Omrod –Cognitive Views of Learning
Chapter 7: Introduction to Cognition and Memory
*This chapter marks a shift in the book – from roles of environmental conditions
and observable behaviors  Cognitive Processes
Cognitive Processes: “how people perceive, interpret, remember, and in other
ways think about environmental events” (p.149)
I. History
 1950-1960s: many psychologist became dissatisfied with “thoughtless
approach” to human learning
 Major work started to emerge w distinct cognitive “flavor” (p.149)
 1967:Ulric Neisser’s Cognitive Psychology published
-landmark book
-helped to legitimize cognitive theory as a major altner. to behaviorism
 Other well known early proponents- Jerome Bruner, David Ausubel,
 VERBAL LEARNING- research conducted in early/mid 20th century
- tried to apply as a stimulus-response analysis to human
learning, but later found that human language base
learning was difficult to explain from behaviorist perspective.
II. Edward Tolman’s Purposive Behavioralism (pg150-153)
 Tolman- prominent learning theorist
 His ideas included:
1)”Learning is an internal rather than external change” (p150)
-learning is internal process, isn’t reflect in organism’s behavior
- Ex. Study: 3 groups of rats ran a difficult maze under different
reinforcement conditions- Group 1 rats- reinforced w.food,
group 2- no reinforcement for success, and group 3-none
during first 10 days, but started reinforcement on 11th day
Results: Data number of wrong turns made – improved with
group 2 and 3 over time, When group 3 started recieveing
reinforcement performance equaled group 1
“Latent Learning”: unobservable learning
 Tolman believed “reinforcement influences performance rather than learning, in
that it increases likelihood that a learned behavior will be exhibited” (P151)
2)”Behavior is Purposive”:
- learning should be viewed on as a formation of S-R connections, but as a
process of learning that certain events lead to other events
-Purposive Behaviorism: once an organism learns that a behavior leads to
an end result, organism behaves in order to achieve that end (in
other words- “behavior has a purpose”/goal ) (p151)
3) “Expectations affect behavior”
-“ Once organism learns that certain behaviors produce certain result, it
begins to form expectations about the outcomes of it behaviors” (p.151)
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Organism now expects the reinforcement that precedes it
If “organisms expectations are not met, its behavior may be adversely
affected” (p151)
-Study: two groups of rats go through a maze, one gets sunflower
seeds and one get bran (Rats like bran)- the rats with the bran go
through maze faster, when these rats have reinforcement switched to
sunflower seed (not as desired) they faster rats move even more slowly
than the control group (p.152)
4) “Learning results in an organized body of information”
- Rats in maze learn more than independent response- they learn way maze
is arranged
Cognitive Maps: learn where different parts of the environment are located in
relation to one another. Knowing this enables organism to get to move from
one place to another quickly and easily- sometimes called a mental map
(p153)
III. Gestalt Psychology
 Emphasized importance of organizational processes in perception, learning, and
problem solving
 General idea: People organize the things they learn. (p.157)
 Believed people were “predisposed to organize info. in particular ways” (p153)
 Basic Ideas that emerged from Gestalt Psych:
1)”Perception is often different from reality”
- the way an individual sees an experience is often different than the
experience itself
2)”The whole is more than the sum of its parts”
- cannot understand aspects of human experience when studied in
isolation- need to be studied all together
- Ex. Jingle bells0 is recognized by a particular sequence of musical notes,
even when played in a different key, we still recognize those specific
notes
Transportation: importance of interrelationships among elements is shown
in an experiment with chickens. Chickens are shown a black and
gray piece of paper with grain placed on both sheets. Chickens only
allowed to eat from the black sheet. When shown two sheets of
paper later- chicken select black because through reinforcement
learned something about the relationship between these pieces of
paper. (p.153)
3) “An organism structures and organizes experience”
(see figure 7.3 a and b for nice visual example of this on p.154, easier
to explain through picture than words)
4)”The organism is predisposed to organize experiences in certain ways.”
- Humans structure their experiences in predictable ways
- Law of Proximity: “People tend to perceive as a unit those things
that are close together in space.”
Ex. Reading the letter sequence “ONEVERYHIGHWAY”is perceived differently based on how your group the
words together- might be “One Very High Way” OR
“On Every Highway”
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Ex. See other visual examples with dot formations on P.154155 to further elaborate (they are helpful to see!)
