Cognition

One aim of this volume is to encourage a wider understanding of human learning. Ironically, the application of the study of cognition to under- standing human learning has long been criticised by learning theorists and practitioners as being too narrow and compartmentalised, and as having a too restricted view of the person. However, a casual glance at any introduc- tory text on human cognition reveals quite disparate theoretical approaches (such as functionalism, structuralism, connectionism, gestalt psychology, and so on) and widely different phenomena being studied (such as attention, pattern recognition, memory and forgetting, perception, concept develop- ment, information processing, thinking and problem solving). It appears that the study of cognition is as disparate as the field of psychology itself. However, what is common to these disparate theoretical positions and inter- ests is ‘the belief that elements inside the head are causal in directing human behaviour’ (Howes 1990: 25). This seems an unremarkable statement, but the advent of behaviourism in the middle part of the twentieth century provided a strong challenge to such a belief. The re-emergence of cognitive psychology in the 1960s was made possible by the failure of behaviourism to translate mental constructs into behaviourist terms and, perhaps more importantly, the success of the challenges to behaviourism posed by struc- turalist theories and by a new interest in information processing models of human cognition associated with computerisation. This chapter takes up contemporary exemplars of these two apparently opposing traditions in cognitive psychology, cognitive structuralism and information processing, and looks at how they shape contemporary understandings and issues in learning. At the outset, however, I should point out a common concern in the development of both of the above traditions: the growing awareness of the need to take into account the complexities of context in order to under- stand the functioning of mind in situ. Thus there has been a general move away from identifying abstract, decontexualised cognitive attributes sepa- rated from meaningful action in the world towards a more inclusive understanding of cognition as it operates through engagement in everyday life. In many ways this common concern unites these traditions. In this chapter two specific exemplars (or rather legacies) of these traditions are explored: the design of computer-based expert systems, and theoretical and empirical work on situated cognition.