Cognitive Skills and Their Acquisition


Book Description

First Published in 1981. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.




Cognitive Skills and Their Acquisition


Book Description

First published in 1981. This book is a collection of the papers presented at the Sixteenth Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, held in May 1980.




The Transfer of Cognitive Skill


Book Description

The issue of the transfer of learning from one domain to another is a classic problem in psychology and an educational question of great importance, which this book sets out to solve through a theory of transfer based on a comprehensive theory of skill acquisition.




The Cognitive Foundations of Reading and Its Acquisition


Book Description

This book serves as a succinct resource on the cognitive requirements of reading. It provides a coherent, overall view of reading and learning to read, and does so in a relatively sparse fashion that supports retention. The initial sections of the book describe the cognitive structure of reading and the cognitive foundation upon which that structure is built. This is followed by discussions of how an understanding of these cognitive requirements can be used in practice with standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, to advance the teaching of reading and the delivery of interventions for students who encounter difficulties along the way. The book focuses on reading in English as its exemplar, but shows how its framework can be adapted to understand the broad cognitive requirements for reading and learning to read in any phonologically-based orthography. It provides a way for reading professionals to think about reading and its development and gives them mechanisms that, coupled with such understanding, will help them link what children must know to become strong readers to what teaching can best provide through the competent use of available tools. In this way, the book will help reading professionals be both efficient and effective in what they provide all their students and be much better equipped to support those students who struggle to learn to read.




The Child as Thinker


Book Description

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.










Acquisition of Cognitive Skill


Book Description

A framework for skill acquisition is proposed in which there are two major stages in the development of a cognitive skill--a declarative stage in which facts about the skill domain are interpreted and a procedural stage in which the domain knowledge is embodied directly in procedures for performing the skill. This general framework has been instantiated in the ACT system in which facts are encoded in a propositional network and procedures are encoded as productions. Two types of interpretive procedures are described for converting facts in the declarative stage into behavior--general problem-solving procedures and analogy-forming procedures. Knowledge compilation is the process by which the skill transits from the declarative stage to the procedural stage. It consists of the subprocesses of composition which collapses sequences of productions into single productions and proceduralization which embeds factual knowledge into productions. Once proceduralized, further learning processes operate on the skill to make the production more selective in their range of applications. These learning processes include generalization, discrimination, and strengthening of productions. Comparisons are made to similar concepts from past learning theories. It is discussed how these learning mechanisms apply to produce the power law speed-up in processing time with practice. Much of the evidence for this theory of skill acquisition comes from work on acquisition of proof skills in geometry but other evidence is drawn from the literature on automatization, language acquisition, and category formation. (Author).




The Child as Thinker


Book Description

This second edition of The Child as Thinker has been thoroughly revised and updated to provide an informed and accessible overview of the varied and extensive literature on children's cognition. Both theory and research data are critically examined and educational implications are discussed. After a brief discussion of the nature and subject of cognition, Sara Meadows reviews children's thinking in detail. She discusses the ways children remember and organise information in general, the acquisition of skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, and the development of more complex reasoning as children grow to maturity. As well as studies that typically describe a generalised child, the book also reviews some of the main areas relevant to individual differences in normal cognitive development, and critically examines three major models of cognitive development. In outlining the work of Piaget, information-processing accounts and neo-Vygotskian theories, she also evaluates their different explanations of cognitive development and their implications for education. Finally, the book examines biological and social factors that may be involved in normal and suboptimal cognitive development. Sara Meadows provides an important review of the crucial issues involved in understanding cognitive development and of the new data and models that have emerged in the last few years. This book brings together areas and approaches that have hitherto been independent, and examines their strengths and weaknesses. The Child as Thinker is essential reading for all students of cognitive development.




Cognitive Processing in Second Language Acquisition


Book Description

This edited volume represents state of the field research linking cognition and second language acquisition, reflecting the experience of the learner when engaged in noticing, input/output processing, retrieval, and even attrition of target forms. Contributions are both theoretical and practical, describing a variety of L1, L2 and L3 combinations from around the world as observed in spoken, written, and computer-mediated contexts. The book relates conditions of language, task, medium or environment to how learners make decisions about language, with discussions about the application or efficacy of these conditions on linguistic success and development, and pedagogical implications.