Cognitivism: Hidden Mental Processes of the Human Brain
by Lorraine Ledger
“Cognitivism has a premise that humans generate knowledge and meaning through sequential development of an individual’s cognitive abilities, such as the mental processes of recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, apply, create, understand, and evaluate…and construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.” (Ritter & Phillips, 2014)
Except for Behaviorism, which deals mostly with imposing controls over learners and learners’ goals, all other learning theories deal with cognitive psychology and the role of the learner’s own willing participation and understanding of the learning process.
Building on the Constructivist psychological theories of self-determination, Cognitivism seeks to understand and explain the “hidden” mental processes that lead to measurable behavioral change. Such change is not always easy to measure, however, often requiring cleverly designed experimentation to identify the many nuanced aspects of factors like perception, biology, and learner self-awareness.
Cognitivism and Social Cognitivism
Jerome Bruner, Albert Bandura, Jean Piaget, Arthur Chickering and other educational psychologists have developed modern Cognitivism over many decades of research, moving the theory from Social Constructivism through neurological and perceptual experimentation to arrive at a broader theory of Social Cognitive Learning that takes into account the interplay of external and internal processes.
Bandura and Bruner, especially, can be credited with bringing a fuller understanding to such nuanced issues as incongruity, personal agency and self-efficacy, and the roles of stress and emotions, socioeconomic class, personal needs, fear, and failure in the ability of individuals to learn and development cognitively (Bandura, 1977).
Cognitivism is about mental processes involved in learning, which itself can be described as the acquisition of knowledge through experience. Such mental processes include the ability to recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, apply, create, understand, and evaluate information. The most important brain function necessary for cognition, then, is memory (Ritter & Phillips, 2014).
In 1968, researchers Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin published their “Information Processing Model”, identifying the 3 main components of these mental processes: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory.
Although considered simplistic, their new model laid the foundation for much discussion and expansion of our understanding of best practices for teaching when considering the limitations of memory and how best to connect new information to build on prior knowledge. Separately, both Atkinson and Shiffrin went on to revise and expand the topic throughout their careers, along with many others who found it useful but imperfect.
Foundations
Jean Piaget laid the foundation with his Cognitive Stage Theory, which inspired social constructivists like Lev Vygotsky and psychosocial theorist Arthur Chickering to develop their own related ideas.
Piaget identified 4 stages of human cognitive development, based on observations and interviews he conducted while administering standardized tests at a local grade school in Paris, where he was I residence for 2 years at the Sorbonne in post-doctoral studies of pathological psychology, logic, and the philosophy of science.
His developmental theory asserts that all people move through 4 intellectual stages according to age and physical maturation, beginning at birth and continuing through adolescence. Piaget says cognitive development happens in stages according to the physical age of a person, and that the capacity to learn is dependent on which stage has been achieved (GSI Berkeley, 2020):
These four stages are:
- SENSORIMOTOR – age 0 to 24 months – object permanence
- PRE-OPERATIONAL – age 2 to 7 years – symbolic thought, pretending, imaginative play
- CONCRETE OPERATIONAL – age 7 to 11 years – operational thought, proximal reason
- FORMAL OPERATIONAL – age 11 to adulthood – abstract concepts, formal reasoning
Because of Piaget’s ideas on developmental psychology, people like Maria Montessori and Howard Gardner have helped educators move away from emphasis on standardized testing and traditional teaching practices. Preschools everywhere emphasize the early years as the time to educate the senses because Piaget put forth the idea that children learn much about the world before they can even speak.
He first began writing about his interest in child development when he was only 18 and studying toward his doctorate in biology, around 1918. By 1952 he had built his ideas into a scientific system of psychology and published his theory on the 4 Stages of Development. His work has changed the emphasis of education in general from memorizing facts to guided self-discovery.
Examples of this are integrated studies programs, use of math manipulatives, use of computers in the classroom, and learning experiences that increase a child’s adaptability. Piaget’s only direct comments on teaching were that “you need a mixture of direction and freedom” (Evans, p. 53).
Cognitive Load Theory
The most important consideration for good instructional design is Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). Supported through a variety of research studies, CLT addresses the demands on and limitations of human memory.
Although research suggests that our long-term memory storage capacity may be very large (possibly infinite), human “short term” and “working memory” space is very limited. For this reason, it is very important to help learners manage the demands on their attention and limit the amount of new information being presented.
As the Information Processing Model (diagram above) indicates, our senses bring information into the brain where it is perceived and filtered, or forgotten altogether, before reaching an opportunity for the new information to be processed by the working memory.
Once processed and learned, new information is encoded and sent for storage in long-term memory. The brain encodes long-term memories so that they can be more easily retrieved and compared with new information during the learning process. Through what Atkinson and Shiffrin called “rehearsal”, connections are made between prior knowledge and new information so that our long-term memory builds upon itself in a continuous cycle of learning, like adding cars to a train or links in a chain.
Originator of Cognitive Load Theory, John Sweller (1988) distinguishes between three different cognitive loads:
Intrinsic load (IL) – is directly related to the learning material (or task) and defined by the number and interactivity of elements that have to be processed. An element being defined as “anything that needs to be or has been learned, such as concept or procedure” (Sweller, p. 124). Interactivity concerns the relationships among elements.
Extraneous Load (EL) – refers to those mental resources devoted to elements that do not contribute to learning and schemata acquisition or automation. It is mainly related to the information presentation and the instructional format that could increase the user’s overall cognitive load without enhancing learning. It has to be kept as low as possible in order to keep available an adequate amount of mental resources for learning.
Germane load (GL) – refers to the mental resources devoted to acquiring and automating schemata in long-term memory.
Conclusion
Although cognition is a “hidden” mental process, cognitive theory suggests we can know if learning takes place because of an eventual outward manifestation of some kind of growth or change of behavior.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review,Vol. 84, No. 2, 191-215.
Bandura, A. (2005). The evolution of social cognitive theory. In K.G. Smith & M.A. Hitt (Eds.) Great Minds in Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press., pp. 9-35.
Bruner, J. S. (1957). Going Beyond the Information Given. New York: Norton.
Bruner, J. S. (1960). The Process of Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, Mass.: Belkapp Press.
Debue, N. & van de Leemput, C. (2014, October 1). What does germane load mean? An empirical contribution to the cognitive load theory. Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 5. National Institutes of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4181236/
Evans, R. (1973). Jean Piaget: The Man and His Ideas (translated by Eleanor Duckworth). E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., NY, pp. 53 – 142.
GSI Teaching Guide (2020, October 11).Learning: theory and research: Social constructivism section, Graduate Student Instructor Teaching & Resource Center, University of California Berkeley.
McLeod, S. A. (2018, Feb 05). Bruner. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html
Piaget, J. (1976). Piaget’s theory. In Piaget and His School. Springer Berlin Heidelberg., pp. 11-23.
Ritter, S.E. & Phillips, K. (2014, January 9). An explanation of connectives. Learning Centered Technology. https://learningcenteredtechnology.wordpress.com /2014/01/20/connectivism-a-learning-theory-for-the-digital-age/
Stevens-Fulbrook, P. (2020, January 30). Learning theories: Cognitive load theory. The definitive guide. Teachers of Science.
Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning, Cognitive Science, 12.
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