Figure 1. A Cognitive Model of Learning
[To continue the Short Tour, click here for a summary of this section.]
Steps in Figure 1 are discussed in the following section.
Figure 1, made by the author from Sharon Derry's
review of cognitive learning theory, provides a starting place. Notes 11 - 12
Professor of Journalism
Florida A&M University
copyright © 1994, 1996
Figure 1. A Cognitive Model of Learning
[To continue the Short Tour, click here for a summary
of this section.]
Steps in Figure 1 are discussed in the following section.
When faced with a new text, readers do not begin by "reading"
in the sense of starting at the first word and moving sequentially toward
the last word, they first predict what the passage will mean. Prediction,
which plays a key role in Frank Smith's cogent account of reading, can be
understood as "the prior elimination of unlikely alternatives"
or "questions we ask the world." Note
13 Readers not only predict what an article will contain or what a statement
will mean, they predict:
Such predictions may be simultaneous with the first decoding of the letters
on the page, and, since a reader can be led to know what to expect by illustrations,
the nature of the publication, or other contextual cues, such predictions
may even precede reading. Most of this activity is unconscious and appears
to be part of the way we orient ourselves in the world.
For example, a glance at the heading "Sports" in a section of
the newspaper will cue one reader to relax, settle in for a leisurely perusal
of sports news, and begin remembering what she already knows (The playoffs
were held last night.), perhaps generating questions (Who won the basketball
playoffs?) or otherwise focusing attention, knowledge, and reading strategies
(what to skip, which teams to read about) onto the new information (researchers
call this activating relevant schemas).
Another reader may see the heading "Sports" and take it as a cue
to skip that entire section of the paper. Like all readers, these two are
active and strategic: They actively interpret what they read; they choose
what to read and how deeply to read it.
Researchers use the word "comprehension" to label what takes place
when the reader connects the new information with prior knowledge. Information
alone, no matter how well written, does not create comprehension. Comprehension
depends on the reader's prior knowledge and reading strategies.
The sports fan has a large body of organized information about sports and
can quickly fit new information into this framework. Another reader, with
a different body of organized knowledge, may actively seek out a music review
to find out how well a visiting chamber group played the opening fugue of
Beethoven's C-Sharp Minor Quartet. Much information in the sports pages
is incomprehensible to someone lacking prerequisite knowledge of sports;
much information in a music review is incomprehensible to someone lacking
prerequisite knowledge of music.
Even though both the sports report and the music review contain well-written
"information," that information becomes comprehensible only to
readers who can combine the new information with organized existing knowledge
(a knowledge network) on the subject matter. The comprehension of new information
requires a meeting of the new with the known. This meeting of the known
with the new is one of the fundamental concepts of cognitive learning theory.
Notice that the known does not wait passively
in the mind; it actively goes forth to meet and make sense of the new. Indeed,
unless a reader is able to predict, to ask relevant questions, and to know
how to find the answers, comprehension is not possible. Note
14
Comprehension does not necessarily lead to learning--at least, not to learning
of a meaningful, useful kind. How many people can remember the actual words
of books they read five years ago? As Bartlett demonstrated in the 1930s,
people do not ordinarily remember much of the exact information they read.
Instead, they learn the "gist" of it. They select. They use selected
portions of the information to address issues important to them. (Never
mind the national scores, did the local team win?) For all practical purposes,
the vast bulk of information one reads is simply forgotten. We use it to
"service" our model of the world, then discard the details.
Once new information has been comprehended--by
linking it to what is already known--cognitive theorists say that the new
information can then be learned through activities which enrich the connections
between the new and the old knowledge. Researchers have studied some ways
students convert "comprehended information" into "learned
information," through such activities as taking notes, summarizing,
outlining, making analogies, relating the information to yourself personally,
creating mental imagery, and similar activities known as elaboration.
Knowledge can be called "meaningful"
only after it is richly interconnected with related knowledge. Knowledge
can be called "useful" only if you can access it under appropriate
circumstances. Meaningful knowledge is filed and cross referenced with other
knowledge to which it is connected. Useful knowledge is filed and cross-referenced
so that you can find it when you need it.
Some of these points may seem obvious, but studies strongly suggest that
this kind of mental housekeeping makes the difference between good and poor
readers. Note 16
People apparently do not store knowledge as long, complete strings of text
but rather in a dynamic, interlinked network in which the elements have
been analyzed into categories linked by multiple relationships that may
be organized as schemas, scripts, narratives, or other forms.
The organization of memory seems to be a good deal more like multidimensional
hypertext than like paragraphs of linear prose. People not only abstract
the gist from what they read, they often do not recall what they
read verbatim; instead, they reconstruct what they "know."
Just as a well-organized knowledge network enables you to scan for and read
only what you do not already know in a new text, the knowledge network enables
you to regenerate the essence of what you know, rather than having to remember
it as complete texts of information. Memory--again, the discovery dates
to Bartlett in the 1930s--is reconstructive. People reinvent as they recall,
and they appear to reinvent on the basis of some deep structure they have
used to hang a few key facts on. A good knowledge structure, in fact, can
enable you to "remember" things you never learned--by inferring
them from what you already know.
The blurred boundary between inference and perception
is one thing that makes eye-witnesses unreliable, and a skillful questioner
can induce a witness to "remember" things never experienced. In
spite this blurriness, we derive a good deal of our knowledge of the world
by applying reason to the things we already know, extending those by inference,
and making good guesses about what "must" exist in the gaps of
our knowledge. In Kenneth Boulding's more organic terms, "Knowledge
grows also because of inward teachers as well as outward messages."
Notes 17 - 18
The basic theme we are developing can be stated this way:
In a nutshell: Cognition is an active,
recursive, integrated process by which we continuously model the world and
continuously modify the model.
[If you are on the Short Tour, click here for a Summary
of cognitive reading theory.]
(Not shown in the diagram.) Under ideal conditions, learners receive feedback
at various stages. A teacher, for example, may:
Because they are not interactive, the major media cannot provide direct
feedback to ensure the accuracy of what readers learn. Later, we will consider
whether media can offer alternatives to interactive feedback.
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