Law of Similarity: “People tend to perceive as a unit those things
that are similar to one another”
Ex. Visual Example of Dot formation p. 154
Law of Closure: “People tend to fill in missing pieces to form a complete
picture”
ex. “Singing in the Rain” Picture on pg.155
Law of Pragnanz: “Individuals always organize their experiences as
simply, concisely, symmetrically, and completely as possible” (p.155)
5) “Learning follows the laws of Pragnanz”
- Learning involved the formation of memory traces.
- ex. Irregularly shaped objects – later remembered as circles or squares
(p155-156)
6) “Problem solving involved restructuring and insight”:
- believes problem solving involves mentally combining and recombining
various elements of problem until a structure that solves the problem is
achieved.
IV. Verbal Learning Research
-Central to verbal learning are two learning tasks:
1) Serial Learning: “involves learning a sequence of items in a particular order”
ex. Alphabet, days of the week, planets in solar system
- First item on list- is a stimulus to which the 2nd item is learned as a response
- Second item, then serves as stimulus for the 3 item learned and so on.
2) Paired Associated Learning: “involves learning pairs of items” (p157)
ex. Learning foreign language words and their English equivalents, learning
state capitals
- The first item in each pair is the stimulus, the second item is the response.
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Serial Learning Curve: “People learn the first few items and the last few
items more quickly and easily than they learn the middle terms” (p157)
Primacy effect: tendency for first items to be learned quickly
Recency effect: tendency for last items to be learned quickly
First and last items serve as “ANCHORS” to which other items can be
attached.
Overlearning: learn material to mastery and then practice it for additional
study trials, enables you to remember info. much more accurately later
(P 157)
Distributive Practice: spreading study time over several occasion, leads to
better learning
Massed Practice: study time occurs all at once (I’d lovely call this
“Cramming”)
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“Learning in one situation often affects learning and recall in other situations”
(p.158)
Retroactive Inhibition: “when people learned two sets of paired associates
in succession, their learning of the second set often diminishes ability to
recall first set”
Proactive Inhibition: when individuals in above mentioned situation, often
have difficulty remembering the 2nd set of information as well (p.159)
Retroactive/Proactive Facilitation: under different circumstances,
learning one set of info. might actually help improve the recall of info
learned at another time- called retroactive or proactive depending on the
order of the two sets of info. were learned. Ex. After learning the S-R
response home- dragon, prob. would learn home- monster more easily.
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“Characteristics of the material affect the speed with which people can learn
it” (p.159)
- Items- learned more quickly when meaningful (when easily
associated w other ideas)
- Items are easy to learn and remember when they are pronounceable.
- Concrete items (turtle, sandwich) are easier to remember than
abstract items (truth, joy, experience) because concrete
items can be “mental visualized”
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“People often impose meaning on new information.” (p.160)
-People try to make info. meaningful to them when learning it.
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“People organize what they learn.”
Free Recall: when people are allowed to recall info. in any order, they
typically do not recall items in originally presented order- recall
often reflects an organizational scheme of some kind
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“People use encoding strategies to help them learn”
“People are more likely to learn general ideas than to learn words verbatim”
(P 161)
V. Introduction to Contemporary Cognitivism
General Assumptions of Cognitive Theories: (Page 162)
1) “Some learning processes may be unique to humans.
2) Learning involves the formation of mental representations or associations that
are not necessarily reflected in overt behavior changes.
3) People are actively involved in the learning process.
4) Knowledge is organized.
5) Objective, systematic observations of people’s behavior should be the focus of
scientific inquiry, however inferences about unobservable mental processes can
be drawn from behavior”
 Despite these common assumptions, cognitivists take different approaches in their
attempts to portray how learning occurs.
