Learning Theories -- A Primer Exercise

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An Examination of Cognitivism: The Psychology of Knowledge and Strategies

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Orientation to Cognitivism. The cognitive perspective is both the oldest and youngest member of the psychology schools. Discussions of the nature of knowledge, the value of reason, and the contents of the mind date back at least to the ancient Greeks. Since that time, behaviorism thrived. Following World War II evidence accumulated indicating that people do more than simply respond to reinforcement and punishment. With the growing realization that learning is an active mental process, educational psychologists became interested in how people think, learn concepts, and solve problems. The older views of cognitive psychology emphasize the acquisition of knowledge; newer approaches stress its construction. They are evident in the following goals of Cognitive Education:

• Help students process information in meaningful ways so that they can become independent learners.
  
• Teach less able learners to use appropriate learning strategies to become more successful in the classroom.
  
• Identify how the information processing system influences learning.
  
• Plan and implement lessons based on declarative and procedural learning tasks.
  

Advanced Organizer. To explore the concepts of Cognitivism, we will use the following Orientation. If you would like to examine a specific theory, you may click on the link to move directly to that area of the Exercise. But, be sure to review the entire exercise.

I. THE THEORISTS

A. Jean Piaget and Cognitive Developmental Stages

B. Lev Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development

C. Erik Erikson and Psychosocial Development

II. INSTRUCTIONAL APPLICATIONS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

A. Discovery Learning with Jerome Bruner

B. Reception Learning with David Ausubel

C. Information Processing Model

III. CRITICISMS OF COGNITIVE EDUCATION

Problems with Cognitivism in the Classroom

One of the most prominent characteristics of cognitive psychology is the AGE-STAGE developmental perspective. And, Jean Piaget is arguably the most widely read and adopted proponent of this perspective. The unique aspect of Piaget's theory is that it separates and identifies stages of intellectual, or cognitive, development. The child's stage of development sets limits on learning and influences the type of learning that should occur. Intellectual growth is not a quantitative process but rather a qualitative operation in which there are significant differences between the thinking of children and adolescents as well as between preschool and primary school students. According to Piaget, people are born with a tendency to organize their thinking processes; his special name for this structure was SCHEMES. Schemes are the basic building blocks of thinking; they are organized systems of actions or thought that allow us to mentally represent the objects and events in the world. Learning also involves several other important concepts, including:

• ADAPTATION. When individuals encounter an unfamiliar situation, they are likely to address the new learning involved with dealing with this situation in one of two ways:
  • ASSIMILATION. When an individual uses their existing schemes to make sense of a new event, assimilation is said to occur. The process involves trying to understand something new by fitting it into what we already know. For example, the first time a child sees a skunk, they are likely to call it a "kitty." They attempt to match the new experience with their existing scheme for identifying animals.
    
  • ACCOMMODATION occurs when an individual must change existing schemes to respond to a new situation. If new information cannot be made to fit into existing schemes, a new, more appropriate structure must be developed. Children demonstrate accommodation when they add the scheme for recognizing skunks to their other systems for identifying animals.

• There are also times when neither assimilation nor accommodation is used. If an individual encounters new information that is too unfamiliar, they may choose to ignore it. For example, if you overhear a conversation in a foreign language, you probably will not try to make sense of the exchange without some background knowledge of the specific language.
  
• EQUILIBRATION. According to Piaget, organizing, assimilating, and accommodating can be seen as a complex balancing act. The art of searching for that balance is called equilibration. In actuality, it is the state of DISEQUILIBRIUM that motivates us to search for a solution through assimilation or accommodation.

