4.1.4 Cognitive and constructivist theories: Gestalt, Tolman, Gagne, Bruner

Explained

1. Behavioural vs cognitive vs constructivist views.

• Information-processing theory (part of cognitivism) compares the mind to a computer: input → encoding → storage → retrieval.
• View of motivation: behaviourists stress extrinsic (reinforcement), cognitivists intrinsic, social constructivists both.

2. Gestalt insight learning.

• Köhler kept the food out of reach so the chimp had to see a relation between tools and goal. After failed attempts and a pause, Sultan suddenly fitted one stick into another and pulled the banana in.
• Features of insight: it is cognitive and sudden; it needs no repetition; it involves structuring and restructuring of the perceptual field; it depends on perceiving the whole situation; once found, the solution is repeated at once without errors, is retained and transfers to similar problems.
• Conditions that help insight: the learner's intelligence and maturity, past experience, how the problem is arranged (all parts in view), and trial in thought rather than blind trial and error.
• Insight suits complex problems and uses thinking, reasoning and intelligence.
• Contrast with Thorndike: Thorndike's cats learned gradually by trial and error; Köhler's apes learned suddenly by insight. Gestaltists said Thorndike's puzzle box hid the relations from the animal.
• Classroom use: teach whole to part (whole method), show relations and patterns, use problem solving and discovery, arrange material so learners can see the whole structure.

3. Gestalt laws of organisation.

4. Tolman: learning without reward showing at once.

• Latent learning experiment (Tolman and Honzik, 1930): three groups of rats ran a maze. Group 1 was always fed at the goal; group 2 was never fed; group 3 was not fed for the first 10 days, then fed from day 11. Group 3's errors fell sharply at once, to the level of group 1, so it had learnt the maze earlier without reward. (Blodgett, 1929, in Tolman's laboratory, ran the first such study; Tolman and Honzik is the best-known.)
• Latent learning = learning that stays hidden until there is a reason (an incentive) to show it. It challenged Hull's view that reinforcement is needed for learning.
• Cognitive map: an inner mental picture of the environment; rats learnt places, not only fixed turns (place learning): started from a new point in a familiar maze, they still went straight to the food box. Everyday latent learning: a person who walks past a shop daily can at once direct a stranger to it.
• Purposive behaviourism: behaviour is goal-directed and molar (whole acts), not a chain of tiny muscle movements. Learners form expectancies (signs that lead to goals). Tolman is a bridge between behaviourism and cognitivism.
• Match from APPSC 2025: reflexes → Pavlov; successive (approximation) → Skinner; habit strength → Hull; latent learning → Tolman.

5. Gagne's hierarchy explained. Each type needs the one below it as a prerequisite, so teaching should move from simple to complex.

Gagne later listed five learning outcomes: intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, motor skills and attitudes. His nine events of instruction: gain attention; tell the objective; recall prior learning; present the content; guide learning; elicit performance; give feedback; assess performance; help retention and transfer. Gagne is called eclectic: he joins behavioural (lower types) and cognitive (higher types) learning.

6. Bruner.

• Modes of representation: enactive (knowing through action and handling, infancy), iconic (through images and pictures, early childhood), symbolic (through words, numbers and symbols, from about age 7). Adults use all three; teaching new ideas should move enactive → iconic → symbolic (objects → pictures → symbols).
• Discovery learning: learners find principles themselves from examples, guided by the teacher; it builds understanding, motivation and transfer. Steps: problem → gathering data → forming a hypothesis → testing → conclusion.
• Spiral curriculum: basic ideas are met early in a simple form and revisited at higher levels. Bruner's claim: any subject can be taught in some honest form to any child at any stage of development (The Process of Education, 1960, after the Woods Hole conference, 1959).
• Theory of instruction (1966) has four features: predisposition to learn, structure of knowledge, sequence of presentation, and nature and pacing of rewards.
• Concept attainment (A Study of Thinking, 1956, with Goodnow and Austin) is the base of the concept attainment model of teaching (Joyce and Weil; APPSC 2019).
• Bruner and Piaget differ: for Bruner, language drives cognitive growth (Piaget: language follows thought); development is continuous and can be speeded up by good teaching (so he opposed waiting for readiness); the three modes stay integrated (symbolic thought does not replace the earlier modes); adults and abler peers matter a great deal. In this he shows Vygotsky's influence.
• Discovery-based models: guided discovery, problem-based, simulation-based, case-based and incidental learning.
• Scaffolding: the term comes from Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976); it is used for the support given within Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.

7. Constructivism.

• Knowledge is not transmitted ready-made; the learner constructs it by linking new experience to prior knowledge.
• Piaget: individual construction through assimilation, accommodation and equilibration. Vygotsky: knowledge is built socially, through language, peers and adults (ZPD, scaffolding). Radical constructivism: Ernst von Glasersfeld.
• Constructivist classroom: learner-centred; group work; real-life problems; questioning; the teacher as facilitator; assessment of understanding, not recall. The 5E model: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate.
• Piaget's teaching principles: discovery learning, sensitivity to the child's readiness, acceptance of individual differences; children build and test their own theories of the world.
• Vygotsky: every higher function appears twice: first between people (inter-psychological), then inside the child (intra-psychological); language and culture shape thinking; knowledge is co-constructed.
• Policy link: NCF 2005 asks for learning connected to life outside school and children constructing knowledge (and also cites "Learning without Burden", 1993).

8. Metacognition and self-regulated learning.

• Flavell's metacognition has two parts: metacognitive knowledge (about oneself as a learner, the task and strategies) and metacognitive regulation (planning, monitoring, evaluating).
• Self-regulated learning (SRL) applies this: the learner sets goals, chooses strategies, watches progress, and changes the approach when it is not working. Zimmerman's cycle: forethought (goal setting, planning, self-efficacy) → performance (self-control, self-observation) → self-reflection (self-evaluation, adjusting). Paul Pintrich also built an SRL model.
• Classroom use: think-aloud, self-questioning ("Do I understand this?"), learning diaries, checklists, goal setting before a task and review after it.

9. Ausubel: meaningful reception learning

Ausubel held that pure discovery is too slow for most school learning; well-organised expository teaching is meaningful when it is linked to the learner's existing cognitive structure (rote learning = not linked). His theory is also called subsumption theory.

10. Thinking and heuristics

• Units of thought: concepts, images (mental pictures), propositions (statements linking concepts).
• Algorithm = a step-by-step rule that always gives the answer (slow but sure); heuristic = a rule of thumb (quick, may fail).
• Availability heuristic: people fear air travel after news of a crash because such cases come easily to mind. Representativeness: judging by how typical something looks. Anchoring: sticking to the first number heard.

11. Who gave which idea (match items)