 The predominate approach is the Information Processing Theory
 In recent years to other perspectives have arised, Constructivism and Contextual
Theories
Information Processing Theory (p163 -164)
 Focuses on “how people think about (ie process) the information they
receive from the environment
 How they perceive the stimuli around them, how they put this into their
memories, and how they find what they’ve learned when they need to use it
 Weakness: better at dissecting than at synthesis- has yet to combine various
cognitive processes into integrated whole that explains overall how humans
think and behave
Constructivism (Emily’s Favorite! P. 164-165)
 We construct knowledge rather than directly acquiring it from the outside
world
 Individual Constructivism: process of construction occurs individually
within each learner
 Social Constructivism: people working together to construct their
understanding
 Weaknesses: offers only vague explanations of process that underlies
learning, taking the idea of learning control too far (aka teachers should not
have influence over how students interpret subject matter), while students
are in the “drivers seat”, teacher still needs to have the roadmap
Contextual Theories (p. 165 -166)
 Suggests that “learners often think and perform more intelligently when
they can draw on a variety of environmental support systems that enable
them to make sense of new situations and help them tackle challenging tasks
and problems.
 Contextual theories of learning have a variety of labels around them
including- situated learning, situated cognition, distributed learning, and
distributed intelligence
Integrating Cognitive Perspectives: combined these 3 theories, as well as theories already
considered in the book, provide us with a more complete understanding of how humans
think and learn than any single approach can offer alone.
VI. An Information Processing View of Human MEMORY
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LEARNING versus MEMORY (p 167-168)
Learning: “acquisition of new information or skills”, “involves long term changes in
mental representations or associations”
Memory: “ability to recall previously acquired information
Storage: “the process of ‘putting’ new information into your memory”
Encoding: “modify the information as you store it in your memory, changing the
formation of the info/simplifying the info my remembering the overall gist
of it
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Retrieval: “process by which people find information they have previously stored
so they can use it again”
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Dual- Store Model of Memory: (P 168-169)
- claim that short term memory and long term memory are 2 distinctly
different entities
- information from the environment first enters a “sensory register” and
is held there for a short time (a few seconds) – like junk mail you throw
away
- If processed in a particular way- moves to “short term
memory”/”working memory” (held there for less than 1 min & must
be processed further to move to long-term memory) – like bills you have
to pay but then forget about them
- If information is not processed sufficiently enough to transfer from short
to long term- then it is assumed to be “lost” – like more important
information you want to file away somewhere
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Sensory Register (P 169-170)
Characteristics of Sensory Register:
- Capacity: “unlimited”
- Forms of storage: info. is stored in the same form in which it has been
sensed ex. Visual input- stored visually, auditory
input- stored auditory etc.
- Duration: brief time, difficult to precisely measure amt of time
- Studies indicate auditory input might last longer than visual input
- Two factors for rapid disappearance of info:
(1) interference- new info coming in replaces old
(2)Decay- unnecessary simply fades away
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Moving Information to Working Memory (aka short term memory): The role
of attention (p.170-176)
-to move info from sensory register to working memory-must pay attention
to it!!
- Factors Influencing Attention: (p172-173)
Motion: moving object more likely to capture attention than stationary ones
SIZE: Larger objects attract more attention
Intensity: Brighter colors or louder noises attract more attention
Novelty: Things that are unusual in some way
Incongruity: Objects that don’t make sense in context
(ex. I took a walk to the rabbit this morning)
Emotion: Stimuli that invoke a strong emotional reaction
Personal Significance: meaning and relevance people find in an
object or event
Social cues: People more likely to pay attention to things they see
other people looking at
- Nature of Attention: (p.173-175)
Cocktail Party Phenomenon: ability to attend to one spoken
message while ignoring others (think- being at a crowded
party, but still able to carry on conversation w one person
despite other convos. going on around you)
Shadowing: Technique used to study cocktail party phenomenon,
person is asked to listen to 2 simultaneous messages through
earphones and to repeat one of the messages- easier to do
when two people have distinctly different speaking voices.
- Attention as Limited Capacity (p175)
-Figure- Ground: Individual can attend to 1 object (figure) and
notice most of the details of the object
- Ground: whatever the individual is NOT paying attention too, not
carefully inspected
- Other theorist propose that people can attend to one COMPLEX
source of information at a time ex. You can carry on a
conversation w a friend in your passenger seat, while driving
the car.
- Limited Processing Capacity: the # of stimuli being attended to
depends on how much cognitive processing is required for
each transmission.
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Working Memory (p176-182)
(aka short term memory, but working memory is preferred term)
-component of memory in which “thinking” occurs
- identifies the information from the sensory register than warrants attention, saves
the information for a longer period of time, and processes it further
- may hold and processes info. it receives from the long-term memory
Characteristics of Working Memory: (p177-179)
- Capacity: very limited, can only from 5-9 units of info. in working memory at a
time, the average being 7 units of info.
