Cognitive

Learning
Theories
CHAPTER 3
 Learning Outcomes:
● Explain the meaning of cognitive learning theories;
● Differentiate the cognitive learning theories by citing
their key features;
● Cite empirical proofs of the cognitive learning theories;
and
● Identify the teaching implications of the cognitive
learning theories.
 Cognitive Learning

● Derives its meaning from the word cognition

● Defined as “the mental action or process of
acquiring knowledge and understanding
through thought, experience, and the senses.”
● Thus, learners viewed to learn by using their
brains.
Through connections of old and new
experiences, the acquisition of
knowledge and understanding result
exists.
 Piaget’s
Cognitive
Development
Theory
LESSON 1
JEAN PIAGET
• A Swiss psychologist,
argued that children’s
cognitive development
is influenced by
biological maturation
and their interaction
with the environment.
Core Concept of Cognitive Development

Schema

Assimilation

Accommodation
 Schema
● It is a person’s way of organizing knowledge
● Viewed like the central processing unit of a
computer.
● Schemata (plural form) are the individual files
representing an aspect of the world like objects,
actions, and concepts.
● Schemata guide the person’s way of responding to a
new experience.
 Adaptation
Piaget used the word adaptation to refer to the
ability to adjust to a piece of new
information or experience, making it
possible for the person to cope with change. If
the person can adapt to every
experience, learning happens.
Boy saw an airplane and from existing schema he
called it “BIRD”, this is called ASSIMILATION
 Assimilation
● Using an existing schema to deal with new
object or situation.
● The process of taking in new information
into the previously existing schema is called
assimilation.
 With the help of new
Boy saw an airplane Mother told him it’s schema, now Boy came
to know the difference
and from existing an airplane and
of bird and airplane and
schema he called it people travel in it now he can correctly
“BIRD”, this is called and it’s a non- recognized it. This is
ASSIMILATION living thing. called
ACCOMMODATION
 Accommodation
● Accommodation involves changing or
altering existing schemas as a result to the
new information provided or learned.
● New schemas may also be developed
during this process.
 Equilibration
● Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance
between assimilation and accommodation, which is
achieved through a mechanism called equilibration.
● It is important to maintain a balance between applying
previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to
account for new knowledge (accommodation).
● Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one
stage of thought into the next.
 Disequilibrium

Disequilibrium occurs
when a person is unable
to take a balance
between assimilation
and accommodation.
Stages of
Cognitive
Development
 Concrete Formal
Sensorimotor Preoperational
Operational Operational
Stage Stage
Stage Stage
0-2 years 2-7 years
7-11 years 12 years & up
 Sensorimotor Stage
● Children at this stage think through what they see,
hear, move, touch, and taste.
● Two major accomplishments happen in this stage:
■ object permanence (belief that object still exists
even if not within the sight of the child.
■ goal-directed actions (children do not think
about what they do as these actions are
instinctive and involuntary, e.g., getting food and
family attention).
 Preoperational Stage
● Children have not yet mastered mental operations
because they use actions schemes connected to
physical manipulations, not logical reasoning.
● By operations, it means actions a person carries out by
thinking them through instead of performing them
(Woolfolk, 2016).
● Semiotic function, children’s ability to form and use
symbols to represent a physical action or ability.
 Concrete Operational Stage
● Ability to engage in “hands-on thinking” characterized
by organized and rational thinking.
● Reversible thinking, thinking backward, from the end to
the beginning (Woolfolk, 2016). It involves:
■ Conservation
■ Decentration
● Classification, involves the ability to group similar
objects in terms of color, shape, use, etc.
■ Seriation
 Concrete Operational Stage
● Reversible thinking, thinking backward, from the end to
the beginning (Woolfolk, 2016). It involves:
■ Conservation (whatever is the arrangement or

appearance of the object, as long as there is

nothing added or decreased, the number or
amount of the object would remain the same.
■ Decentration (the children’s ability to focus on

more than one dimension of an object a time.

