term memory is similar to the hard disk memory. As in the case of RAM, working memory has only limited capacity to store information and therefore it stores information only for shorter period. The decision whether to send an information to long term memory or not is usually taken by the brain based on the how a person experience it. Sensory inputs help human brain to take such decisions. For example, a person who suffered a severe accident may not forget it till his death since that experience could be stored deep into his long term memory. On the other hand, a person may forget what he ate in the morning of a particular day, after a week. In short, an information is send to working memory or long term memory based on the perceived importance of that information. Contributions of theorists who worked to develop Cognitive theory as it exists today There are many psychologists who contributed heavily to the development of cognitive theories of learning. Kurt Lewin, Edward C Tolman, Jean Piaget, Jerome S Bruner, RM Gagne etc are some of the psychologists who contributed immensely to the development of cognitive theories of learning. Gagne has put forward the cognitive theory of hierarchy of learning process. He has put forward eight stages in the learning process; signal learning, stimulus response learning, chaining, verbal association, multiple discrimination, concept learning, principle learning and problem solving (Gagne, n.d, p.125-128). Gagne has mentioned signal learning as an emotional response to a signal or stimulus. For example, an infant smiles at the sight of his mother. Stimulus response learning is the process of learning through stimuli and responses. For example, a child will say mum at the sight of his mother. Here the stimulus is mother and the response is mum. Chaining is the process of connecting previous experiences with the current experiences. The learning of a particular language can be cited as the best example of chaining. Verbal association is the learning occurs when a particular words uttered by others. For example, there are many Indians living in America. They often use lot of Hindi words in their conversations. An American may learn some of those Hindi words because of his interactions with the Indian community. Multiple discrimination is the ability of a person to segregate certain things from a group of many things. For example, a child can segregate a Benz car from a group of different cars parked at a particular place. Concept learning is the process of learning from abstracted properties. For example, when we see a black person with curled hair, we normally assume that he is from the Negro community. Principle learning is the process of deriving certain principles from different concepts. For example a child learns the principle that round things will roll after watching his toy balls and other spherical things rolling in the ground. Problem solving is the last step in the hierarchy model of learning. It is the process of finding solutions to different problems from the principles learned. Piaget stressed the importance of biological maturation in the thinking and learning process. He has pointed out that learning occurs at various stages of biological development. In his opinion, sensory motor development starts at the time of birth and lasts approximately 24 months. The development of language happens between the periods of 2-7 years whereas the skill development starts between the periods of 7-11 years. After the age of 11 years, the child starts to develop reasoning skills according to Piaget (Atherton, 2011). Kurt Lewin has proposed the field theory of learning. According to Lewin, the environment consists of vector forces (forces with magnitude and direction) such as people, objects, language, myth, art, religion, thoughts, fantasies, tensions etc. He referred such a field in which vector forces exist as life space. The field represents the complete environment of the individual. Behavior, Lewin believed, resulted from tensions between an individual’s self-perceptions and the environment encountered. Ones “life space”, or total environment of the individual and all significant others, had to be understood and researched in order to understand behavior. Lewin then concluded that as individuals participate in many different life spaces such as family, church, work, or school, behavior was represented as movements through life spaces that carry both positive and negative influences and are driven by ones perceptions based off their underlying psychological needs (Kurt Lewin, n. d) Cognitive theory & mental processes associated learning Cognitive theory and mental process learning are closely associated with each other. Activities such as information processing, predictions, and expectations are the outcomes of this close association between cognitive activities and mental processes associated learning. Tolman’s experiment with maze and rat gives us clear picture about the close association between cognitive activities and mental processes associated learning. Tolman created a maze with three different routes. One route was a straight path to the goal box where a reward of food was present. The second route was to the left of the first and was slightly longer. The third route was to the left of the first and was the longest of the three. With experience in the maze, the rats came to prefer the first route and would regularly take it when placed in the maze. Tolman then blocked route