Chunking: process of combined info. in some way, increases the amt. of info.
that the limited space of working memory can hold.
- Forms of Storage: regardless of way info. was received, most info in working
memory is stored in auditory form
- will this is most prominent way to store info, it can still be stored
in visual, spatial, and tactile forms
Phonological Loop: small amt of info. are kept fresh through constant repetition
Visuospatial Sketchpad: allows manipulation &short term retention of
visual Materials
Episodic Buffer: “place” where information from multiple modalities can be
integrated into an overall understanding of a particular
situation
- Duration: “somewhere between 5-20 seconds”,
-some information stored in working memory will fade away, if not
processed further
Control Processes in Working Memory (P.180-182)
-Three Processes affect the functioning of working memory:
(1) Organization
(2) Retrieval
(3) Maintenance Rehearsal
-Organization (p180)
-Strategies to organize information: Chunking it into parts, making up a
rhyme or melody, attach meaning to certain digit (when memorizing
numbers)
- When you attach meaning to something, you also facilitate its storage in
long-term memory
- Retrieval (p180-181)
- usually easy and automatic
- how quickly you can retrieve something depends on how much info. is
stored there
- “may sometimes be a process of scanning all of the contents for working
memory, successively and exhaustively, until the desired information is
found” (181)
- Maintenance Rehearsal (p181)
- “Repeating information to keep it alive in working memory”
- Often takes the form of subvocal speech
- when rehearsal isn’t possible, information disappear quickly from working
memory
- ex. When you try to remember a phone number, you repeat it over and
over again in your head until you dial the number
- There is a limit to how much info. people can store in working memory at
one time through repetition
- Word Length Affect: able to remember a greater number of short
items than longer items
- Observed more frequently in older children and adults- so to some
degree it is a learned skill
 Moving Information to Long-Term Memory: Connecting New
Information with Prior Knowledge (p182)
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Storage of information in long-term memory is more complex.
Further processing of info. is necessary to transfer information
from working memory to long term memory
Involves combined new info. with info. already stored in long-term
memory
“People store information in long-term memory most successfully,
when they can relate it to information they already know”
Working Memory: is the bottleneck, prevents most information
from getting into long-term memory
Process of memory storage occurs slowly and a great deal is lost
 Long Term Memory (P. 182-186)
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Most complex component of human memory system
Characteristics of Long-Term Memory (p 182-183)
Declarative Knowledge: “knowledge of how thing are or were”, most of
long-term memory is this knowledge
Procedural Knowledge: “knowledge about ‘how to do things’, also stored in
long-term memory
Capacity: unlimited (as far as theorist can tell), the more information that is
stored there, the easier it is to store additional info.
Forms of storage:
- knowledge is stored in all different forms- from sensory images,
language based, nonverbal abstractions and meaning, general
understanding about the world etc.
- People often remember the “gist” of what they see and hear, along
with idiosyncratic interpretation and minor or major distortions
of reality
- Explicit Knowledge: people can easily recall and explain it
- Implicit Knowledge: (great deal of our memory), affects people’s
behavior even though we cannot consciously retrieve and inspect
it
- Interconnectedness: “related pieces of information in long-term
memory is probably directly or indirectly connected with every
other piece”
Duration:
- Theorist disagree:
- Some think once info. is stored in long-term memory it is there
forever, the process of “forgetting” is a retrieval problem
- Others believe- info. can disappear from long-term memory
through a variety of forgetting processes- may or may not be
depending on how info was initially stored and how often it is
used
- “best we can say is that long-term memory’s duration is
indefinitely long”
VII. Challenges to the Dual-Store (3 component) Model (P.183-184)
 Not all psychologists agree that the dual store model represents how human
memory functions.
 Many have questioned the idea that working memory and long term memory
are separate entities- argued that both components are actually different
aspects of a single- storage mechanism
 In this section- will examine evidence related to these issues.
1) Are working memory and Long-Term Memory Really Different? (p184-185)
- Some theorist believe that the serial learning curve can be explained as a
“single-stored model” rather than a “dual stored model”
- For concrete examples/studies see pg 184
2) Is Conscious Thought Necessary for Long-Term Memory? (p.185-186)
- Working Memory, by definition, is “an active, conscious mechanism”
- If describe in this way, one would say that a learner would have to be
actively involved in storing virtually anything in long-term memory.