 Concrete Operational Stage
● Classification, involves the ability to group similar
objects in terms of color, shape, use, etc.
● For example, children would group balls, wheels,
marbles as round objects; that 4, 12,36 are numbers
divisible by 4.
■ Seriation (the ability to arrange objects

according to size, like small to smallest, far to

farthest, etc.)
 Formal Operational Stage
● Adolescents can engage in mental processes
involving abstract thinking and coordination of
some variables (Woolfok, 2016)
● All earlier mental abilities have been mastered.
■ Hypothetico-deductive reasoning

■ Adolescent egocentrism
Formal Operational Stage
■ Hypothetico-deductive reasoning (can give
hypotheses and conjectures about a
problem, set up experiments to test them,
and control extraneous variables to arrive to
a valid and reliable explanation. Adolescents
are capable of giving deductions as they
systematically evaluate their observations as
well as their answers.
Formal Operational Stage
■ Adolescent egocentrism (the assumptions
that although others have different
perceptions and beliefs, every individual
shares other’s thoughts, feelings, and
concerns. This is opposite to the egocentric
characteristics in the earlier stages, wherein
children think that what they and others
think are similar to theirs.
 Teaching Implications (Berk, 2013)
1. A focus on the process of children’s thinking, not just
its product.
2. Recognition of the crucial role of children’s self-
initiative, active involvement in learning activities.
3. A de-emphasis on practices aimed at making children
adult-like in their thinking.
4. Acceptance of individual differences in development
progress.
 Vygotsky’s
Sociocultural
Theory of
Cognitive
Development
LESSON 2
 Learning Outcomes:
● Explain the sociocultural theory of cognitive
development;
● Discuss the major terms and concepts related to the
theory; and
● Cite classroom implications of the theory.
Sociocultural
Theory
 Sociocultural Theory
● Postulates that social interaction is fundamental
to cognitive development.
● Argues that cognitive abilities are socially guided
and constructed. As such, culture serves as a
mediator for the formation and development of
specific abilities, such as learning, memory,
attention, and problem solving.
LEV VYGOTSKY
• A Russian psychologist,
argued that social
interaction, mediated
through language, is a key
factor in the child’s
development.
• From the child’s
interaction with others,
concepts and social
behavior are formed.
 Key components of sociocultural
learning

Social Cognitive
Language
Interactions Development
 The Role of Social Interaction
● Vygotsky emphasized the
significance of social interaction in
one’s thinking.
● Children learn from the More
Knowledgeable Others (MKOs),
which include parents, teachers,
adults, and more advanced peers.
The Role of Social
Interaction
Children learn from the MKO’s.
More Knowledgeable Others
(MKO) is anyone who has
higher skill level than the
learner in terms of specific
tasks to perform.
 The Role of Language
● Vygotsky viewed language as an essential tool for
communication and that culture and behaviour was
understood through language.
● Vygotsky also highlighted the critical role that
language plays in cognitive development.
● Vygotsky's theory says that social interactions help
children develop their ability to use language.
 Stages of Speech Development

1. Social or external speech (birth to approx. age 3),

thinking is not related to speech at all. Speech only
occurs on the external or social level to express desire
or to convey simple emotions such as shouting and
crying. At this stage, speech is merely a tool to make
things happen in the external world.
Ex. A child would tell “dede” or milk if hungry.
 Stages of Speech Development

2. Egocentric speech (approx. ages 3-7), children think

out loud or talk to themselves as they are doing
something. It is used to guide behavior and help to
solve problems. It is an important part of the
transition to inner speech and more sophisticated
thinking.
Ex: Paul plays with his toy car and it does not run,
he tells himself “sira na” or “it’s destroyed.”
 Stages of Speech Development