one, and left only two and three as options. When the rats came to the blockade, they immediately turned around and took route two (the second shortest) with absolutely no training to do so. When Tolman blocked routes one and two, the rats would come to the blockade of route two and immediately take route three to get to the reward (The cognitive perspectives, n. d, p.4). The above experiment clearly shows the relation between cognitive activities and mental process associated learning. Rats were able to find the shortest route because of the mental processes. It should be noted that they were not trained by any means to find out the shortest route. They followed the shortest route all the time because of the mental process associated learning. Tolman concluded that the rats movements inside the maze was motivated only by cognitive maps in the form of mental representations rather than discriminative stimuli (The cognitive perspectives, n. d, p.4). How Cognitive theory makes use of prior experience in explaining how people learn Cognitive theory believes that people learns more from their past experiences. For example, a child may not know the dangers associated with touching a candle flame. However, if he suffers burns while touching a candle flame, he will never approach any type of flames in future. The burning suffered from candle flame will force him to think that fire is dangerous and it should not be touched under any circumstances. In short mental processes are the base of all types of cognitive theories of learning. In the above case, mental processes which took place as a result of the bitter experience from candle flame forced the child to stay away from all kinds of flames in future. Punishments are often given to the children who commit mistakes in home or in schools. The aim of such punishments is to make the child aware of the dangers of the mistakes committed by him. Cognitive theory & permanent change in behavior As mentioned earlier, learning is a process of making changes in the behavior. It is impossible for a child to learn all the good and evil things in this world within a short time period from his birth. So he may engage in all types of activities during his childhood because of his unawareness about the pros and cons of his activities. However, he will begin to learn more about the outcomes of his activities as time goes on and will make permanent changes in his behavior. For example, it is quite possible that a child below four or three years may often urinate in the bed. However, he will modify that behavior, once he realizes it as a bad habit and the consequences of his bad habits. He will never repeat it in future since he tries deliberately to avoid it in future. Application of cognitive theory in school, businesses and social activities where learning environments exist Cognitive theory of learning is applied in schools in various forms. Rewards and punishments are implemented in most of the school curriculums to cultivate positive behavior and eliminate the chances of negative behaviors among school children. A child who gets a word of appreciation from his teacher for an outstanding performance will try to improve his performance further. On the other hand, a child who got punishment for a wrong behavior will try to modify his wrong behavior. Rewards and punishments are used as the responses to the various stimuli exhibited by the school children. In business also, cognitive theory of learning is applied in various forms. Promotions are often given to the outstanding candidates for motivating them further whereas warnings and punishments will be given to the underperforming employees to motivate them further. A worker with positive frame of mind will always try to deliver 100% of his productivity whereas an employee with dissatisfaction will always underperform. Heredity and Environment plays a vital role in controlling the learning of a person. Most probably, a person brought up in a healthy society may become a good citizen whereas a person brought up in an unhealthy society may develop antisocial elements in his character or behavior. The following illustration clearly shows the association of personal factors and environmental factors with behavior. (Social Cognitive Theory, n. d) Man is a social animal. Social environment consists of family members, friends and colleagues. It is difficult for a person to relive from the influence of these social environmental factors. References 1. Atherton J S (2011) Learning and Teaching; Piaget's developmental theory. Retrieved from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm 2. Chapter Outline, Learning Objectives, and Summary, (2010). Retrieved from http://wps.prenhall.com/chet_eggen_education_7/49/12581/3220843.cw/index.html 3. Cognitive Principles and Guidelines for Instruction, (n. d). Retrieved from http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~redish/Book/02.pdf 4. Fritscher L. (2011). Retrieved from http://phobias.about.com/od/glossary/g/cognitivethedef.htm 5. Gagne. R. (n. d). A Hierarchy of learning. Retrieved from http://www.cpe.uts.edu.au/pdfs/Chapter16MN.pdf 6. Kurt Lewin, (n. d). Retrieved from http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Kurt%20Lewin.htm 7. Social Cognitive Theory (n. d), Retrieved from http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Health%20Communication/Social_cognitive_theory.doc/ 8. The cognitive perspective, (n. d). 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