Theories Of Cognitivism

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Another relevant learning theory to address in order to carry out this study is cognitivism. By the end of 1950, learning theories started to change and depart from behaviouristic ideas towards an approach that supported its ideas based on models developed from the cognitive sciences (Snelbecker, 1983). As Bower and Hilgard (1981) pointed out, cognitive theories put emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge and internal mental structures, that is to say, cognitive models focus on the conceptualisation of students’ learning processes and how the input acquired is received, organised, stored, and retrieved by their minds (Ertmer & Newby, 2013). In this case, the process of learning is concerned with what learners know and how they acquire new …show more content…

First, the principle that links cognitivism and Chomsky’s ideas will be reviewed. In Horst (2003), it is said that Chomsky was the responsible for introducing a cognitivist revolution in the field of linguistics that shifted away from the behaviourist theory of language-learning. Chomsky was unable to explain the fact that children rely on grammatical rules, and that they are able to apply them in different new contexts in forms that are not determined by the finite set of stimuli that they have been exposed to. This meant that, with the aim of solving Chomsky’s problem, a mechanism that was not bound to general principles of classical and operant conditioning was necessary. Consequently, a mechanism designed especially for language-learning and linked to computational terms was plausible. This mechanism is one of the most important principles within the cognitive theory, it is the so-called computational theory of the mind (Bechtel, Graham, & Balota, …show more content…

These tasks have been addressed by several authors in the field, which attempt to introduce a cognitive perspective in order to investigate the factors involved in the different learning processes, their nature and how they are influenced by external and internal issues (Craik & Lockhart 1972; Marton & Säljö, 1976). To achieve meaningful learning, teachers can undertake the task to monitor the processes that students go through, guide them and encourage their critical thinking and

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