Cognitive correlates of social perception in students with learning disabilities

In investigating possible explanations for social skills deficits in students with learning disabilities, researchers have examined social perception-the interpretation of behavior in order to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. This study specifically examined cognitive correlates of social perception in individuals with learning disabilities. Thirty-two students with learning disabilities in elementary grades were measured on three subtests (Comprehension, Picture Arrangement, and Digit Span) of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised and on the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity. Both Picture Arrangement and Comprehension seemed to have an inherent relation to social perceptual functioning. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Cognitive requirements for learning with open-ended learning environments

Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) use the capabilities of technology to provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic problem solving; generate, test, and revise hypotheses; explore and manipulate concepts; and reflect on what they know. By design, such environments require sophisticated levels of cognitive functioning. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze assumptions underlying learner-centered, technology-based environments in light of how well learners appear to meet the cognitive demands for engaging them. Implications for design include the following considerations: (a) direct learner attention to key variables and visual cues; (b) prompt and guide connections to prior knowledge; and (c) provide explicit scaffolding of metacognition and teaching-learning strategies.     

Cognitive abilities and learning disabilities

Summary The greater discrepancy between spatial vs sequential/conceptual WISC subtest results in learning-disabled children is instrumental to the idea that these children might profit relatively more from an imagery based strategy in organizing and recalling noun pairs and triplets than from a verbal strategy. The results from the present studies with concrete nouns show that this is not the case. Another result is that learning-disabled children’s recall performance is also lower when strategy instructed (except in the first experiment) than normal children’s performance. Suggestions as to which strategy aspects could be responsible are given. This paper is based upon a presentation at the 30th Annual Conference of The Orton Society in Indianapolis, November 1979.     

Cognitive conflicts in mathematics learning

The paper describes research results on how students’ conceptions conflict and change in the process of learning mathematics. There are conflicts within the learner which can be explained as developmental conflicts. Some of them seem to be age-dependent (U-shaped behavioral growth: a global view gets destroyed into a chaos and grows up again as a structured view), and others seem to be fundamental as gaps between two types of concepts (spontaneous versus scientific in the sense of Vygotsky). A third kind of conflict appears when the learner expands the boundaries or exceeds the limits of a concept which was successful till then in the limited version. Conflicts between the learner’s concept and an outside concept originate from communication problems. Both the learner and the teacher may have correct concepts but there is a mismatch of understanding because of thinking in different frames.     

Cognitive versus stimulus-response theories of learning

In his 1948 address to the Division of Theoretical-Experimental Psychology of the American Psychological Association, Kenneth W. Spence discussed six distinctions between cognitive and stimulus-response (S-R) theories of learning. In this article, I first review these six distinctions and then focus on two of them in the context of my own research. This research concerns the specification of stimulus-stimulus associations in associative learning and the characterization of the neural systems underlying those associations. In the course of describing Spence's views and my research, I hope to communicate some of the richness of Spence's S-R psychology and its currency within modern scientific analyses of behavior.     

Cognitive implications of learning to read

This paper explores possible cognitive consequences of the experience of learning to read. Whilst it is written mostly with young learners in Europe and N. America in mind, much may also bear on the experience of learning later in life and in different cultural contexts. The perspective is intentionally broad, recognizing that literacy has complex social and personal significance and arguing that the conditions of learning combine with the degree of technical mastery to affect thinking powers and conceptions of language, of learning, and of authority. Reference is made to existing literature on learning to read, but much of the argument opens up issues for further exploration rather than demonstrating effects with any certainty.     

Social representations as mediators of mathematics learning in multiethnic classrooms

Drawing on socio-cultural theory, we understand the norms regulating the practices within the mathematics classroom as resulting from the social representations of the socially dominant groups and of the school culture related to what constitutes learning mathematics. Immigrant studients, having their own personal histories as members of particular social groups, and having been in school traditions other than the one predominant in the host society, have their own images of what mathematics in school is about. Individuals interacting in the classroom are all re-interpreting the different episodes from the perspective of the social representations of the larger groups with which they identify themselves. In multiethnic classrooms different re-interpretations of the same norms clash. The lack of negotiation gives rise to obstacles to immigrant students’ participation in the mathematical conversations and, therefore, interferes with the students’ learning process.     

面向意义学习的认知过程

学习不仅包括获取知识,还包括在各种各样的新情况下运用知识的能力,即学习包括“保持”和“迁移”这两个过程,本文以此观点为基础分析了意义学习与机械学习的区别,依据新修订的布卢姆认知目标分类学,对意义学习中的六类19种认知过程具体要素作出了说明,以此凸现认知过程中的“迁移”,帮助教育者更全面地完成教学和评估目标。     

Vocalization as an objective measure of shock-elicited social aggression in rats

Intense vocalizations emitted by pairs of shocked rats were compared when physically separated by a transparent partition and when free to engage in social aggression. Greater vocalization occurred in the free-access condition and was positively correlated with visually observed attack scores in pairs that had prior experience with shock. A second experiment determined the influence of repeated fighting exposures upon the correlation between observed attack and vocalization. High positive correlations were obtained after initial sessions within a broad range of intermediate fighting. At high and low extremes of fighting, correlations were nonsignificant. The results are discussed with reference to restriction imposed upon variation of attack scores based upon standard criteria of observation.     

The social construction of learning disabilities

Underpinning the technical gaze that dominates learning disabilities theory and practice is the assumption that learning disabilities are a pathology that resides in the heads of individual students, with the corollary that remedial efforts also focus on what goes on in the heads of students classified as learning disabled. This article begins with a critique of the ideology of individualism that situates individual success and failure in the heads of individuals as a means of introducing an alternative perspective--social constructivism--that locates learning and learning problems in the context of human relations and activity. Extended examples are used to illustrate how the performative aspects of learning disabilities emerge in the context of human relationships. The primary argument developed here is that one cannot be learning disabled on one's own. It takes a complex system of interactions performed in just the right way, at the right time, on the stage we call school to make a learning disability. The article concludes with a brief consideration of the instructional implications of a social constructivist stance.     

Cognitive and affective processes in multimedia learning

This special section focuses on cognitive and affective processes in multimedia learning in a range of learning domains. Expanding previous research that has taken a predominantly cognitive perspective of multimedia learning, recent studies have begun to consider affective aspects of multimedia learning with the aim of integrating emotion, motivation, and other affective variables into cognitive processing models. The articles included in this special section are examples of the various ways in which the cognitive perspective can be enhanced by taking affective aspects of learning into account. Investigations range from the study of confusion as an affective state that can be beneficial to learning, and the consideration of the potential distracting or motivating function of decorative illustrations, to an inquiry into how visual design can induce positive emotions in learners. The results of the studies included in this section are in line with Moreno's Cognitive-Affective Theory of Learning with Media (CATLM; Moreno, 2006) and show how emotion and interest facilitate cognitive processing and improve cognitive and affective outcomes.