Marianne Ricamonte

Arcelle Tadena

Cognitive, Metacognitive

and Motivational Problems

Cognition – it refers to our ability to think

Metacognition – refers to our ability to think about thinking.

Attention – it refers to our ability to concentrate

Defi ni t ion o f Terms

Cognition: Beginning in the mid-1970’s, professionals began

to criticize behavioral theory as too simplistic. This growing dissatisfaction prompted the growth of cognitive psychology.

“Humans do not passively register the world as it really is; they filter, transform, and construct the experiences which constitute their “reality” (Mahoney, 1974)

Brief History

Stimulus

Response

Stimulus

Cognition

Behaviorism Cognitive

In the 1960’s there was a rapid growth in an area of study that came to be called “Cognitive Styles”

Ausburn and Ausburn (1978) defined Cognitive Styles as the “…psychological dimensions that represent the consistencies in an individual’s manner of acquiring and processing information .

According to Messick (1984), cognitive style deals with the manner in which people prefer to make sense out of their world by collecting, analyzing, evaluating, and interpreting data. These styles are thought to remain consistent preferences throughout life (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993).

Cognitive Styles – refers to the ways of approaching solving tasks.

Early Research: Cognitive Styles

Field Dependent vs. Field Independent

this concept refers to how much individuals are influenced by their environment when ask to make decisions on perpetual tasks.

Diff erent Cognitive Styles:

Field Dependent – Persons who are heavily influenced by their environment. Their perceptions are less accurate because they can be “thrown off” by misleading information in their surroundings.

Field Independent - individuals who are able to focus on the most essential perpetual data w/out being influenced by inessential details.

Daniels (1996) summarizes the general tendencies of field dependent and independent learners asfollows:

Field Dependent:

• Rely on the surrounding perceptual field.

• Have difficulty attending to, extracting, and using non salient cues.

• Have difficulty providing structure to ambiguous information.

• Have difficulty restructuring new information and forging links with prior knowledge.

• Have difficulty retrieving information from long-term memory.

Field Independent:

• Perceive objects as separate from the field.

• Can dissembled relevant items from non-relevant items within the field.

• Provide structure when it is not inherent in the presented information.

• Reorganize information to provide a context for prior knowledge.

• Tend to be more efficient at retrieving items from memory

Researchers have found that children become more field independent with age.(Witkin, Goodenough, & Karp, 1967).

However, children who have learning disabilities are generally more field dependent than their nondisabled peers (Blackman & Goldstein, 1982).

Reflectivity vs. Impulsivity

refers to whether a person takes time to reflect on various alternative before making a choice on difficult but solvable tasks.

Reflective learners -tend to make a slower, more calculated decision.

They are usually more systematic and more cautious in learning.

Impulsive learners - tend to make a quick or gambling guess at an answer to a problem. They are usually more intuitive and more willing to take risks in learning.

It is also important to note that impulsivity, as a cognitive style is not thesame as having an impulsive personality (Sternberger &Grigorenko, 1997).

The Matching Familiar Figures Test is used to measure the bipolar trait of reflection-impulsivity.The original children's version of the MFFT contains two practice and 12 experimental items. Each item consists of a standard picture of a common object and six variants, one identical to the standard and five slightly different in one detail each. The subject is to choose the variant that matches the standard, with five incorrect choices allowed per problem. The responses are timed. The instrument is projective, which can be self-administered.

Researchers found that those children who respond more slowly and make fewer errors were reflective, whereas impulsive children respond quickly but make many errors.

Also, researchers have generally found the reflectivity-impulsivity dimension to developmentally sensitive, with children becoming more reflective with age.

In addition, children with learning disabilities are more apt to be impulsive than regular children (Blackman & Goldstein, 1982).

Memory -the function involved reliving past experiences

-totality of past experiences which can be remembered.

Types of memory:

Short –term memory – the ability to remember information over a relatively short period of time – a few seconds or a minute or so at most.

This can vary in many ways, example: In a auditory short-term memory task, the individual hears several trials of five to seven digits . After each trial, the individual is to repeat back the sequence in correct order.

Working Memory – refers to a person’s ability to keep a small amount of information in mind while simultaneously carrying out further operations.

Research shows that those students with LD who performed well on short-term and especially in working memory tasks also performed well on reading and mathematics problem among other student with LD.

Memory Strategies:

Rehearsal - is the repetition of the names of the to-be-remembered things.

Organization – or clustering things to be remembered while rehearsing them.

e.g. Fruits ; Animals etc.

Metacogn i t i on• The theory was first developed in the 1970s. (Favell, 1977).

Definition of Metacognition:“knowing about knowing” or knowledge

and awareness of your own cognitive processes, how they function, when it’s likely to falter, etc.

“I don’t recall”“I understood this fairly well”“I won’t be able to solve this problem right away”“I can’t study with the TV on”“Her name is on the tip of my tongue”

• For a student, the knowledge about how his “knowing” is progressing can help him retain more information and guide him on how to proceed when confronted with text containing ideas that must be remembered. (Paris, Lipson & Wixson, 1983).

Example of Metacognition

 Knowing that a fact is or is not in long-term memory (eg. knowing that you won't know Charles Dicken's telephone number)

 Knowing you will recognise something when you see it (eg. knowing you will recognise the correct spelling of a word)

 Knowing there are categories of tasks (eg. knowing that multiple-choice tests are all alike in certain ways)

 Knowing that the results of one procedure should be consistent with the results of another (eg. knowing that 3 + 4 should equal 4 + 3 )

 Knowing that your own words are easier to recall than an author's words (eg. knowing it will be easier to say what this Table is about than to recite it word for word)

 

Knowing how much study time will be needed (eg. knowing how to schedule homework)

 Knowing when a study strategy will be needed (eg. knowing when to hire a tutor)

 Knowing when memory aids will be needed (eg. knowing when to write down directions)

 Knowing which part of a task will need to be rehearsed (eg. knowing that you should drill the names of the Australian Prime Ministers for a history test)

(Source: Farnham-Diggory, 1992, p 81)

The metacognitive process can be thought of as a form of Self-Regulation:

These consist of several elements :

Awareness of viable strategies.

Selection of an appropriate strategy.

Monitoring of the use of the strategy.

Possible adjustment or revision towards strategy. (Borkowski, 1992)

Researchers have found that students with learning disabilities are deficient in a variety of metacognitive areas such as:

Metamemory

Metalistening

Metacomprehension in Reading

Metamemory – the ability to think about memory strategies.

Questions like this tests metamemory skills: If you wanted to phone a friend, and someone told you the phone number, would it make any difference if you called right away after you heard the number or if you got a drink of water first? Why? What would you do if you wanted to try to remember a phone number?

Metalistening – the ability to conceptualize the listening process.

In a study for metalistening – children were told they would play a game that involved several rules. An adult presented one rule at a time, asking the children after each rule presentation if they thought they now had enough info to play the game. -The result was that children w/ LD were found to be much more likely than the regular peers to voice a readiness to play even though by objective standards they have not yet heard enough info to play the game appropriately.

THANK YOU.