Memory and prior knowledge in cognitive learning theory

¶ … Learning: Cognitive

Cognitive Theory of Learning

The cognitive theory of learning states that memory and prior knowledge play active roles in learning, which requires that researcher look beyond different types of behavior to learning that is based in the brain. If memory promotes learning, both long-term and short-term memory will be important and significant to theorists, researchers, and educators focused on cognitive theory where education and learning are concerned.

The major principles associated with this theory involve memory and prior knowledge (experience). What a person experiences, and what he or she remembers about those experiences, shape how that person lives and what he or she learns during his or her time in an educational setting. Instructors must learn how to use this in order to help students learn all they can during a class or other educational experience.

B. There are many theorists who worked to develop the cognitive theory of learning. Three of these theorists are Bode, Baddeley, and Atkinson. Shiffrin should also be included in the list of important theorists, because he worked with Atkinson to great a model that was used by Baddeley and others to show how prior knowledge and memory was more significant in learning than the experiences the person had while learning took place.

C. The mental processes associated with learning are important and significant. The cognitive theory of learning had its beginnings in 1929, when Bode began to use Gestalt techniques to question how learning was undertaken and the views surrounding it. Over time, Bode's work developed into a strong opinion that memory and how memory is used is more important than the experiences people had while they were learning. Primarily, this was due to the different mental processes that are used to remember something as compared to the processes that are used to accept and understand an experience.

D. The cognitive theory of learning is based on Gestalt techniques, and makes use of those to show how people learn information and retain that information. That is where memory comes into the equation, because a person who learns something gets no real value from that learning unless it is retained. In order to retain the learning and be able to use it in the future, memory must be employed by the learner.

E. Permanent change takes place in this theory. Memory is something that is not fixed, as people remember some things and not others. Additionally, both short-term and long-term memory can be improved, damaged, or overloaded with too much stimulation and information. In learning, memory must be used in the proper amount, so all pertinent information is retained.

F. In school, the cognitive theory of learning would require teachers to use techniques to ensure memorization of important facts. In business or church settings, similar issues arise. Church services frequently provide the same information, but they do so in many different ways, allowing the listener to absorb the overall message. Business settings are more focused on the same information, presented the same way, each time. This rote memorization is important for things such as company rules, which remain static and inflexible.

III. Annotated Bibliography

Bates, J.A. (1979). Extrinsic reward and intrinsic motivation: A review with implications for the classroom. Review of Educational Research, 49, 557-576. How students are motivated and what they are given as rewards greatly affects how they respond to stimuli and information they are given. This would seem to show that it is the experience that is important, but that is not necessarily the case. Students must remember the information, be motivated to do so, and feel as though they will be rewarded for remembering, provided they can recite the information as and when requested. By using their memory and being rewarded for that, students lean and retain more information, and they focus on that information to the extent that it stays in their memory even after their reward for memorization has been received.

Buisson, G.J., Murdock, J.Y., Reynolds, K.E., & Cronin, M.E. (1995). Effect of tokens on response latency of students with hearing impairments in a resource room. Education and Treatment of Children, 18, 408-421. Some students have disabilities that require them to be taught in a different way than other children. That does not mean, however, that they cannot remember information and tie it to their prior knowledge that they have already received. The more a person knows and remembers from the past, the more he or she can take that information and put it to work with new information being collected. Rewarding children with disabilities for remembering information is just as important - if not more important - than providing the same kind of feedback for children without disabilities of any kind.

Cameron, J. (2001). Negative effects of reward on intrinsic motivation -- a limited phenomenon: Comment on Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (2001). Review of Educational Research, 71, 29-42. Do children who are rewarded externally focus less on being internally motivated? That is the view of some researchers, at least in certain cases. Not all children have that difficulty, but some appear to struggle with it and find that they are not easily motivated by internal factors if they focus on the external rewards they may receive. Regardless of what interests these children, however, the overall concern is that they are learning and using their memory. Their prior knowledge tells them they will be externally rewarded for doing something, so they continue to do it.