3. Inner speech (approx. age 7). Inner speech is

soundless speech. Speech becomes internalized and is
used to guide thinking and behavior. It eventually
leads to higher levels and more complex types of
thinking.
 Zone of Proximal
Development
The ZPD is the gap between the
level of actual development,
what the child can do on his
own, and the what a child can
do with the assistance of more
advanced and competent
individuals.
 Scaffolding
The provisions of cues, clues,
modeling, and demonstrations
of the MKO, can assist in
successfully performing the
task.
 Teaching Implications (Berk, 2013)
1. Instruction can be planned to provide practice within
the ZPD for individual children or groups of children.
2. Scaffolding provides hints and prompts at different
levels.
3. Cooperative learning activities can be planned with
groups of children at different levels who can help
each other to learn.
 Information
Processing
Theory
LESSON 3
 Learning Outcomes:
● Explain the major features of the information processing
theory;
● Cite teaching implications derived from the theory; and
● Identify teaching strategies that facilitate the storing and
retrieving of information.
 Information
Processing Theory
GEORGE MILLER
• Developed by an
American psychologist.
• Information Processing
Theory (IPT) pertains to
the study of what occurs
in a person’s mind as he
or she receives a bit of
information (Miller, 1956)
The Atkinson-Shiffrin Model
Basic components of the IPT
Model
 Three Major Components:

Sensory Memory

Short-term Memory

Long-term Memory
How Does Memory Work?
• Encoding: the information gets into our
brains in a way that allows it to be
stored
• Storage: the information is held in a way
that allows it to later be retrieved
• Retrieval: reactivating and recalling the
information, producing it in a form
similar to what was encoded
 Sensory Memory
● The state in which the stimuli sensed (heard, seen,
touched, smelled, tasted) are temporarily held in
mere seconds for the information to be processed.
● When given a lot of information, the sensory memory
serves as filter on what to focus on.
● Selective attention is the individual’s ability to
choose and process information while disregarding
the other stimuli or information.
 Sensory Memory
● Information held in the sensory memory is for about
three seconds only, unattended stimuli are forgotten.
The information the person gave attention to is
transferred to the short-term memory.
 Short-term Memory
● Serves as temporary memory while the information
is given further processing before it is transferred to
long-term memory.
● Information in this stage is 15-20 seconds only and
can hold from 5 to 9 bits of information only at a
given time.
● Before information is transferred to LTM, there are
two strategies involved: rehearsal and encoding
 Maintenance Rehearsal
• Involves repetition of the information to
sustain maintenance in the short-term
memory.
Example:
• The use of ABC songs and number songs
serve as rehearsal strategies among
children.
 Elaborative Rehearsal
• Is the process of relating new information to what is
already known and stored in the LTM to make the new
information more significant.
• Organization, the process of classifying and grouping bits of
information into organized chunks (chunking).
Examples:
• Memorizing of mobile numbers involves grouping 11 numbers
into sets of numbers, like XXXX-YYY-ZZZZ
• Flora and fauna are grouped into phyla/divisions, classes,
orders, families, genera, and species.
 Long-term Memory
● Is the storehouse of information transferred from
short-term memory.
● It has unlimited space.
● Varied contents of information are stored, namely:
■ Semantic memory

■ Episodic memory

■ Procedural memory
● Semantic memory, the memory of ideas, words,
facts, and concepts that are not part of the
person’s own experiences.
● Episodic memory, memory of events that
happened in a person’s life, connected to a
specific time and place.
● Procedural memory, accounts for the
knowledge of how to do things.
Retrieving Information from LTM
• Free Recall, the person has to rely on the
information previously learned purely by
memory.
• Cued Recall, involves the provision of cues
and clues to the person to help in the recall of
the information.
• Recognition, it involves providing the learner’s
with stimuli as choices to make a decision or
judgment.
 Primacy and Recency
Effect Principle

The information presented close to

the start of the experience and those
that are close to the end are most
remembered by learners.
 Strong emotions,
especially stress, can
strengthen memory
formation.

