Cognition

The process by which humans absorb and understand new information. Often called high-level or critical thinking, cognition is defined differently by different learning theorists, but it is, in effect, the “figuring-out” process that takes place between the reception of a stimulus and the subject’s response. Put another way, cognition is the process that allows human beings to give meaning to what their senses detect.
Cognition varies widely from person to person. Few individuals give exactly the same meanings or respond exactly the same way to the same stimuli. Cognition varies according to genetic factors, previous experiences, age, development and a wide range of other factors. These variations dictate why students at one age can easily understand concepts they were unable to grasp at a younger age. Because cognition often requires accumulating large numbers of small bits of information over an extended period of time, it is a process that can frustrate some teachers and parents because of the patience required to produce the desired results. Many teachers and parents are more receptive to behavioral theories that tie learning to rewards and punishments. Indeed, the traditional pedagogy of centuries past called for striking a child’s hand with a ruler until the child provided the correct answer to a problem. In effect, the child was punished for each wrong answer (2 + 2 = 3) and rewarded (sometimes only by the cessation of pain) for the correct answer. There is little evidence, however, that such learning produced any understanding of the associated concepts, for example, that two bushels added to a bin with two other bushels yield four bushels or that subtraction and addition are inversely related.
Swiss psychologist JEAN PIAGET explained cognition through the concept of equilibration, which involved three basic elements that he called schemes, assimilation and accommodation. Schemes refer to the mental or intellectual framework a student brings to a learning situation. Based on previous learning experiences, schemes allow students to acquire new knowledge that automatically expands or alters the shape of those schemes. Thus, a child with a scheme, or conceptual structure, associated with the word “house,” for example, may at first only have knowledge of his or her own house. Each time the child visits or sees a new house, however, the new sensory information expands and alters the original scheme. Once told that igloos or tepees are also houses, the child begins to learn that any houselike structure is probably a house, regardless of its color or shape. Cognitive learning, or equilibration, has taken place. Piaget called the addition of each new bit of information to a scheme (for example, that igloo equals house) assimilation, and he called the altering of the scheme to produce knowledge and understanding accommodation. Piaget pointed out, however, that schemes are in a constant state of change in normal children, fluctuating from a state of disequilibrium to equilibrium. Thus, the child whose scheme of a house includes tepees and igloos may be thrown into disequilibrium when confronted with a geodesic dome. When provided with enough added information (assimilation) to understand that the dome is another type of house, the original scheme expands to accommodate the new knowledge, and the scheme is once again returned to temporary equilibrium. One educator described equilibrium as the “that makes sense” response of a student whose eyes light up at a moment of complete understanding. Cognitive psychologists contend that conventional teaching relies too heavily on assimilative techniques that require students to memorize facts without accommodating or understanding their broader meaning. Students may accurately repeat such facts on tests, but without accommodation, they quickly forget them.