Cameron, J., Banko, K.M., & Pierce, W.D. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst, 24, 1-44. Rewarding children through external means gives them a reason to lower their intrinsic motivation, in many cases. That is due to the fact that they have no need to consider or want something on an internal level when they are being given something outwardly on which they can focus. They are still learning cognitively, however, because they are using their memory of past events and the prior knowledge they have about a situation to help them determine what comes next - and what comes next is some kind of external reward they can use to feel better about themselves. There are arguments on both sides as to whether this is helping or hurting today's children.

Cameron, J., & Pierce, W.D. (1996). The debate about rewards and intrinsic motivation: Protests and accusations do not alter the results. Review of Educational Research, 66, 39-51. How children learn, and how they learn best are issues that have been addressed for some time. The past opinion was that children learned through the experience of learning. What was taking place around those children during that time was sufficient to ensure that they learned what they should. However, that thinking started to change, and new research came about that addressed the memory of children and how they built their learning off of knowledge they had in the past, as opposed to off of the experience through which they were currently going. That changed the way teachers looked at how to motivate students, and whether intrinsic motivation to learn something was better than an external reward for doing so.

Carton, J.S. (1996). The differential effects of tangible rewards and praise on intrinsic motivation: A comparison of cognitive evaluation theory and operant theory. The Behavior Analyst, 19, 237-255. Cognitive theory and operant theory have been compared in the past. Cognitive theory focuses on the memory of the person and the prior knowledge that person has, as well as how those two things mesh and work together. Operant theory is more about conditioning, in that a person is "trained" to do something in return for getting something else. This kind of training can be done with a person or with an animal, and the results are similar. This leads researchers to believe that intrinsic motivation is lower in students who are taught under a more operant style as opposed to students taught under the cognitive theory of learning.

Cavalier, a.R., Ferretti, R.P., & Hodges, a.E. (1997). Self-management within a classroom token economy for students with learning disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 18, 167-178. Students who have differences in the way they learn, or who have disabilities that can make it more difficult for them to learn, often struggle to keep up with their peers. Sometimes, they have to be taught differently. The use of rewards for learning can often work better for these students, because they do not always have the memory and ability to use their prior knowledge to put together the pieces of the puzzle they need in order to remain focused on what they should be learning. In that case, teaching them how to manage themselves as much as possible and allowing them more operant styles of teaching and learning may serve them better, depending on their disability.

Davidson, P., & Bucher, B. (1978). Intrinsic interest and extrinsic reward: The effects of a continuing token program on continuing nonconstrained preference. Behavior Therapy, 9, 222-234. When children are given the option between a reward they would like and the internal desire to learn something, most children would rather have the reward. That is also true of many adults, whether they are in an educational setting or a business setting. Still, that does not mean that intrinsic interest cannot come along with extrinsic reward, or that operant theory is completely wrong. Many educators mix operant theory with cognitive theory in an effort to provide those with different learning styles more of an opportunity to learn and develop. This helps to reach the largest number of students per educator, improving the overall educational goal.

Cognitive Theory of Learning

Introduction

The cognitive theory of learning has been part of education since the late 1920's, when a Gestalt psychologist focused on the issue of Gestalt teaching and learning, and what that could offer to students who were not learning well in their current environment. There was too much of an emphasis, it was believed, on learning through experience, and not enough emphasis on actual memory and prior knowledge (Bates, 1979; Buisson, et al., 1995; Davidson & Bucher, 1978). The two areas are closely related, however, so some individuals failed to understand how memory and prior knowledge could be so much different from experience. One had to have experiences of some kind in order to gain prior knowledge, and one also needed those experiences in order to have something to remember. That made the issue confusing for many, but those who believed in the cognitive theory of learning were persistent in stating their beliefs and showing others that there was, indeed, a difference between the experiences people had while learning and the prior knowledge and memory that was used to learn (Cameron & Pierce, 1996).

In other words, cognitive theory was not the same as operant conditioning. In operant conditioning, a person is provided with something (an extrinsic reward) because he or she did something. That person (or even an animal) can be taught to react in a specific way to a sound, smell, taste, or even to a word. The classic example of operant conditioning is Pavlov's dog. Pavlov would ring a bell each time he fed his dog, right before the food was offered. Eventually, the dog could be observed salivating at the sound of the bell, even if there was no food offered. He had come to associate the sound of the bell with being fed, and had been conditioned that way. When students are rewarded with something external every time they complete a learning experience, there is a concern that they will end up in that same predicament - they will be taught to expect a certain thing, and they will not understand how to intrinsically reward themselves for a job well done (Bates, 1979; Cameron, Banko, & Pierce, 2001; Ferretti, & Hodges, 1997; Davidson & Bucher, 1978).