Flashbulb Memory refer to

emotionally intense events
that become “burned in” as
a vivid-seeming memory.
 Forgetting
• Is the loss of information, either in the
sensory memory, short-term memory, or
long-term memory.
• Interference, is the process that occurs
when remembering certain information is
hampered by the presence of other
information (Woolfolk, 2016)
 Why Do We Forget?

• Decay Theory: memory degrades with time

• Interference Theory: one memory competes
(interferes) with another
➢ Retroactive Interference (new information

interferes with recall of old)

➢ Proactive Interference (old information interferes

with recall of new) i.e. when learning a third

language your second interferes .
 Why Do We Forget?

• Motivated Forgetting: motivation to forget unpleasant,

painful, threatening, or embarrassing memories;
Repression (automatic ejection of painful memories and
unacceptable urges from conscious awareness.
• Encoding Failure: information in STM is not encoded in
LTM
• Retrieval Failure: memories stored in LTM are
momentarily inaccessible (tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon)
 Teaching Implications (Woolfolk, 2016;
Slavin, 2018; Schunk, 2012)

1. Make sure you have the students’ attention.

2. Move around the room, use gestures, and avoid
speaking in a monotone.
3. Begin a lesson by asking a question that stimulates
interest in the topic.
4. Regain the attention of individual students by
walking closer to them, using their names, or asking
them a question.
 Teaching Implications (Woolfolk, 2016;
Slavin, 2018; Schunk, 2012)

5. Help students to separate essential from

nonessential details and focus on the most important
information.
6. When you make an important point, pause, repeat,
ask a student to paraphrase, note the information on
the board in colored chalk, or tell students to
highlight the point in their notes or readings.
 Teaching Implications (Woolfolk, 2016;
Slavin, 2018; Schunk, 2012)

7. Help students to make connections between new

information and what they already know.
8. Provide repetition and review information.
9. Present material in a clear and organized way.
10. Focus on meaning, not memorization.
 Problem
Solving and
Creativity
LESSON 4
 Learning Outcomes:
● Describe problem solving and creativity;
● Explain the stages/processes of problem solving and creativity;
● Cite situations manifesting barriers to problem solving and
creativity;
● Differentiate common problem-solving strategies;
● Determine the role of transfer of learning in problem solving
and creativity; and
● Cite classroom applications of theories related to problem
solving and creativity.
Problem Solving
 Problem Solving

Ana’s food catering business has been profitable,

as there is no competitor. Lately, a new catering
group was put up, offering as good services similar
to hers. With the presence of the competitor,
some clients have shifted to the new provider. Ana
inquires on how to sustain her customers’ loyalty.
This situation illustrates a problem.
 Problem Solving

A problem arises when there is a difference

between where are you now (e.g., the
presence of Ana’s competitor) and where
you want to be (e.g., Ana’s desire to sustain
customer loyalty).
 Problem Solving

A distinguishing feature of a problem is that there

is a goal to be reached through some action on
your part, but how to get there is not immediately
apparent. There is an obstacle or a gap between
where you are now and where you want to be
(Robertson,2015).
 Elements of a Problem Scenario

Current state Block/Obstacle Desired Goal

A necessary element of a problem is the presence of an

obstacle or block toward the attainment of the goal.
 Problem Solving

• Refers to cognitive processing directed at achieving

a goal for which the problem solver does not
initially know a solution method (Mayer, 2013).
• It consists of four major elements:
• Cognitive
• Process
• Directed
• Personal
 Types of Problem

Well-defined
• A well-defined problem is one where the initial
state, goal state, and the methods to reach the goal
state are clearly defined.
Example:
• A Mathematics problem where you have specific
steps to reach the solution.
 Types of Problem
Ill-defined
• An ill-defined problem lacks clear specification of
either the initial state, the goal state, or the
methods for achieving the goal.
Example:
• Problem of climate change, where the end state
(solving climate change) is clear, but the initial state
and methods to achieve this are vastly complex and
unclear.
 Approaches to Problem Solving

Behavioral approach
• reproducing a previous behavior to solve a
problem. A person faced with a problem
situation is likely to use the same solution
previously used and was effective in the past.
 Approaches to Problem Solving

