It’s important to note that complete consensus doesn’t exist—not even among cognitivists— about how different cognitive theories can best be categorized. As one simple example, some theorists (including yours truly) have portrayed contemporary information processing theory as being decidedly constructivist in nature (e.g., Derry, 1996; Phye, 1997; Prawat, 1996; Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, et al., 1997; also see Chapter 9 ).
Despite the fuzziness of the boundaries between various cognitive perspectives, some psychologists and educators have insisted on drawing sharp distinctions among them. This tendency to dichotomize theoretical perspectives—to portray one as black and another as white, to suggest that one points strictly to “teacher-centered” instructional methods while another supports more “learner-centered” methods, and in some cases to imply that one is a “good guy” and another is a “bad guy”—drives me nuts, and some of my colleagues in the field share my concern (e.g., Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1996; Clancey, 1997, 2009; K. R. Harris & Alexander, 1998; Prinz, 2009; R. K. Sawyer & Greeno, 2009; Sfard, 1998).
Having read countless books, articles, and papers about human learning over the past 40 years, I remain firmly convinced that ideas from information processing theory, constructivism, and contextual views—as well as ideas from theories we’ve already considered (e.g., social cogni- tive theory and recent, cognitively oriented behaviorist perspectives)—all make significant contributions to our understanding of how human beings think and learn. Taken in combina- tion, they give us a more complete understanding of human cognition than any single approach can offer alone (e.g., J. R. Anderson, Greeno, Reder, & Simon, 2000; Gauvain, 2001; Leach & Scott, 2008; Marshall, 2009; R. K. Sawyer & Greeno, 2009; Zimmerman, 1981). Accordingly, we’ll be pulling eclectically from a variety of cognitive perspectives as we continue to explore how people think and learn in the next few chapters.
G
ENERALE
DUCATIONALI
MPLICATIONSOFC
OGNITIVET
HEORIESWe have much more to discover about cognitivist perspectives in the chapters ahead. But even at this point, we can make two generalizations that have implications for educational practice.
◆ Students control their own learning through the cognitive processes in which they engage . The
behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1954, 1968) argued that if students are to learn anything, they must make active responses in the classroom. Cognitivists share Skinner’s view; however, they empha- size mental activity rather than physical activity. Students who aren’t mentally active in the class-
room—those who don’t pay attention to, make sense of, and in other ways cognitively process the subject matter at hand—learn very little. For those who do become mentally engaged with
the subject matter, the nature of their cognitive processes will determine what they learn and how effectively they learn it. Thus, teachers must consider not only what students need to learn
but also how students are trying to learn it.
◆ Instructional practices can have a significant impact on how students mentally process classroom material and thus also on how effectively students learn it . Verbal learning theorists uncovered sev-
eral factors that enhance learning, including the degrees to which new information is meaning- ful, concrete, and easy to organize. Teacher guidance regarding effective ways to study—for instance, instruction in the use of visual images—can also make a difference. In upcoming chap- ters, we’ll consider many, many ways in which the nature of both instructional materials and instructional practices can maximize students’ learning for the long run.
Summary
Cognitivism is currently the predominant theoretical perspective within which human learning is studied and explained. The roots of cognitive theory can be found in research and theories dating back to the 1920s and 1930s. For example, while conducting ani- mal laboratory studies similar to those of behaviorists, Edward Tolman included mental phenomena in his views of how learning occurs. Gestalt psychologists emphasized the importance of organizational processes in perception, learning, and problem solving, propos- ing that people are predisposed to organize informa- tion in particular ways. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, verbal learning theorists, who ini- tially attempted to apply an S–R analysis to the study of human language-based learning, further stoked the cognitivist fire by increasingly incorporating mental events into explanations of their research results.
Contemporary cognitivism emphasizes mental processes and proposes that many aspects of learning
are probably unique to the human species. Cognitivists share behaviorists’ belief that the study of learning must be objective and that learning theo- ries should be based on empirical research; however, they suggest that by observing the responses human learners make to different stimulus conditions, they can draw inferences about the cognitive processes that have led to various responses. Cognitivism encompasses several perspectives—information pro- cessing theory, constructivism, and contextual views—that all contribute to our understanding of how human beings think and learn.
In classroom settings, what students do “inside” typically makes a huge difference in what they learn and how well they remember it. Fortunately, as we’ll see in later chapters, teachers can do many things to promote and support effective cognitive processes.
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magine yourself taking an exam on the material in the preceding chapter. Imagine, too, that, as your instructor, I write ridiculously picky exam questions. You come to this question: “What was Edward C. Tolman’s middle name?” 1 You know you read this information in thechapter, and you even wrote it down in your notebook, but despite your best efforts you can’t recall it now that you need it. After considering all of the names you can think of that begin with C ,
you finally write “Charles”—although you’re pretty sure it wasn’t Charles—and turn in your
exam. Immediately afterward, you meet your classmates in the hall and rehash the questions. “What was Tolman’s middle name?” you ask. “It was Chace,” your friend Harry responds. “I remembered that because my sister married a guy named Marvin Chace.” And then your friend Carol adds, “I learned the name by imagining Tolman chacing his rats down their mazes.”
You grit your teeth, thinking it ridiculous that Harry and Carol could answer the question because of a coincidental brother-in-law or silly visual image. But let’s face it, your classmates remembered and you didn’t.
Mere exposure to new information doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll learn it, and even if you do, you won’t necessarily remember it later on. Many variables determine what information gets into memory in the first place and what information stays there long enough for you to recall it when you need it. In this chapter, we’ll begin our exploration of human memory by looking at a popular model of memory—the dual-store model —and also at two alternative perspectives of
how memory might work. As we do these things, we’ll draw largely from information processing theory. Thus, we first need to pin down some of its basic terminology: memory, storage, encod- ing, and retrieval.
Memory Information processing theorists have consistently made a distinction between learning and memory . Learning is viewed, quite simply, as the acquisition of new information or skills; as
we defined it in Chapter 1 , it involves a long-term change in mental representations or associa- tions as a result of experience. In contrast, memory is related to the ability to recall previously
Is Conscious Thought Necessary for Long-Term Memory Storage?
Alternative Views of Human Memory Levels of Processing
Activation
Remembering That The Map Is Not the Territory Generalizations about Memory and Their Educational
Implications Summary A Dual-Store Model of Memory
Sensory Register
Moving Information to Working Memory: The Role of Attention
Working Memory
Moving Information to Long-Term Memory: Connecting New Information with Prior Knowledge
Long-Term Memory Challenges to the Dual-Store Model
Are Working Memory and Long-Term Memory Really Different?