Chapter 1: Cognitive Psychology and Educational Practice

Abstract

Over the past quarter-century, no development in the social sciences has been more radical than the revolution-often referred to as the information processing revolution-in our way of understanding the processes of human thinking" (Simon, 1980a, p. 76). In this review I will examine the background for this remarkable statement, and will explore the educational implications of our new knowledge about the human mind.As befits a "re-view," I begin with a quick scan of the historical paths that lead to present-day cognitive psychology. Next I present what I see as major facets of our current conceptions of human cognition, concentrating first on the architecture of the mind, and second on mental activity. I then turn to education-what do we mean by the educated mind, and how does the school foster intellectual growth? This section moves next to a consideration of some promising applications of cognitive theory and research for the improvement of educational practice.This review is more an essay than a compendium. I have sought to represent major trends in cognitive psychology, while emphasizing works that seem most promising for educational practice. The conception of education presented in this chapter is not all encompassing, but is designed to match concepts and issues central in the thinking of cognitive psychologists. The paper is unabashedly theoretical, and some of the ideas are admittedly conjectural. My aim is to "accentuate the positive." The spotty character of our research knowledge, the apparent complexity of many behavioral and social phenomena, the practical barriers in the way of Preparation of this review was supported in part by grants from the Teacher Corps (U.S. Department of Education) and the National Institute of Education. I have benefited from the helpful comments of several people (implementing research findings-such concerns receive little notice in this paper. The reader interested in a more critical account can satisfy this need elsewhere (Cronbach, 1975;Rohwer, 1980; and especially the thoughtful comments on cognitive psychology by Jenkins, 1981). AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEContemporary cognitive psychology is, as Simon suggests, the result of a fundamental redirection of psychological theory and research during the past few decades. In this section, I will review the major developments during three epochs of this history: behaviorism, the watershed of the 50s and 60s, and present-day cognitive psychology (also cf. Simon, 1980b).Behaviorism. At mid-century, the behaviorism of Thorndike and Watson dominated American psychology. The approach focused on the empirical relations between stimulus and response. The theoretical efforts of Hull and Spence amounted to curve-fitting overlays; they were close kin of Skinner. There was great emphasis on learning, on the acquisition of simple skills over brief periods of time. Members of this school assumed the existence of basic learning principles of broad generality over organisms and situations.

Second Language Speech Production Research

“…The former may be said to be a kind of planning; the latter is often referred to as monitoring. 1 Both have been classified as executive control processes (Calfee, 1981;cf.Kluwe, 1987).…”