Gestalt approach
• problem solving is productive process.
• As the individual ponders upon how to solve a
problem, a flash of an idea comes to mind,
which eventually provides the best solution to
the problem.
• Eureka moment
Eureka moment
the “moment a person
realizes or solves
something.”
 Identify
problems and
opportunities

Look back and

Define goal
learn

Anticipate
Explore possible
outcomes and
strategies
act

Problem-solving Cycle
 Barriers to Problem Solving

• Mental set The situation when the person becomes fixated on the
use of a strategy that previously produced the right solution, but in
the new situation it is not the application.
• Functional fixedness This is a phenomenon when individuals
fail to recognize that objects can have other purposes, aside from the
traditional use they were made for.
• Failure to distinguish and irrelevant information This
happen when a situation arises during analysis of a problem when an
individual cannot discern the relevant information needed in planning
the strategy to solve a problem.
 Creativity

• the ability to make or otherwise bring into

existence something new, whether a new
solution to a problem, a new method or
device, or a new artistic object or form.
 Theories about Creativity

• Developmental theory advocates that creativity develops

over time (from potential to achievement) mediated by an
interaction of person and environment.
• Cognitive theory states that ideational thought processes
are foundational to creative persons and accomplishment.
Individuals who discern remote association are good at
divergent/convergent thinking and conceptual combination
and metacognitive processes likely to be more creative.
Preparation (gathering materials)

Incubation (Subconsciously working on the Idea)

Illumination (Eureka, AHA, Lightbulb moment)

Verification (Idea into Form)

Stages of Creative Process

 A research conducted by Calubaquib (2013) illustrates
the creative problem solving. One time, she heard from a
fellow teacher about the parents’ personal experience about
the potency of cat’s whiskers or balbas pusa (Orthosiphon
aristatus Linn.) as antihypertension treatment. As it sounded
interesting to her, she read more about the plant and the use
of its extract. She wondered about what other studies could
be made out of the plant extract. At this stage, she was in the
preparation stage.
 While thinking of a novel use for the balbas
pusa extract, she was informed by the fellow teacher
after two weeks that only did her blood pressure
stabilize, but she also observed that there were
intestinal worms in her stool. this phase was the
incubation stage.
 As Calubaquib was intrigued, a bright idea came to her
mind. Balbas pusa cannot only act as antihypertension but
also be an antihelminthic. This is illumination stage as she
realized about the possibility of using the plant extract to
expel internal parasites. Following that idea, she planned
using swine as experimental animals to prove the
antihelminthic potency and efficacy of the plant extract, a
study of her master’s degree in chemistry. This is the
verification stage of the creative problem-solving process.
 Transfer of Learning

The phenomenon that past experiences

in solving problems are carried over or
used in solving new problems.
 Types of Transfer of Learning

1. Near transfer and Far transfer. When learners

apply their knowledge and skills in situations
and contexts that are very close to those in
which the learning occurred, it is near transfer.
When learners perform a skill in a context very
much different from the context it was learned,
it is far transfer (Johnson,1995).
 Types of Transfer of Learning

2. Positive and negative transfer. When learners

can use their prior knowledge or experience in
solving a new problem situation, it is a positive
transfer. When the previous learning or skill
obstructs the acquisition of a new skill or the
solving of a problem, it is negative transfer.
 Types of Transfer of Learning

3. Neutral or zero transfer. This happens when

past learning or prior experience does not
enhance or hinder the acquisition of a new skill
or in the solution of a problem.
Problem solving, creative process, and transfer of learning are
essential areas that learners should develop. In life, learners
are faced with many challenges. To prepare them to face
these realities, learners must be taught creative problem-
solving skills. Exposing the learners to these challenging
experiences in school enables them to be equipped with the
necessary competencies that they could transfer in life. The
focus should be more on the development of transferrable
skills that are enduring so that through their life span, the
learners can benefit from their learning.
Thanks!
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