- This is not always the case, some info. can be automatically stored
- “Much of this seemingly ‘nonconsciously’ processed information becomes
implicit knowledge”
- “Quite possibly the human brain learns and stores information in long term
memory- in at least two distinctively different ways”
(1) is conscious way where working memory plays and active role
(2) “thoughtless” ways that involves information of simple stimulusstimulus and stimulus-response associations
- “Thinking itself may sometimes occur outside the confines of working
memory” (p.186): people might describe these things as “intuition” or
a “gut feeling”
VIII. Alternative Views of Human Memory
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Level of Processing Model of Human Memory
According to this model:
- incoming information is processed by a central processor at many
different levels of complexity
- Central processor has limited capacity, information that is
temporarily held there is what we are aware of at a given time
- How long and how well info. is remember depends on how the
central processor deals with it
- Info. that isn’t processed at all leaves brief impression, only when
info. undergoes “deep” processing- when its interpreted,
understood, and related to previously learned info do we
remember it for any length of time
- Children process info in one of five ways: Labels, sentence
generation, sentence repetition, “what” question, and “why”
question (p187)
- Intention to learn: important factor in this model, “people who
intend to learn something are more likely to learn and remember
it than people who do not specifically try to learn the information”
- Incidental Learning: “when individuals process material deeply,
they often learn it successfully even when they are not specifically
trying to learn it, sometimes called non-intentional learning
- Weaknesses to this approach include: the idea of “depth of
processing” is too vague to define or measure, studies have shown
the more often info is repeated the more better is can be
remembered regardless of “deep processing”
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Activation Model of Human Memory
According to this model:
- working and long term memory are not separate entities, but
“instead simply reflect different activation states of a single memory”
- All info. stored in memory is either an active or inactive state
- Info. that is currently active, include incoming information and
information previously stored in memory, is the information that a
learner is paying attention to and processing
- When attention shifts, other pieces of info in memory become
active and previously activated info gradually becomes inactive
- Bulk of info. stored: is inactive, so we are not consciously aware of
it
- Priming: a phenomenon where activation of one thing, primes or
activates a second item.
IX. General Educational Implications of Cognitive Theories (p.190-192)
 “People control their own learning” – Students who aren’t mental active in the
classroom- do not attend, think about or cognately process subject matter
will learn very little, those who do attend- nature of cognitive process will
determine how much they learn
 “Memory is selective” – Teachers and textbooks often load students with more
information than any person can possibly remember, students must select
some information and exclude other info, but do not always know how to
best judge what material is most important, teachers must help students sort
through essential and nonessential information.
 “Attention is essential for learning”- Helping students focus their attention is
the first step in helping them learn, things teachers do in the classroom can
make a big difference in the extent to which student pay attention to the
topic at hand. Here are several effective strategies for capturing and holding
attention:
- Include variety in topic and presentation style: repetition can lead
to boredom and reduced attention
- Provide frequent breaks: especially when working w young
children
- Ask questions: frequent ?s helps to keep students attention and
increase students learning of the content
- Minimize distractions when indep. work is assigned: easier to
focus when environment is quiet and subdued
- Seat students near teacher if they have difficulty staying on task
- Monitor students’ behaviors
 “People can only process a limited amount of information at a time”- getting
information into long term memory is a slow process, teachers need to
remember this when planning lessons and lectures- in choosing or creating
instructional materials. When too much info is presented too fast, students
will simply not be able to remember it all.
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“Limited capacity for working memory is not necessarily a bad thing”- working
memory “bottleneck” forces learners to condense, organize, and synthesize
information they receive
X. SUMMARY
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“Cognitivism encompasses several perspectives – information
processing theory, constructivism, and contextual views- that all
contribute to our understanding of how human beings think and
learn.” (p.192)
Most prevalent views of human learning – dual-store model
“Despite the differing perspectives on memory that currently exist, we
can make several generalizations about memory that have
implications for classroom practice. For instance what learners do on
the ‘inside’ makes a huge difference in what they learn and how well
they remember it, and teachers can do many things to nudge students
towards effective cognitive processes” (p.193)