CHAPTER 3

COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORIES
Presentation by Group 2
 Introduction
The term cognitive learning derives its meaning
from the word cognition, defined by an el dictionary,
as "the mental action or process of acquiring
knowledge and understanding through thought,
experience, and the senses." Thus, learners are
viewed to learn by using their brains. In the proces.
are actively engaged in mental activities involving
perception, thinking, and relying on their memor.
they process new experiences. Through the
connections of these old and new experiences, the
acquisim of knowledge and understanding results
exist.
In this chapter, you expected to:

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.
 LESSON 1 : PIAGET’S COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT THEORY
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

explain terms and concepts associated with Piaget's

cognitive theory;

discuss the stages of cognitive development; and

identify teaching strategies that are supportive of Piaget's

theory.
 THINK

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

In his theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget argued that

children's cognitive development is influenced by biological
maturation and their interaction with the environment. Children
undergo a similar order or stages of development. Owing to varied
circumstances the children are exposed to. the rate at which children
go through the stages differ. Some children may even miss the later
stages of cognitive development.
 HOW LEARNING OCCURS:
To explain how cognitive development happens, Piaget introduced
the concepts of schema, assimilation, and accommodation. He
defined schemas as "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence
possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and
governed by a core meaning" (Piaget, 1952). It is the person's way of
organizing knowledge. Viewed like the central processing unit of a
computer, schemata (plural form) are like 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. Piaget used the term 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 the change. If the person can
adapt to every experience, learning happens.
 HOW LEARNING OCCURS:
Consider the story of Jayden, a boy who is no more than 2 years old,
who formed the concept of "dog" as he played very often with
Starbucks, a Shih Tzu, the family dog. When introduced to a poodle,
he called the same as "dog." One day, he saw the neighbor's cat and
shouted "dog" to get the attention of his mother.

Jayden's schema for dogs includes having a small furry body, with four legs, a waggling
tail, and barking ability. Calling the poodle "dog" is a case of assimilation, the process of
taking new information into the existing schema. When the mother explained that dogs
bark but cats meow, Jayden accommodated the new experience, thus, his schema for "cats"
was created. Accommodation involves changing or altering existing schemas owing to the
new information provided or learned. The balance between assimilation and
accommodation is achieved through a mechanism, which Piaget called equilibration.
This ability is believed to be a factor in children's ability to move from one stage
to another in cognitive development. If the person is unable to take a balance of
these two processes, disequilibrium occurs (see Figure 4)

ASSIMILATION

EQUILIBRATION

NEW SITUATION

DISEQUILIBRIUM

ACCOMMODATION
Stages of Cognitive Development
To Piaget, cognitive development among children has four phases (see Figure 5).
Children generally move through these different stages of mental development.
Each stage describes how children acquire knowledge and the nature of
intelligence.
SENSORI-MOTOR
BIRTH TO 2 YEARS

PREOPERATION
STAGE: AGES 2 TO 7

CONCRETE
OPERATIONAL STAGE:
AGES 7 TO 11

FORMAL
OPERATIONAL
STAGE: AGES 12
AND UP
 The milestones in terms of cognitive abilities children manifest in the
different stages are summarized as follows:
STAGE MILESTONES

Learns through reflexes, senses, and movement actions on the environment. Begins
Sensorimotor (0-2 years) to imitate others and remember events; shifts to symbolic thinking. Comes to
understand that objects do not cease to exist when they are out of sight-object
permanence. Moves from reflexive actions to intentional activity.

Begins about the time the child starts talking, to about seven years old. Develops
language and begins to use symbols to represent objects. Has difficulty with past
Preoperational (2-7 years) and future thinks in the present. Can think through operations logically in one
direction. Has problems understanding the point of view of another person.

Begins about first grade, to early adolescence, around 11 years old. Can think
logically about concrete (hands-on) problems. Understands conservation and
Concrete Operational
organizes things into categories and in series. Can reverse thinking to mentally
(7-11 years)
"undo" actions. Understands the past, present, and future.

Can think hypothetically and deductively. Thinking becomes more scientific.

Formal Operational Solves abstract problems logically. Can consider multiple perspectives and
(12 years and up) develops concerns about social issues, personal identity, and justice,
Sensorimotor Stage.
Children at this stage think through what they see, hear, move,
touch, and taste. Two major accomplishments happen at this stage.
One is object permanence, the belief that an object still exists even
if not within the sight of the child. Even when the mother leaves for
work, the Formal Operational (12 years and up) Adapted from
Woolfolk (2016). ly re child is aware that the mother comes home in
the afternoon.
The other major achievement children demonstrate in this stage is
goal-directed actions. Initially, children do not think about what
they do as these actions are instinctive and involuntary (e.g., getting
food and family attention). Later, Piaget believed that as children
grow, they begin to think about what they need to accomplish, how
to do it, then act on it.
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

At this stage, children have not yet mastered mental operations

because they use action 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). The case of kindergarten
learners using sticks to count illustrate this preoperational
ability.
Another ability demonstrated at this stage is children's ability to
form and use symbols to represent a physical action or reality,
this is a semiotic function. A child's ability to identify from a
book the picture of a bird illustrates this skill.
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

