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Cognitive/Mental
Learning Theories
Description
Information
Processing Theory
- Messages in the environment are input, processes and stored as
knowledge, and output as behavior.
-
Individual's attributes determine which messages are processed - prior
knowledge, memory capacity, etc.
- Roots
of IP go back to creation of intelligent machines - Artificial Intelligence.
- Primary
task of the individual is to move information from the external environment
into Long-term memory - where it is permanently stored.
- To be entered into Long-term memory, information must pass the 1)
Sensory Information Store (or Sensory register) which gathers together
impulses and images picked up by the senses and fuses them into some
impression that can be mentally grasped, and 2) the Working memory
or short-term memory which is the realm of consciousness (explicit
knowledge) in order to be contemplated and analyzed.
- To
be retrieved from long-term memory, information must reach the Response
Generator, the point where the brain converts the conscious thoughts
into behaviors or outputs - which are externalized by one or more
sense organs.
- IP theory holds that there is a difference between information and
knowledge.
Cognitive
Constructivism
- Knowledge is individually formed and is an individual possession
(like IP)
- See
long term memory and knowledge structured in long term memory as important
to learning and development (like IP).
- Emphasize how human minds grow and develop biologically and psychologically
rather than the mental process by which information is transformed
into knowledge (like IP).
- Based
on the work of Jean Piaget.
- Believe
that level of mental maturation has a great deal to do with information
individuals can grasp from their environment, plus it affects the
construction or interpretations that people make and the knowledge
that they create.
Radical
Constructivism
- Takes
individuality to higher level than those theories discussed above.
- Emphasize
appreciating and building on whatever interpretations or constructions
the students have made - constructions that must inevitably be as
unique to them as their fingerprints.
- The
concept of an objective reality or truthfulness is merely an educational
illusion - there is only one reality that an individual mind creates.
- Supporters
come from math and science.
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