Definition of Cognitive Learning

Cognitive Learning is a term that is often used in the academic arena but more recently it has started to pop up in the business world.

But what does it mean? To most people probably very little. Essentially what 'cognition' means is 'to know', gaining knowledge through thought or perception.

Cognitive learning is about enabling people to learn by using their reason, intuition and perception. This technique is often used to change peoples' behaviour. But people's behaviour is influenced by many factors such as culture, upbringing, education and motivation. Therefore cognitive learning involves understanding how these factors influence behaviour and then using this information to develop learning programmes.

So it is far more subtle than just telling people what you want them to do differently it involves presenting the message in such a way that it allows people to work out the answer themselves. This can be achieved a number of ways

• Response consequences - should you reward for demonstrating the right behaviour or punish for demonstrating the wrong behaviour? Which approach will achieve the required outcomes? In reality there needs to be a combination of both as people will be motivated by different things.
• Observation - observation is a very powerful learning tool as it enables us to see whether performing an action is desirable or not without making the mistake ourselves. Also employees will be more likely to demonstrate the right behaviours if they see managers and senior managers doing so.
• Symbolism - allows us to create mental pictures and act out scenarios so that we can think through the consequences without actually performing it.

Therefore cognitive awareness involves using cognitive learning techniques which are then used to make informed decisions about how to deal with new or similar situations.

This may sound complicated but in reality its how we learn.

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Learning Skills 101 - What Are Learning Skills?

So what are learning skills anyway? Most of us were never taught about these underlying mental skills that lay the foundation for our ability to learn. We were always taught that we could learn if we set our mind to it. Between home and school we should be fine. If not, just see a tutor for a bit and you will be good to go. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to learn in this type of scenario. Why? Well, how easily and efficiently we learn is based on how strong our underlying learning skills are. This definitely turned out to be the case for my daughter and all of the students who have worked through my system.

The skills we use to learn with are technically known as working memory, attention, processing, auditory analysis (including auditory processing), visual processing, word attack and logic and reasoning. We see these skills play out everyday based on how well we can pay attention, how well we can remember, how well we can process what we hear (we hear fine - its the processing of the sounds), how well we can process what we see (letter reversals, etc.), how well we can read unknown words (beyond the words we may have memorized) and how well we can plan, organize and problem solve. For each of these learning skills there are sub-categories that exist too.

Lets explore an example of a student who has weak attention skills. In this example, we have a student is able to attend to one thing at a time only. However, the student will state that they get distracted very easily. After I work them through a series of exercises I can tell whether or not this is truly the case. 9 times out of 10 it is not the case. You see, students like this one tend to hyperfocus on their targeted input. They zone in on the teacher and everything else around them disappears. So, when an additional task is being introduced that requires processing, they are conflicted because they can only attend to one thing at a time and state they get distracted. In actuality, their "divided attention" skill is very weak along with their ability to process more than one thing at a time.

A student with the above weakness will show easy distraction but will also have great difficulty with remembering information coming from different inputs at the same time, especially is one is auditory. This student is able to take notes and process the input in the brain. However, if the teacher begins "discussing" the topic of the notes on the board, the student is lost. Similarly, if the teacher started to talk first, the student would be able to process this input but once the teachers asks the student to start writing notes along with the teacher speaking, the student would be unsuccessful. They are unable to share processing within the brain.

The good news is that the above weak skill is just one of many that you are able to strengthen due to the brain's ability to develop and grow. A student doesn't need to struggle with this weak skill set any longer. The Enhanced Learning Skills System was designed to strengthen learning skills required to learn and read easier and more efficiently. Call me today for an assessment and let's begin working together to help your child learn with ease.

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