Cognitive Theory

It is a scientific study in psychology as information processor that yearns to explain human behavior with
the process of understanding cognitive activities. Through this Cognitive Psychologists develop Spiritual
Self through making several cognitive models to focus on individual’s thoughts to determine one’s
emotions, behaviors and personality. These information processing occurs in one’s minds and
perceptions, thinking, memory, consciousness, attention and language. It aims to change the patterns of
thoughts, behavior and feelings. Also it targets to help treat a wide range of difficulties and problems of
one’s thinking and actions. There several cognitive theories made by different cognitive psychologists
but here are the three main cognitive theories:

 Cognitive Developmental Theory

 Sociocultural Theory
 Information-Processing Theory

1. Cognitive Developmental Theory

Jean Piaget stated that with this theory, children play an active role in learning
processes. This theory involves changes in one’s cognitive process and abilities. Children
construct ones understanding of the world through experiencing the four stages.

 Sensorimotor stage- children in this stage construct their own understanding of

the world and are able to acquire knowledge through coordinating sensory
experiences and manipulating objects.
 Preoperational stage- it is when children starts to learn to connect sensory
information with physical action. Children represented the world concretely
through images and drawings. They develop skill such as pretend play and
language.
 Concrete Operational stage- in this stage, children are able to do activities that
involve concrete objects. They learn literal thinking and can reason logically.
Children are less egocentric that the previous stage because they tend to
consider other’s thoughts and feelings.
 Formal Operational stage- children’s development increases as they learn the
ability of Deduction reasoning, improve their logic and can understand abstract
concepts. They are more hypothetical and systematical in thinking.

2. Sociocultural Theory
It is a social process and is stated by Lev Vygotsky which focused on how individual,
social interaction, culture and contextual problems affect one’s activity. It also
highlights the important social and cultural factors and how those influence the
cognitive development and learning behavior of an individual. He strongly believed that
learning is through two levels.
 A. With the help of interaction with others and then integrating into individual’s
mental.

 social level (interpsychological)- involve between people

 individual level (intrapsychological)- within the individual

B. Through Zone of Proximal Development which limits the ability for the
development of cognitive. It is the area of exploration that needs help and social
interaction to develop. Collaborative learning, discourse, modelling, and
scaffolding are some of the strategies in helping and facilitating the development
of intelligence and learning.

3. Information- Processing Theory

This is developed by several American psychologist including George Miller that focused
on how information is manipulated, monitored, encoded into our memory. It involves
different cognitive processes like filtering information. It has three stages.
 Sensory memory- the stage which refers to what the individual is experiencing
with the help of one’s senses.
 Short-term or Working memory- some of the information are thrown or
filtered and some are encoded and stored. Involves further processing.
 Long-term memory- it is when the information being encoded and stored are
implanted in one’s mind. Sometimes one is not aware of possessing such
information but will once triggered.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html

https://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/cognitive/

https://www.verywellmind.com/cognitive-theory-2671570

https://www.verywellmind.com/piagets-stages-of-cognitive-development-2795457

https://canvas.vt.edu/courses/62492/pages/sociocultural-theory-overview

http://www.ceebl.manchester.ac.uk/events/archive/aligningcollaborativelearning/Vygotsky.pdf

https://www.learnupon.com/blog/what-is-information-processing-theory/

https://www.shsu.edu/aao004/documents/8_003.pdf