Mental Processes Involved in the Cognitive Theory

There are mental processes involved in the associated learning that can be explained through the cognitive theory. With cognitive theory, the concern is not about the outside experience the student has and about the external rewards that student receives. Instead, the theory is about the intrinsic motivation a student has, and how he or she learns through the building of intelligence and understanding. Intelligence has long been something that has been difficult to measure, and researchers have argued that there are many different kinds of intelligence that have to be addressed (Cameron & Pierce, 1996; Carton, 1996). In addition to understanding issues like mathematics, science, and proper grammar, there are aspects of emotional and other types of intelligence on which individuals must focus if they are to be successful in life and in their education. Still, they have to consider many different areas in order to determine how intelligence is factored into the equation of learning and how much of a role memory plays in both intelligence and learning (Carton, 1996; Cavalier, Ferretti, & Hodges, 1997).

Learning is viewed through the cognitive theory as an internal mental process. Since that is the case, it begs the question of why educators provide external rewards for students who are working to learn new concepts. If learning is internal, should not the rewards for learning also be internal? This is something that educators and theorists have battled back and forth on for some time, but there are no easy and concrete answers to the issue. That is largely due to the fact that, while learning takes place as an internal mental process, the motivation to learn is not always internal. Children - and adults, to some extent - have to learn what they need to know to be successful in life, but they also have to have a reason to learn. If they do not feel as though there is any point to learning the information, they will focus on learning something else or not learning anything at all (Davidson & Bucher, 1978). While this is expected more commonly in children, it is also seen in adults, especially those who have busy lives and do not have much time to learn.

The Use of Prior Knowledge

The theory also makes use of prior knowledge in explaining how people learn. This is a serious argument that is ongoing between cognitive theorists and behaviorists, because prior experience and prior knowledge are not the same things. With that in mind, it is vital to consider the way individuals learn and how they process their past experiences. If they are relying on experiences of the past to learn, is that considered the same, in some ways, as relying on prior knowledge? This is at the heart of the argument, but those who believe in the cognitive theory of learning argue that prior knowledge is used as a basis that can be coupled with other information that is currently being learned. Because of that, information collected five or even 10 years ago may become part of information collected yesterday or today, and those two pieces of information will be intermingled to form an understanding and/or an opinion about a particular issue (Bates, 1979; Davidson & Bucher, 1978). This has been the opinion of researchers in the past, and will likely remain so into the future.

While a previous experience may be forgotten or may not be seen the same way anymore, previous knowledge is something that has been ingrained and memorized. Because that knowledge is internalized, it will not be forgotten or misunderstood when other knowledge arrives to which it can be attached or with which it can be processed. That difference between knowledge and experience is a subtle distinction, but it is also one that must be realized and recognized by those who are interested in the cognitive theory of learning. The use of that theory will help educators to decide what kinds of rewards they want to offer extrinsically and how often those rewards should be offered, so that other rewards (intrinsic rewards) can be provided by the students who will see the value in what they are learning and retaining as they move through their educational experience. The age of the person being educated may be highly important in what kinds of rewards work best for memorization of facts and other information about life Carton, 1996).

Permanent Behavioral Changes

Permanent changes in the behavior of individuals often take place when learning under cognitive theories. While the cognitive theory of learning is not about the behavior of a person but the memory and knowledge that person uses and possesses, there are still behaviors that come along with learning and that cannot be ignored or discounted. These behaviors will work to shape the memories the person has about his or her learning experiences. There is no argument about the fact that some people learn differently than others, and what works for one person may not work as well (or at all) for another person. With that being the case, a person who learns to accept and appreciate internal or intrinsic motivation for his or her gains in knowledge will behave differently than a person who is more focused on learning only for the external rewards he or she expects to receive (Cameron, Banko, & Pierce, 2001; Cameron & Pierce, 1996). Every person is different, but yet they are all the same in many ways, as well. Those similarities are the issues on which theories are based.