Stages of Cognitive Development. Piaget believed that all people pass through the same four stages in exactly the same order as their thinking matures. When you see the ages linked to stages, remember that these are only general guidelines and do not apply to all children of a certain age. According to his research, individual children may go through long periods of transition between stages, they may show characteristics of one stage in one situation but different characteristics of a higher or lower stage in others. Before we discuss the individual stages, examine the following table:

Infancy: The Sensorimotor Stage. The earliest period involves seeing, hearing, moving, touching, and tasting. During this period, the child develops OBJECT PERMANENCE, the understanding that objects in the environment exists whether the infant perceives them or not. "Out of sight, out of mind" typifies the sensorimotor stage. As the child approaches the next stage, the older infant who searches for the ball that has rolled out of sight is indicating an understanding that the objects still exist even though they cannot see it.

Early Childhood to the Primary School Years: The Preoperational Stage. This stage is marked with the use of many action schemes. However, as long as these schemes remain tied to physical actions, they are of no use in recalling the past, tracking new information, and planning future actions. Piaget coined the term OPERATIONS for actions that are carried out and reversed mentally rather than physically. This stage is called Preoperational because the child has not yet mastered the mental operations - but mastery of this mental capacity is imminent. Preoperational children, according to Piaget, are very EGOCENTRIC; they tend to see the world and the experiences of others only from their own viewpoint. Another characteristic common to Preoperational children involves CONSERVATION tasks.

Elementary to Middle School Years: The Concrete Operational Stage. "Hands-on Thinking" best describes this stage. The basic characteristics are the recognition of the logical stability of the physical world, the realization that elements can be changed or transformed and still conserve many of their original characteristics, and the understanding that these changes can be reversed. With an understanding of REVERSIBILITY, the student can mentally cancel out any changes that have been made - in effect, mastering two-way thinking.

Junior and Senior High: The Formal Operations Stage. Some individuals will remain at the concrete operations stage throughout their school career - and even throughout the remainder of their lives. ABSTRACT REASONING is the hallmark of formal operations; it is the ability to think logically about intangible concepts, about possibilities, about hypotheses. Logical operations can be performed outside the presence of concrete objects. Some characteristics of formal operations include: HYPOTHETIC-DEDUCTIVE REASONING (consideration of alternative hypotheses when dealing with a problem that can formulated, data can be measured, and appropriate decisions reached); PROPOSITIONAL REASONING (ability to deal with statements that describe concrete data and even contrary-to-fact propositions); and, COMBINATORIAL REASONING (isolation of individual factors and possible re-combination of factors that may figure into new solutions).

Piaget conducted career-long research with children in an attempt to validate his stages of cognitive development. Specific characteristics verifying attainment of these stages could be identified. Take a look at some of the most famous Piagetian experiments:

Conservation of Liquid. Most children still in the Preoperational stage will respond to the above question by claiming that there is MORE water in the longer, shorter glass - even though they have witnessed the experimenter pour what they attested was identical amounts of liquid.

Conservation of Mass. Again, Preoperational children will most likely identify the rolled out piece of clay as having more than the original ball - again, even though they witnessed the experimenter alter the feature of the clay by rolling it flat.

Criticisms of Piaget's Theory. Piaget's notion of distinct stages has come under considerable criticism. The critics argue that he has underestimated the intellectual abilities of preschool children and overestimated the formal thinking skills of adolescents and adults. Research has found that only about 30 percent of adults could be classified in Piaget's formal operations stage. Finally, Piaget has failed to answer some particularly important questions, such as: "Why does the child move between stages?", "Is the sequence of stages dependent upon some innate maturational blueprint or some other cause?" In general, many psychologists believe that the stages of cognitive development are not as clear cut as Piaget has proposed; new research is needed to explain some of the discrepancies found in his theory.

To read more about Jean Piaget and his Stages of Cognitive Development, we suggest checking the following Web Sites:

Invention by Children - Piaget's Stages

Cognition and Intelligence Activities: Piaget's Theories

a. Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operations
b. Primitive, egocentric, socialized, formal thought
c. Egocentric, socialized, concrete operations, formal operations
d. Sensorimotor, concrete operations, preoperational, formal operations

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