Cognitive Approach

Cognition refers to mental activity including thinking, remembering, learning and using language. When we apply a cognitive approach to learning and teaching, we focus on theunderstaning of information and concepts. If we are able to understand theconnections between concepts, break down information and rebuild with logicalconnections, then our rention of material and understanding will increase.
When we are aware of these mental actions, monitor them and control ourlearning processes it is called http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/COG/COG.HTML

David P Ausubel

David P. Ausubel (1918 - ) contributed much to cognitivelearning theory in his explaination of meaningful verbal learning which he sawas the predominant method of classroom learning.
To Ausubel, meaning was aphenomenon of consciousness and not of behavior. The external world acquiresmeaning when it is converted into the "content of consciousness." Hebelieved that a signifier (ie. word) has a meaning when its effect upon thelearner is equivalent to the effect of the object it signifies.
Bruner believedwhen there is "...some form of representational equivalence betweenlanguage (or symbols) and mental content," then there is meaning. Hebelieved there are two processes involved in cognitive learning: the receptionprocess and the discovery process. What he termed receptionprocesses are almost exclusively used in meaningful verbal learning. Concept formation and problem solving are more likely, according to Ausubel, toinvlove discovery processes.

Ausubel felt discovery learning techniques are often uneconomical,inefficient, and ineffective. He felt most school learning is verbal learning(receptive learning).

Subsequent research has shown that verbal learning is most effective forrapid learning and retention and that discovery learning is most effective infacilitating transfer.

Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner (1915 - ) had a great effect upon cognitivelearning theory. Based upon the idea of catagorization, Bruner's theory states"To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to learnis to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize." He maintainedthat people interpret the world in terms of its similarities and differences andsuggested a coding system in which people have a heirarchial arrangement ofrelated categories. Each successively higher level of categories becomes morespecific.
Bruner maintained that people interpret the world in terms of similaritiesand differences which are detected among objects and events. Objects that areviewed as similar are placed in the same category. The major variable in histheory of learning is the coding system into which the learner organizes thesecategories. The act of categorizing is assumed to be involved in informationprocessing and decision making.

Bruner's theory of cognitive learning theory emphasizes the formation ofthese coding systems He believed that the systems facilitate transfer, enhanceretention and increase problem solving and motivation. He advocated thediscovery oriented learning methods in schools which he believed helped studentsdiscover the relationships between categories.

Memory

Memory is a living library of all references to our past. It isavailable to help us deal with problems of the present to make future decisions. Memory can bestored to later recall or recongize events that were previously experienced. It also refers to what is retained, the total body of remembered experience aswell as a specific experience that is recalled.
Memories are not like photoalbums because memories are rarely exact copies of earlier experiences. Whatyou remember is influenced by many factors, some operating at the time of theoriginal encoding of information, others operating during storage, and still others operating atthe time of recall.
Memories can be affected by physical health, attention,emotion, prejudice, and many other conditions.
There are three types of memory:sensory, short-term, and long-term (Zimbardo, 1993).

• Sensory memory- preserves fleeting impressions of sensorystimuli-sights, sounds, smells, and textures for only a fraction of a second.
• Short-Term memory- includes recollections for what we have recentlyperceived, such as limited information, lasts only up to twenty seconds unlessspecial attention is paid to it or is reinstated for rehearsal. Information inshort term memory is limited to seven discrete units (plus or minus 2)
• Long-Term memory-preserves information for retrieval at any time. The information may be stored for an entire life time and constitutes ourknowledge about the world. Long term memory is considered to be unlimited induration and capacity.

Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is how we use our knowledge of language, speechproduction and comprehension and how a child acquires that knowledge.
How weacquire and process knowledge depends to a great extent on the nature of thatknowledge. Psycholcinguistics have found that speech perception andcomprehension involves deductive processing as well as inductive processing.
Deductive processing as it relates to linguistics is the use of grammatical and contextualinformation where it originates in the brain and influences selection,organzation or interpretion of sensory data. For example, when subjects hearrecorded sentences in which some part of the signal is removed and a cough issubstituted, they "hear" the sentence without a missing phoneme andin fact are unable to say which phonemic segment the cough replaced.
Inductive processing as used by linguists is the use of sensory information of thesignal. In speech understanding, we use stored semantic, lexicial and syntacticinformation as well as the sensory information in the signal itself. Subjectsmake fewer errors identifying words when the words occur in sentences than whenthey are presented in isolation. They do better if the words occur ingrammatical, meaningful sentences as opposed to grammatical, unmeaningfulsentences (Fromkin and Rodman, 1991).

Perception/Comprehension

Perceptions are interpretations of the messages from our environmentbased on our past experience, the current context, our needs, goals andexpectations.
Our ability to perceive and sense contributes to our uniquenesson a further dimension: we have a conscious awareness of ourselves and anability to go beyond that experience, extending the limits of our consciousness.Perception also refers to later processess that organize and interpret information in asensory image as having been produced by the properties of objects in theexternal, three dimensional word.
The first stage in the comprehension process is the perception of the speechsignal, an acoustic signal produced the speaker. This includes the position ofthe tongue, lips, velum, the state of the vocal cords, and the airstreammechanisms. The intrepretation of these sounds is necessary in order to learnthe language, therefore, understand the content (Fromkin and Rodman, 1991).