Cognition and Learning

Cognitive and Learning.
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Cognitive and Learning
There are various ways of learning and teaching. Methods of acquiring information and skills and teaching learners vary depending on the type of students being taught, their age, their cultural backgrounds and the mode of teaching that the teacher chooses to adhere to. Many analysts from all over the world have claimed, emphasized and concluded that the best way to educate a pupil or a student is by doing it without them deciphering that they are being educated. Thereupon, cognition is the process of acquiring and understanding knowledge through one's thoughts, experiences, and senses (Savarese, 2015). On the other hand, learning itself is obtaining knowledge by being taught, extensive studies and experience. While the two are inexorably interconnected in the sense that effective learning requires cognition, this text serves to examine and recommend many other ways of teaching students to aid them to grasp and remembers what they have been taught.
The research of the study resources to advocate how students should study for them to understand, remember and be able to apply what they have learned better, is done on all students partaking different courses in the world right now and in the future. However, having read all the provided materials on cognitive and learning, students who will benefit more from the skills are those taking technical courses in sciences such as physics, chemistry, and psychology programs. Additionally, the knowledge is more pertinent to high school and higher learning students because it is generally at these ages that children have become fundamentally aware of their environment, relatively able to engage their thoughts in their learning and newly equipped with the ability to apply their memories in their judgments and life.
Recommendation 1: Using Embodied Cognition in Learning
Teachers should consider using embodied cognition as a learning strategy and more importantly, as one of the primary methods of teaching students. This text highly recommends this method because of the sense that with it, a student ought to utilize their imaginations when devising a formula or reason about a physical function without using the required abstract rules (Han & Black, 2011). The theory suggests that the body of a human being is responsible for thinking and problem solving. Embodied cognition and haptic feedback is significant because using it will not only make education more efficient and productive, but also allows students to better understand what they are being taught. The method works by giving students a platform and the ability to engage with the knowledge being taught at a personal level. This is because the strategy enables them to create a mental picture of the constitutes of learning then applying them in answering certain questions in all fields of education.
An experiment that shows the validity of the idea of embodied cognition in education is one that estimates certain measurements of students. In this practice, students could be asked to look at pictures of several pictures such as the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and others, then estimate their distinct pictures. The participants of the experiment stood in the same position as the board while the analysts changed their proximities to the balance of the participants so that they would not notice that the pictures was shifting, occasionally. From the study, the researchers found out that the posture of each participants affected their estimation of the apparent heights of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. Additionally, the team found out that when the students tilted their positions slightly to the left, they believed that the tower was smaller. From the research, it is evident that the body is resposible for the functioning of the brain.
Embodied cognition, in its practical form, explained using the technical language of cognitive psychology, is an emerging field of analysis in cognitive psychology. The method states that perceptual and conceptual learning is a significant mode of acquiring education since it emphasizes that knowledge and thought to emanate from aggressive interaction between the body and the physical environment (Spaulding, 2017). Nevertheless, for people to decrypt solutions to particular technical situations, they ought to first have emotive experiences which will help them with the creation of multimodal representations which will, in turn, present their mental simulations. Furthermore, obtaining information via communication with the physical world is enhanced by haptic feedback. The term haptic is used to refer to manual interaction between an individual and his or her immediate environment to acquire knowledge from it or manipulate its specific elements such as feedback forces, tactile stimuli, motion and temperature among others.
I recommend embodied cognition to be used by teachers to teach science subjects, especially physics, because of its primary functions and benefits. As mentioned earlier, haptic feedback is significant in cognition. This is the reason why scientists have developed devices that use haptic technology, particularly force feedback technology, to create and develop haptic augmented simulations that will provide them with the required perceptual experiences (Pouw, Van Gog & Paas, 2014). These experiences can be easily channeled into multimodal representations on the movement of gears and other machines. The ease of a student to understand and remember what he or she has been taught is because haptic augmented simulation serves them with the richest perceptual experiences by utilizing three sensory inputs; visual, auditory, haptic, compared to other simulations that use only two (Han & Black, 2011). Secondly, this method is important because its incorporation with an efficient perceptual experience provides a cognitive ground that builds a far more significant level of comprehension. This will enable students to mold a multimodal representation built with enhanced force feedback in that even if they transfer from one institution to another, they will be able to carry their own constructed schematic knowledge with them.
Embodied cognition can be applied in teaching numerous subjects in high school and higher education units, but the most theoretical and empirical disciples of its major application are in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. An instance of this situation is that using high school physics, if students were given five gears, all of them attached, then asked to name the direction of the fifth gear to make a complete revolution, they will create and apply simulations in their minds to answer the question. In this context, they will think that if the first gear moved in a clockwise direction, then the fifth one will rotate ensuing the clockwise direction. People are quick to decode such problems because they have seen actual gears before and they have a mental simulation of the same, already created and stored in their subconscious mind (Spaulding, 2017). However, if they had never witnessed an instance of gear movements, it would be difficult for them to imagine the rotation of the objects due to lack of perceptual experience that would act as the basis of their mental simulations.
Recommendation 2: Image and Visual Cognition