Concrete operations are described by Piaget as the ability to engage in

"hands-on thinking" characterized by organized and rational thinking. A
major ability at this stage is reversible thinking, thinking backward, from the
end to the beginning (Woolfolk, 2016). Reversibility involves conservation
and decentration. Conservation is the belief that, whatever 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. A related skill is
decentration, the children's ability to focus on more than one dimension of
an object at a time. Children at this stage would understand that the smaller
but wider glass contains the same amount of fruit juice with the content of
the tall but narrower glass. These children not only focus on the height of the
glass but also considers its width. The width of the narrow glass compensates
the shortness of its height. Figure 6 shows sample conservation tasks.
Formal Operational Stage.
At this stage, adolescents can engage in mental processes involving
abstract thinking and coordination of some variables (Woolfolk,
2016). All the earlier mental abilities have been mastered. The
adolescents can now think like a scientist, as they can give
hypotheses and conjectures about the problem, set up experiments
to test them, and control extraneous variables to arrive at a valid
and reliable explanation. They are capable of giving deductions as
they systematically evaluate their observations as well as their
answers. This ability is called hypothetico-deductive reasoning.
 Teaching Implications of Piaget's
Cognitive Development Theory
The influence of Piaget on classroom instruction is summarized in his
words, "What is desired is that the teacher cease being a lecturer
satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions, his role should rather
be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research." It behooves the
teacher to be creative in imparting knowledge and skills to the students
to engage them in a more active learning environment so they can
construct meaning and concepts. In addition to instruction, the
classroom environment, curriculum, and instructional materials should
complement each other.
 LESSON 2 :
VYGOTSKY ‘S SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

At the end of the lesson, you will be able to:

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

The sociocultural theory of cognitive development was formulated by

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist. Its major argument
is 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 (social level), and he or she later
thinks internally (see Figure 7). The theory underscores his belief that
children's thinking is affected by their knowledge of the social
community, which Vygotsky considered as learned from either technical
or psychological cultural tools (Vygotsky, 1978).
 CULTURAL CONTEXT

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. An
MKO is anyone who has a higher skill level than the learner in terms of
the specific task to perform. For instance, a child who is guided by verbal
clues by the mother learns how to tear off the plastic covering of the
cookies. In another case, children playing "Chinese garter" abide by the
rules that they agree with. This is called a co-constructed process as the
children negotiated to create an acceptable rule on how to play the game.
The Role of Language
Vygotsky's theory emphasizes that language plays a central role in the
theory of human cognitive development. Language plays multiple roles,
including culturally shaping the overt behavior individuals as well as
influencing their covert behavior, such as thinking (Burkholder Pelaez,
2000) Through language, human cognitive development and higher
mental functions are initiated from social communications. As people
engage in social activities, they are involved in mental and
communicative functions (Vygotsky, 1986).
 The three stages of speech development (see Figure were
identified by Vygotsky (Johnson, 2014). These are as follows:

EGOCENTRIC
SPEECH
Thinking not Speech internalized
related to Speech guides
speech Thinking out loud
Talking to oneself thinking, behavior
Thinking in the
form of images,
emotions
SOCIAL OR EXTERNAL INNER SPEECH
SPEECH
1. Social or external speech.
At this stage (birth to approximately age 3), thinking is not related to
speech at all. Instead, thinking is primarily in the form of images,
emotions, and impressions. Speech only occurs on the external or social
level to express a desire or to convey simple emotions such as shouting or
crying. For instance, a child would tell "Dede" or milk if hungry. At this
stage, speech is merely a tool to make things happen in the external
world.
 2. Egocentric speech.
At this stage (approximately ages 3-7), children think out loud or talk to themselves
as they are doing something. For instance, as Paul plays with his toy car and it does
not run, he tells himself "Sira na" or "It's destroyed." Called egocentric speech, 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.

3. Inner speech.
Inner speech is soundless speech or thought. Here, 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

One major feature of Vygotsky's theory is the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as illustrated by
Wheeler (2013) in Figure 9. He argued that at any time, children find difficulties in performing tasks

or problems posed to them as they are not yet matured enough to handle them. With the guidance of
the MKOs, like their parents or elder siblings, they could perform the task.

Scaffolding, the provision of cues, clues, modeling, and demonstrations of the MKO, can assist the
children in successfully performing the task. The goal of the ZPD is to help the child move from the
level of current independent performance (the competence demonstrated to do a task alone) to the
level of potential performance (the competence achieved with the guidance of others).
Scaffolding as intervention to reach the zone of
proximal development. Source: Wheeler (2013)
Teaching Implications of
Vygotsky's Theory
The theory of sociocultural learning has greatly influenced practices in
facilitating learning. Vygotsky's theory promotes learning contexts in which
students play an active role in learning. His theory requires that the teacher
and student are collaborators in the learning process, with the teacher as
facilitator or guide in learner's construction of knowledge and development of
skills. The process makes learning a reciprocal experience for both the teacher
and learners.
Teaching Implications of Vygotsky's Theory
Citing research findings (e.g., John-Steiner & Mann, 2003; Webb, 2008; Slavin, 2014), Slavin
(2018) proposed the following teaching practices for consideration by the facilitator of learning.
In the use of ZPD, teachers can organize classroom activities in the following ways:

1. Instruction can be planned to provide practice within the ZPD for individual
children or groups of children. For example, hints and prompts that helped
children during a preassessment could form the basis of instructional activities.
2. Scaffolding provides hints and prompts at different levels. In scaffolding, the
adult does not simplify the task, but the role of the learner is simplified "through
the graduated intervention of the teacher."
3. Cooperative learning activities can be planned with groups of children at
different levels who can help each other to learn.
 LESSON 3 :
INFORMATION PROCESSING THOERY

At the end of the lesson, you will be able to:

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.
 Nature of Information Processing
Developed by American psychologist George A. Miller, the information processing
theory (IPT) of cognitive development pertains to the study and analysis of what occurs in
a person's mind as he or she receives a bit of information (Miller, 1956). Other theorists
enhanced Miller's theory, although the different theories that followed share common
assumptions (Schunk, 2012). First, information processing occurs in stages that intervene
between receiving a stimulus and producing a response. The form of information, or how
it is represented mentally, differs depending on the stage. The stages are qualitatively
different from one another. Second, information processing is analogous to computer
processing. The mind receives and represents/encodes the stimulus from the
environment, processes the information, stores it, locates/retrieves it, and gives a response
to it. Learning is a change/revision in the knowledge that has been stored by the memory.
Basic Components of the IPT Model
The information processing theory model has three major
components, namely: sensory memory, short-term memory, and
long-term memory (see Figure 10). As seen in the figure, each has
a particular function (Schunk, 2012; Woolfolk, 2016
The Information Processing Model
Sensory memory
Sensory memory is the state in which the stimuli sensed (heard, seen, touched, smelled, tasted)
are temporarily held in mere seconds for the information to be processed further. As a person is
presented a lot of stimuli at a given time, the sensory memory serves as a filter on what to focus
on. When viewing a basketball game, you can see one person focused on the one in possession of
the ball, while another one's attention is centered on the guard's action. Selective attention is the
individual's ability to choose and process information while disregarding the other stimuli or
information. Schunk (2012) cited several factors that influence attention:

1. The meaning is given by the individual to the task or information.

2. The similarity between competing tasks or source of information.

3. The difficulty or complexity of the task as influenced by prior knowledge.

4. The ability to control and sustain attention.

Short-term memory
Short-term memory serves as a 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 the information is transferred to long-term memory, there are
two strategies involved: rehearsal and encoding or elaboration.

Maintenance rehearsal involves repetition of the information to sustain its

maintenance in the short- term memory. The use of ABC songs and number songs
serve as rehearsal strategies among children. Meanwhile, elaborative rehearsal is the
process of relating the new information to what is already known and stored in the
long-term memory to make the new information more significant.
Long-term memory
The long-term memory is the storehouse of information transferred from short-
term memory. It has unlimited space. Varied contents of information are stored,
namely:

1. Semantic memory is the memory for ideas, words, facts, and concepts that are
not part of the person's own experiences. Individuals with good semantic memory
include those who know the capital of countries in the world, many words and their
meanings, the order of planets, and other facts.

2. Episodic memory includes the memory of events that happened in a person's

life, connected to a specific time and place. An example is a student who can explain
the details of his or her most embarrassing moment (who were involved, when,
where, why, and how it happened).
Long-term memory
The long-term memory is the storehouse of information transferred from short-
term memory. It has unlimited space. Varied contents of information are stored,
namely:

3. Procedural memory accounts for the knowledge about how to do things. A

student teacher who recalls the step-by-step process of presenting the lesson to the
class has procedural memory.

4. Imagery refers to mental images of what is known. For instance, beginning

readers use configuration clues, shape, and appearance of words to help in word
recognition. Associating a familiar image to the name of a newly introduced person,
like giraffe, guides one to recall the name of Gigi, a long-necked beautiful lady.
 Retrieving Information from the
Long-term Memory
Retrieving information from long-term memory involves locating the information
and transferring it to the short-term memory to be used for a purpose. Studies (e.g.,
Bransford & Johnson, 1972) have shown that a person remembers a lot less of the
information stored in long-term memory. The quality of how the information was
stored influences its access and retrieval.

mentioned two ways of information retrieval. One is recalling, which is either free
recall or cued recall. In free recall, the person has to rely on the information previously
learned purely by memory. In contrast, the cued recall involves the provision of cues
and clues to the person to help in the recall of the information.
 Forgetting

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 hampered by the presence of other
information (Woolfolk, 2016). At the senory memory, there are other stimuli
that bombard the person. As one stimulus is just the focus at a time, others are
forgotten. In addition to interference, time decay is another factor for the loss
of stored information from long- term memory. Unused information decays
and is forgotten. However, some theorists argue that stored information in the
long-term memory is never lost.
Thank
You

Presentation by Group 2