Simultaneous-Successive Syntheses, Planning Strategies and Education: A Process Approach toward an Integrated Theory

Abstract

This paper reviews recent research on simultaneous-successive processing and planning and traces the development of an integrated model of cognition stemming from Soviet neuropsychology and evolving from a succession of factor analytic studies beginning in the early 1970's. The evolution of the model parallels a contemporary shift in cognitive psychology toward the study of processes and strategic behaviour vis-a-vis the more traditional abilities approach with its emphasis on power or quantitative aspects of learning. Some theoretical and practical implications as they pertain to the educative process are discussed in the light of the model.In reiterating his long-held stance, Biggs (1978) argues that instructional strategies derived from an abilities orientation are destined to result in therapeutic nihilism since the notion of abilities provides at best, only a tenuous theoretical underpinning for prescribing treatment. Relatedly, from the point of view of facilitating learning, ability information is only educationally useful if the ability and treatment interact, which they rarely do, because an inherent shortcoming of quantitative measures is that they mask the possibility of identifying qualitative differences in coding information (Biggs, 1969(Biggs, , 1973MacKenzie and Molloy, 1979;Molloy and Das, 1979). In contrast, a process model provides a viable alternative, as the processing strategies used by the individual learner are directly related to ways of structuring input. In turn, the manner in which input is organized is directly related to instructional methods. Thus, the educational implications of a process model are quite different from those based on an abilities model, the latter focusing solely on output. These implications are examined in the present paper following an explication of a process model. Luria (1966aLuria ( , 1966bLuria ( , 1971) described the brain functions as inhering in three localized yet interdependent divisions or blocks: first, an arousal or attention block (Block I), which is located in the upper brain stem, the reticular formation, and to some degree the limbic cortex and hippocampus; second, a processing block (Block 2), which encompasses the occipital, parietal and fronto-temporal regions of the cortex and collectively is concerned with the integration of information-input, recoding, and storage; third, the planning or programming block (Block 3), which is located in the frontal lobes and which, phylogenetically, represents the most recent division. Successively, these three brain blocks are concerned with arousal, coding and planning (Luria, I 966a, 1966b). c 289 at CARLETON UNIV on June 24, 2015 aed.sagepub.com Downloaded from