Cognitive components of learning process

Whether in a natural situation or in an artificial situation, learning is happening with the support of the cognitive process. Teachers or the presenters are modifying their teaching styles and strategies day by day and hour by hour to hold the participants to their messages. To effectively use differentiated instruction, a tutor must have a firm understanding of each of the cognitive components of the learning process, what are the major components, how they look like, what are the subcomponents, which components are disrupting individual learning, and when will these components act together.

Here we need to explore the meaning of the two terms “Cognition and “learning. Cognition is the process of acquiring and understanding knowledge through our thoughts, experiences, and senses Learning contains obtaining knowledge through experience, study, or being taught. If you think that these two notions are similar, you’re right. Both are inextricably linked – learning involves cognition and cognition involves learning. At any time you see or hear something new, you go through a chain of cognitive processes, which are the processes that result in learning. So we can assume that whenever you’re cognitive components disturbed learning won’t occur.

There are four interactive components of the learning process: attention, memory, language and organization. Apart from these components attitude, interest and emotion also play a vital role in learning. Besides, graphomotor (writing) and higher-order thinking are the other influential subcomponents, which play a significant role in classroom learning in the early stages.

In order to hold students, motivate and teach all learning components at optimal levels, teachers must aware about the general learning process, understand and respond to students individual interest, emotional and cognitive profiles and choose instructional strategies and styles that are effective for different learners. Understating general learning process will help you to make better instructions even if the student’s cognitive levels being different.

Attention

Paying attention is the first stage in learning anything. It is easy for most of us to pay focus to things that are stimulating or thrilling to us. It is hard for most of us to pay attention to things that are not. When something is not interesting to us, it is easier to become unfocused and distracted, to move to a more interesting topic or activity, or to tune out. It is more than just noticing or hearing a thing or stimuli, but involves listening or observing a thing.

To holding attention teachers should construct lessons that connected to the learner. People don’t like to hear your words if you are not connecting your lessons with their life. That’s why they are feeling bored when you teach the theories of mathematics or physical sciences. They don’t know the applicability of these theories in their life, if you are connecting these theories into their life and its significances for their upcoming career growth, they will ready to hear you with maximum attention. So, classes ‘without life’ won’t bring attention.

Why did people show eagerness to listen to social and psychological matters than physical matters? Because students or common people love the realities that they experiencing in their life. So they show more willingness to hear life-related stories rather than the difficult logical reasoning’s. They would like to hear “Anna Karenina” or Romeo and Juliet”. Hold class discussion on these matters that students have personally experienced or witnesses.

When you are teaching the difficult “dialectics” or mathematical formulas, add your case studies to the subject and make your class more attentive.

Physical movement can support to “wake up” a mind. When a student displays signs of daydreaming and/or restlessness, teachers can provide the student with breaks to move around. Many students with attention challenges really need to move in order to stay focused. It is wise to find satisfactory, non-destructive ways for these students to be lively. Duties such as erasing the board, taking a note to the office, and collecting papers can offer appropriate channels for activity.
So we sum-up that attention is a selective process. When we pay our attention towards any stimulus, it means that we have detached our attention from other stimuli. Our mind picks only one stimulus, which is best fit to it, for paying attention.

Attention also depends on one’s interest. However, if you want to attract your students, you have to mix your subjects with the life surrounding them and you because there is a self-element that people would like to hear the matters about them rather than the intangible things.

Memory

Learning and memory are closely associated with concepts. Learning is the gaining of skills or knowledge, while memory is the manifestation of what you’ve acquired. Memory is a complex process that uses 3 systems to help a person collect, use, store, and retrieve information. The three memory systems are (1) short-term memory (e.g., memorizing a phone number you got from information just long enough to dial it), (2) working memory (e.g. keeping a personas address in mind while listening to the instructions about how to reach there) and (3) long-term memory (e.g., remembering of an important day in the distant past including wedding day, birthday etc.

Memory is our ability to encode, store, retain, and retrieve or recall information and past experiences. Obviously, children in school have much more information to remember than most adults do. when we compare adults and children, adults are focused something special—for example, a geographer use and remember information about geography, a doctor use and remember information about advanced technologies in medical sciences, and so on. On the other hand, children have to remember several subjects- e.g. language, science, math, social studies arts etc.

We have to understand that when a learner, whether a child or an adult understands something, it doesn’t guarantee that he will remember it. Sometimes, they may forget the information that they have got in the earlier day. In order to improve the likelihood that all students will elaborate on new information, teachers should motivate their prior knowledge and make new information meaningful to them.

Students who have trouble with both short-term and working memory may need directions repeated to them. Giving directions both orally and in written form, and giving examples of what is probable will help all students. Repetition and reinforcement are better mechanisms to enhance memory and imprint a thing to the person.

Language

Language is the chief means by which we give and accept information in school. There are two language processing systems that are expressive and receptive. We use expressive language when we speak and write, and we use receptive language when we listen and read. Students with good language processing skills consistently do well in school. Problems with language, on the other hand, can affect a student’s ability to communicate successfully, understand and store verbal and written information, cognize what others say, and maintain relationships with others. If the student has ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) or a similar kind of disabilities, would have communication problems.

If a normal child shows weaknesses in written language, you can use improving measures like expository and creative writing techniques. With this technique, students first generate ideas. Next, they may shape their ideas. Third, they may look at sentence structure. Then they scan their spelling. Finally, they go to mechanical and grammatical rules. It is also supportive for students to list their most regularly occurring mistakes in a notebook and refer to this list when self-correcting. All students will benefit from cumulative, systematic, and explicit teaching of writing and reading.
As a foundation stone for all communication, language in the educational scenario has more importance in putting across developmental thoughts; your thought is based on your language. If you are using high-quality semantics, and you’re thought also be high-level. Hence, you’re thought process and its quality is determined by your language skills.

When a teacher in the classroom or a presenter is getting -ready for a corporate PowerPoint presentation, remember your language skill is the only thing which holds your viewers. Your exposures in linguistic skills and the way you express your ideas are beyond what you are saying. So, we can say, how you are presenting your ideas have more importance than what your ideas is.

If your students have serious language problems, it is better to use visual communication such as videos, pictures and PowerPoint templates to reinforce verbal communication is beneficial to all students, especially to students with receptive language challenges.

Organization

Blending information in a systematic way is a part of cognitive learning process. We process and organize information into two main techniques: simultaneous (spatial) and continual (sequential). Simultaneous processing is the process we use to arrange or organize information in space. Having a good sense of direction and being able to “see” how jigsaw pieces fit together are two instances of simultaneous processing ( similar to the surface and figure theory of perception). Successive processing is what we use to arrange or order information in time and sequence. Notions of time, dates, and order –today, and tomorrow, yesterday, months of the year, mathematical actions such as separation and multiplication, sentence order in paragraphs, and word order in sentences, are examples of sequential processing.

People who are good at sequential organization usually have little or no trouble with time management and commonly find it easy to organize an article in a sequence that is logical. People who have problem with understanding spatial or geographical matters may need successive verbal explanations given to them. They may benefit from writing written descriptions and explanations of the information contained in charts, graphs or diagrams. In the case of students, teachers should model this process for all students.

In a nutshell, our learning process is determined by several cognitive components, the above-said components are the major ones, however, learning has been influenced by our emotion, motivation, perception, and other basic psychological processes. Besides, the ability of the body to make neural transmissions and the capacity of nerves to adapt, are the chief characters which make proper learning in a conducible situation.