This presentation highlights the insight learning theory and Kohler's Experiment

1. Unit IV
Cognitive and humanistic theories
of learning
Learning – meaning of learning as defined by cognitive psychologists –
Insight learning (Kohlberg) - Modes of cognitive development (Bruner) –
Stages of intellectual development (Piaget) – Learning styles (Kolb) – Self-
actualization ( Maslow) - Theory of a fully functioning person ( Carl Rogers).

4. Cognitive approach to learning
• Learner processes the stimuli received or
perceived
• response is determined by this mental processing.

5. Cognitive approach to learning

8. Insight Learning
• theory of learning by insight - contribution of Gestalt Psychologists.
• Gestalt German word: ‘configuration’ or an ‘organized whole’.
• Believe: Whole is more important than its parts
•Learning : development of insight

9. Gestalt Psychologists
Wolfgang Kohler
Max Wertheimer
Kurt Koffka

10. Insight Learning
• Gestaltists:
• Learning : development of insight – based on the nature of perception
• Perception : the process by which an organism interprets and organizes sensation to produce a
meaningful experience of the world.
• Used the term ‘insight’ to describe the perception of the whole situation by the
learner.
• Insight refers the sudden flash in the mind about the solution of the problem.

11. Kohler’s Experiments

13. Bruner’s theory of cognitive development
focused on the symbolic activities that human
beings employed in constructing and making
sense not only of the world, but of themselves.
Bruner theorizes that children construct
knowledge using three modes of what he called
representation that corresponds to
developmental stages.

14. Enactive Mode (0 – 1 Years)
• This mode of representation is dominant in babies who first
represent or interact with the world through their actions.
• At this stage the infant represents thought processes through
non-verbal activities based on motor actions and movements.
• Knowledge is therefore stored in muscle memory.
• Information is stored according to physical movements. When
something has to be remembered, the movement is recreated.

15. The Iconic Mode (1 – 6 Years)
• This mode represents knowledge through visual or auditory
images.
• Children in this mode represents things and events in terms
of sensory images or mental pictures.
• Have difficulty in thinking beyond images, to categorize the
knowledge or understand relationships between objects.
• Information is stored using images which may be based on
smell, hearing or touch. A smell may trigger a memory.

16. The Symbolic Mode (7 Years onwards)
• This mode enables children to encode the world in terms of
information storing symbols such as the words of our language or
the numbers of mathematics.
• This allows information to be categorized and summarized so that
it can be more readily manipulated and considered.
• The symbolic mode allows children to think beyond the physical
images of the iconic mode.
• Information is stored in the form of language and numbers.

17. • Education : facilitate child's thinking and problem solving skills which can
then be transferred to a range of situations.
• Difficult concepts must be taught only when the teacher believes that the
child has reached the appropriate state of cognitive maturity..
• Complex ideas should be taught at a simplified level first, and then re-
visited at more complex levels later on.

18. • Bruner believed that the most effective way to develop a coding system is to discover
it rather than being told it by the teacher. The concept of discovery learning implies
that students construct their own knowledge.
• Teacher should facilitate the learning process and help student discover the
relationship between bits of information.
• Primary level children should be allowed to manipulate objects. Middle school level
children should be allowed to learn by observing pictures and simple demonstrations.
At the higher level, Lecture method involving symbols and languages can be used.