When individuals understand that there is more value in intrinsic motivation than there is in external rewards, their behavior changes. They remember and retain what they need to know in order to succeed, but they also often show interest in other areas of knowledge, and will gain understanding just for the sake of having that knowledge, as opposed to only learning what is required of them to receive some type of reward or meet a particular milestone. This is a small distinction between the ways in which people learn, but it is also an important one that can provide a better understanding of human goals and desires, as well as memory, knowledge, and the basis for learning.

Applying the Theory to Different Settings

This theory can be applied to many settings with similar results, including school, business, and church. While it may seem as though the cognitive theory of learning is identical no matter what kind of learning is taking place, that is only partially true. Some examples will be examined here, in order to show the subtle differences between various types of settings where learning takes place. The school setting is the most common place for people to consider learning as an important activity. Whether it is a child just starting out in kindergarten, or an adult going back to college after a long absence in an effort to change careers and seek gainful employment, people go to school to learn new information and new skills. The best way for these people to learn these skills is through repetition. The more a person does something, the easier it becomes. At some point, the information or activity will become "second nature," and the person will automatically perform that activity. However, that goes back to the idea of operant conditioning and Pavlov's dog. People who are taught only through conditioning are not really learning in the deepest sense of the word.

Schools focus on this kind of conditioning very strongly when they "teach to the test" in order to provide a reward (high test scores and more funding) for the students and the schools. but, what are the students learning that will help them in later life? Where is there actual knowledge? Do they have only the memory of the experience? If they do not gain knowledge that they can use in the future, and they are not provided with information they can actually use in their lives, they have learned nothing. All they have done is memorized information for a test, and that information is then promptly forgotten once the test has been completed. They have no intrinsic motivation to retain the information, because it is of no value in their daily lives once they have been rewarded by a good grade on the test. This is seen in the majority of schools today, and has gone far astray from the idea of cognitive learning that provides actual knowledge for students.

Unfortunately, that lack of use of the cognitive theory of learning appears to extend to much of a person's working and personal life, as well. People memorize information at the office - not because they care deeply about having the knowledge, but because they do not wish to get into trouble with their boss for not knowing something or for doing something wrong. This operant conditioning appears to be taking over, with the exception of individuals who are deeply passionate about and interested in the subject which they studied in school and now use to make a living. Those people learn because they experience intrinsic rewards and motivation to do so, and they are the ones who have true knowledge about their subject. They follow company rules and procedures, but if they switched companies they would only need to adapt to some new rules. The information they actually need to do their job correctly would always be with them because it has been stored in their memories and they have internalized it. It had value to them, or it would have been forgotten.

While religion is a touchy and difficult subject for many, church is another place where a high degree of rote memorization occurs. Many people who attend church do not dig deeper for their own spiritual identity or the question they have about their God, their life, and what is happening in the world today. Instead, they memorize prayers and songs, and they attend church every Sunday. Their external reward for this will be the attainment of their believed version of the afterlife when they pass away and leave their earth. However, that does little for them in the context of cognitive theories of learning. They are learning so they can receive a reward, but they are not learning so they can answer their own questions and have their own knowledge. If they did, they might find that their beliefs would change and would become quite different from what they had been taught all those years.

Conclusion

Overall, cognitive theory is very important when it comes to learning. It is the way people learn best, from the standpoint of internalizing and retaining the material. It is also the way people focus best on the information provided to them, and how they take that information and use it to couple prior knowledge to current understanding. Still, in most aspects of society today, the cognitive theory is not being used effectively, if at all. True learning, and true knowledge causes a person to question things. People who thirst for knowledge and answers are those who are using the cognitive theory of learning.

They are not interested in rote memorization of test answers, or in being conditioned to long for that gold star at the top of their paper. Instead, they are interested in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and of taking that information and putting it together with what they learned in the past so they can draw their own conclusions. Without teaching students that ability at a young age, and showing them the value of it early on, they will miss out on the opportunity to discover who they really are. Educators who are not teaching from the cognitive theory of learning are doing a great disservice to future generations.