MAIN IDEAS BEHIND COGNITIVE THEORY
What is important is the cognitive process, not the behavior.
Learners are not passive responders to the environmental stimuli.
Learners are actively making mental connections between new information and old.
Learners organize their knowledge
into categories and connected networks.
IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
Children become more capable of sophisticated thought as they grow so don't try to ask for more than they can give.
People organize what they learn. If you want them to have the correct organization principles, help learners see them.
New learning is easier if we can make connections so giving examples and making up examples are good ways to learn.
People control their own learning. No two students will be exactly alike in all ways, so expect and plan for differences in what and how they learn. Helping students learn to learn
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here to view the cognitive model visual representation.
"STRUCTURES"
SENSORY MEMORY
Characteristics
Really short
Size uncertain
Any processing destroys remainder
Stored as received
WORKING MEMORY
Characteristics
Relatively short (seconds)
Limited in capacity (7 + - 2)
Probably electrical in nature
Primarily auditory format, but some visual
LONG TERM MEMORY
Characteristics
Permanent
Unlimited capacity
Probably chemical in nature
Organized network structure/schemata
Probably stored in two ways, visual and auditory
Ways to think about how memories are stored:
episodic vs semantic
imaginal vs verbal description (dual code)
Types of knowledge
declarative knowledge
procedural knowledge
compiled knowledge
automaticity
Things that affect memory storage:
Prior knowledge
Schemas and Scripts
Misconceptions
"PROCESSES"
Between Sensory and Working memory
ATTENTION: Getting sensory input
into working memory by orienting to it
Personal significance
Prior knowledge
Expectations
Novelty or variety or incongruity
Vividness, intensity, size
Volume of input
Motivation, Emotion
PERCEPTION: Recognizing an incoming stimulus (pattern recognition)
Prior knowledge
Context and expectation
Gestalt tendencies
Patterns of input
In Working Memory
ORGANIZATION (CHUNKING): Breaking a big thing up into smaller, compactparts or putting things together
to make compact parts
REHEARSAL: Repeating something over and over to hold it in STM until you'reready to use it
RETRIEVAL (see below): Getting things out of
LTM into STM
Between Working and Long term Memory
ENCODING (Storage): Changing the stimulus in order to store it in LTM
Meaningful learning
Elaboration
Imagery
Organization
Deep vs shallow processing (Summaries and
paraphrasing)
Mnemonics
How teachers assist encoding
Advance Organizers
Comparative organizers
Schema activation
RETRIEVAL: Pulling information out of LTM
Encoding Specificity
State Dependent Learning
Failure to retrieve (forgetting)
Repression
Decay
Subsumption
Interference
Reconstruction errors
In Long Term Memory Itself
Storage/Retrieval (see above)
Compiling
Assimilation (elaboration of schema)
Accommodation (reorganization of schema)
Organizing the Whole Process
METACOGNITION: Monitoring progress and adjusting as needed
Using Cognitive Theory to Design Instruction
Structure to draw attention to key variables.
Activate learner prior knowledge.
Help learner with storage system for new information.
Give opportunities to practice the new information and improve storage.
Give feedback on accuracy of storage.
If possible,
Help learner learn to monitor and correct own learning.
Other Teaching Applications of Cognition
Active learning
Reciprocal Teaching
Cognitive Apprenticeship
Hypertext Computer programs
Scaffolding
Discovery Learning
Authentic Testing