COGNITIVE THEORIES OF LEARNING
 Introduction
 Meaning of Cognition
 Information Processing Approach
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Introduction
 Cognitive psychology re-emerged in 1960s.
 By then, Cognitive learning theories started
to dominate ideas about learning and
criticized behavioral learning theories.
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What is cognition?
 Cognition, according to Hamilton, I (1995:20) in the
Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology is ‘the
understanding, acquisition and processing
knowledge, or more loosely thought processes’.
 Cognitive learning theories deal with the way human
being acquires and understands knowledge through
thinking.
 All explanation about how human being acquires and
understands knowledge through thinking.
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Information Processing Approach
 Information processing approach is the first serious
movement of cognitive psychology.
It is concerned with how:
 human being acquires, processes, retains and retrieves
information.
 people remember and forget information.
 Psychologists work on different aspects in this
approach. For example, Siegler worked on attention in
memory formation and Flavell worked on expansion of
memory capabilities (Passer and Smith;2001:467).
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 Related to learning, it studies how the learner
receives information from the environment and
uses it in the learning process.
 Understanding how students acquire, process,
retain and retrieve information will enable the
teacher to help learners learn effectively.
 Remembering is an important condition for
learning.
 If learners remember what they learn, their
learning will be incapacitated.
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Concept of ‘Memory’ and its storage
systems
 Memory: keeping facts or experiences in mind
and be able to retrieve it when needed.
 Three types of memory storage systems;
 sensory memory;
 short term memory; and
 long term memory.
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Information registered,
attended and
recognized enters in
the STM
Holds current
information
Short time stay
Rehearsal needed
(maintanance and
elaborative rehearsal)
LONG TERM MEMORY
Temporary and brief
storage
Large amount of
information
Short time stay
Senses of hearing,
touching, smelling,
tasting and vision
Attention and
recognition needed
Fading occurs when
no attention
SHORT TERM MEMORY
SENSORY MEMORY
MEMORY SYSTEMS
Large capacity store
Long time stay
Most information used
is retrieved from LTM
Information can not be
lost
Retrieval for STM
Promoting sensory registration
The teacher must:
• avoid giving too much information;
• pause at every stage or step;
• make learners aware of the important
information;
• help learners use as many sense organs as
possible.
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Promoting sensory memory
Teachers should:
 present little information;
 involve short time activities (opportunity to rehearse)
 organize and link well the information with other
materials to be learnt and previous information.
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Long Term Memory
 Information held in Short Term Memory is
transferred in to Long Term Memory.
 LTM has very large capacity to store.
 Information in LTM is retained for a long time and
will never be forgotten.
 Failure to retrieve it may be due to some factors.
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Types of memory
 Episodic, Semantic and Procedural.
 Episodic memory/images: pictorial representations
of information like images of personal experiences or
events; what one did or saw.
 Semantic memory: stores facts and general
knowledge; concepts, principles, learning strategies or
problem solving skills.
 Procedural memory: stores information of how to do
things or how to perform intellectual tasks; how to
operate a computer or to build a house.
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Forgetting:
 Failure to retain information in the long term memory or
unable to retrieve already available information.
Why do we forget?
Forgetting is caused by:
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Information interference; mixed up of information,
information is pushed aside or inhibited.
•
This happens when two pieces of information appear to
be similar or too much a like and there were no cues to
differentiate them.
•
One is lost or confused with another because of lack of
sufficient learning.
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• The interval is too short
• One information has not been well comprehended
Two types of interference/inhibition:
1. Retroactive inhibition
2. Proactive inhibition
• Proactive inhibition: failure to learn new information
because is interfered by previously learned
information.
• Retroactive inhibition: failure to recall previously
learned information due to learning new
information.
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 Emotional state on a material, process, teacher or
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when doing an action affect remembering, example
fear, hate, sadness disappointment or lack of interest.
Fatigue; it is difficult to retrieve or retain information.
It affects the work of sense organs, attention and
concentration.
Unorganized information; Organization facilitates
the work of the schema.
Information which is not interrelated or is in illogical
sequence is hard to organize in a mental schema.
• No rehearsal: large amount of information, noise
some emotions or lack of chance to rehearse.
• Encoding failure: the information has never been
encoded so it has not been transferred neither to STM
nor to LTM.
• Motivated forgetting: bad, traumatic, shameful
information are intentionally repressed as they bring
out bad feelings.
Memory Strategies
• Engagement in meaningful practices and using
variety of visual aids assist in using many sense organs
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in learning.
Good organization and presentation of
material.
Interrelation of facts and ideas can be captured easily
and so makes mental schema to work more
effectively.
Frequent revision and practice;
• Mass learning: Practice newly learned information
intensely until it is thoroughly learned.
• Distributed practice: Spread several shorter sessions
over a few days and guide students to practice a little
each day through home work or class work.
• This leads to better retention.
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• Part learning: Breaking the long list of items into
smaller list.
• Encourage learners to learn part of a thing separately.
• Over-learning: Continuous practice of the learned material
beyond the point of recall or initial learning. This help long term
retention
• Teaching by association; using examples, real
objects, illustrations, pictures or models.
• Association provides memory cues. One thing
stimulates remembering of another.
• Motivation: promotes interest and feelings of need and
meaningfulness of a material.
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• This will reinforce attention, concentration and
rehearsal.
• Give an outline in the beginning of the lesson and
summary at the end due to primary and recent
effects of information.
• Primary information draws more attention to the
learner while recent information is not affected by
intervening information.
Using elaborative rehearsal
• This helps in deeper information processing. Ask the
students the meaning of a concepts at every step.
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The use of mnemonics: these are cues that aid
memory. They are used to form mental images to
help remember associations.
Types of mnemonics:
• Yodai mnemonic; each word in a piece of information
to be remembered is given another more familiar
name.
 Peg word method: List of facts is linked with
images; two- shoe, three- tree, four-door,
 Initial letter strategies: make acronyms like
BODMAS.
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References
 Elliot et al (2000): Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching,
Effective Learning: Boston: McGraw Hill.
 Hamilton, I (1995) Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology. Methuen
 Passer, M & Smith, R (2001):Psychology: Frontiers and Application.
Boston: McGraw Hill.
 Slavin, R (1988): Educational Psychology:Theory into Practice.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
 Snowman, J. McCown & R. Biehler, R (2009): Psychology Applied
to Teaching (12th edition). Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
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