As scientists continue with their research on methods of complex learning, current strategies of providing instructional education are becoming apparent. Although the analysis is incomplete, cognitive models of learning are viewed to provide vast accounts of comprehension compared to other methods due to its profound implications on students. In this section, I recommend another cognitive way of teaching students called imagery and visual cognition. However, visualization is arguably different from other modes of teaching as it is used more on instruction than on learning. To better understand the recommendation, it would be significant to distinguish between instruction and learning. Researchers have deduced that instruction is an external dimension for a learner whereas learning is an internal process that involves psychological means of perception, assimilation, interpretation, storage, and retrieval of information (Clements, 2018). Therefore, to advance the thinking of a student, their understanding and remembrance of what is being taught, having them wander around creating mental images and visualizing the information would be important.
Imagery and visualization are used in indirect thinking and other processes such as fantasizing. This method of teaching is pertinent and recommended because it is a mental activity that aids children with the important function of anticipating and learning. It helps them not to forget what they have been taught and maintain knowledge and concentration of what they are being educated on, even when they are involved in strenuous tasks (Pearson, Rademaker & Tong, 2017). Furthermore, imagery and visualization is a significant process which plays specific roles of thought such as direct memory, problem-solving, motor control, and decision-making. Additionally, this strategy is recommended due to its generalization feature that explains the differences in the backgrounds of students. The method allows learners with each other even with the evident contrast in their cognitive processes. Moreover, there is a relationship between imagery and proposition and although they do not relate directly but rather spatially, mental images contain the proposition feature of remembering relevant information regardless of their visual prominence. However, all images require the use of a proposition for its interpretation.
Mental and visualization has been experimented on by many scholars. An experiment by an Australian Psychologist, Alan Richardson, comprised assembling a group of basketball players. Then, he divided them in three groups and tested each of them of their abilities to make free throws. The practice was as follows:
* Group 1 would practice for 20 minutes everyday.
* Group 2 would only visualize themselves making free throws daily, but no actual practice was allowed.
* Group 3 would neither practice nor visualize the practice.
The results were that for the basketball group that only visualized, there was a significant improvement in their games. They were almost as good as those who actually practiced.
According to Kosslyn Mental Imagery Theory, this strategy can be used by breaking up images into smaller meaningful pieces to have a perfect mental image. Although it takes a significant period to image the information into a whole model, the process of doing so will enable the student to remember the information even after the end of the teaching (MacInnis & Price, 2014). Thirdly, in an analysis of imagery and social cognition, students were being told about a UFO coming from space. In one instance, they were told the story while they followed the teaching with a handout that contained images of the UFO. In another instance, the images were edited out. The results were that students who were taught with representational images of the actual object were positive about the existence of a UFO but those who were taught with the absence of images exhibited low ratings on their belief of the existence of the object. Therefore, imagery and visualization aids in persuasiveness.
Imagery and visualization can be applied in general activities of life apart from learning. The reccomendation can be applied in learning in an instance when students already have significant knowledge of what they are being taught and they only need to fantasize on the information for better understanding. For example, when learning art, it is important to provide students with images and even videos of World War II for them to believe, examine and understand the occurrences. Another instance is when playing baseball, a player knows exactly how much force they are supposed to throw the ball so that it lands right in the position of his teammate and not the opponent. Also, the receiving player knows precisely where to stand to catch the ball while it is in the air. The two individuals were taught using imagery. They do not use any technical formulas to know what to do in the field but having continuously seen certain positions of other players, they have a mental picture of what to do to be concise with the game.
Recommendation 3: Knowledge Representation
Representing knowledge in ways that students can easily understand is another strategy of learning. In this segment, I will recommend a method of enabling learners to remember the information being taught. In this strategy, teachers relate new knowledge to what the students have already been taught or pieces of information that they naturally know. A connection between the two helps them retain knowledge. Practically, this strategy involves teachers and instructors referring to the previous information taught on the same topic before the new knowledge (Greenwood, 2018). The previous information should relate to the current one for it to be effective. Therefore, even if the current piece of knowledge is more difficult and complicated than what they already know, linking the two will aid them to gain more understanding of the concept and extend their concentration.
An effective way of relating materials is using the KWL chart where teachers ask students to tabulate what they know, what they want to know and what they learned in the process. This method is highly recommended because the chart encourages students' inquisition, active reading, and research. Also, it helps teachers interact more with the learners since it is a metacognitive method of teaching that involves active monitoring and conscious control and regulation of the cognition process of students (Mihardi, Bunawan, 2017). In detail, the metacognitive strategy of self-questioning is used in this mode of learning to ensure that students fully comprehend the information that they are being exposed to. Further, when students practice self-questioning, self-awareness, and self-regulation, for learning, they become more active, motivated and better readers.
Teachers already know the schema for how his or her group of students view the world and accessing their previous knowledge is the first step in integrating new information into the existing framework. KWL charts are used to activate background knowledge while it provides students with an opportunity to review their expectations of the course and set their objectives. To use the KWL chart, one has to choose a text, preferably prose since this method works best with expository texts. The next step is to create a KWL chart on the blackboard or overboard transparency and students should also have their boards to draw their charts on. Thirdly, the teacher should ask students to brainstorm words, terms, and phrases associated with a topic then write them on the K section of the chart until they run out of ideas (Fengjuan, 2016). The same should be done on the W side of the chart where students should write what they want to learn about the topic. When the learning is over, students should fill out what they have learned in the L part. This will enable students to elicit their prior knowledge, set a specific purpose for their reading and monitor their comprehension.
The following is an example of a complete KWL chart that a student could fill if they were learning about gravity.
K-W-L Chart Sample
What I Know

What I Want to Know

What I Have Learned

Gravity keeps human beings from floating around the atmosphere.
It makes objects fall and stay on the ground.
The moon has...