Cognitive model

There are a lot of cognitive models, most of them are used in psycology and pedagogy. These models change year after year, reflecting the outcome of modern research and experiments, but usually they all share the same structure: a list of skills or goals, with text descriptions and examples. In other words, the most common cognitive models are just an ordinal sequence of categories, which could be described by a bullet list.

Let's consider an example about the cognitive learning goals, as depicted by Benjamin Bloom: the model describes six major categories which are listed in order below, starting from the simplest behavior to the most complex:

• Knowledge: recall data or information.
• Comprehension: understand the meaning, translation of istructions and problems. Being able to state a problem in one's one words.
• Application: use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction.
• Analysis: separate materials or concepts into components so that its organizational structure may be understood.
• Synthesis: build a structure or a pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.
• Evaluation: make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.

In a similar way, the affective learning goals, as depicted by Bloom et al., can be considered as a list of five major categories:

• Receiving phenomena: willingness to hear or experience the phenomena.
• Responding to phenomena: active partecipation, willingness to respond or satisfaction in responding (motivation).
• Valuing: the worth or value a person attaches to a particular object, phenomenon or behavior. This ranges from simple acceptance to the more complex state of commitment.
• Organization: prganizes values into priorities, resolving conflicts. The emphasis is on comparing, relating and synthesis.
• Internalizing values: has a value system that controls the behavior, which is pervasive, consistent, predictable. Show a personal pattern of adjustment.

These are "old" models, but they are not very different from the more modern models. For example, if we consider Goleman model for the emotional intelligence:

WORK IN PROGRESS

We don't want to discuss these models, we want just to notice that such a structure could be used for any possibile behavior, and not just for the cognitive or affective. For example, if we consider the H. Gardner model of the multiple intelligences, we could sketch a general purposes table of cognitive skills:

Bibliography

• [1] Benjamin Bloom, "Taxonomy of educational objectives", Addison-Wesley, New York 1956.
• [2] Krathwohl, Bloom, Masia, "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives", McKay, New York 1973.