David Klahr - Böcker

Here, several leading experts in the area of cognitive science summarize their current research programs, tracing Herbert A. Simon's influence on their own work -- and on the field of information processing at large. Topics covered include problem- solving, imagery, reading, writing, memory, expertise, instruction, and learning. Collectively, the chapters reveal a high degree of coherence across the various specialized disciplines within cognition -- a coherence largely attributable to the initial unity in Simon's seminal and pioneering contributions.

This volume is based on papers presented at the 30th Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition. This particular symposium was conceived in reference to the 1974 symposium entitled Cognition and Instruction. In the 25 years since that symposium, reciprocal relationships have been forged between psychology and education, research and practice, and laboratory and classroom learning contexts. Synergistic advances in theories, empirical findings, and instructional practice have been facilitated by the establishment of new interdisciplinary journals, teacher education courses, funding initiatives, and research institutes. So, with all of this activity, where is the field of cognition and instruction? How much progress has been made in 25 years? What remains to be done? This volume proposes and illustrates some exciting and challenging answers to these questions. Chapters in this volume describe advances and challenges in four areas, including development and instruction, teachers and instructional strategies, tools for learning from instruction, and social contexts of instruction and learning. Detailed analyses of tasks, subjects' knowledge and processes, and the changes in performance over time have led to new understanding of learners' representations, their use of multiple strategies, and the important role of metacognitive processes. New methods for assessing and tracking the development and elaboration of knowledge structures and processing strategies have yielded new conceptualizations of the process of change. Detailed cognitive analysis of expert teachers, as well as a direct focus on enhancing teachers' cognitive models of learners and use of effective instructional strategies, are other areas that have seen tremendous growth and refinement in the past 25 years. Similarly, the strong impact of curriculum materials and activities based on a thorough cognitive analysis of the task has been extended to the use of technological tools for learning, such as intelligent tutors and complex computer based instructional interfaces. Both the shift to conducting a significant portion of the cognition and instruction research in real classrooms and the increased collaboration between academics and educators have brought the role of the social context to center stage.

This volume is based on papers presented at the 30th Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition. This particular symposium was conceived in reference to the 1974 symposium entitled Cognition and Instruction. In the 25 years since that symposium, reciprocal relationships have been forged between psychology and education, research and practice, and laboratory and classroom learning contexts. Synergistic advances in theories, empirical findings, and instructional practice have been facilitated by the establishment of new interdisciplinary journals, teacher education courses, funding initiatives, and research institutes. So, with all of this activity, where is the field of cognition and instruction? How much progress has been made in 25 years? What remains to be done? This volume proposes and illustrates some exciting and challenging answers to these questions. Chapters in this volume describe advances and challenges in four areas, including development and instruction, teachers and instructional strategies, tools for learning from instruction, and social contexts of instruction and learning. Detailed analyses of tasks, subjects' knowledge and processes, and the changes in performance over time have led to new understanding of learners' representations, their use of multiple strategies, and the important role of metacognitive processes. New methods for assessing and tracking the development and elaboration of knowledge structures and processing strategies have yielded new conceptualizations of the process of change. Detailed cognitive analysis of expert teachers, as well as a direct focus on enhancing teachers' cognitive models of learners and use of effective instructional strategies, are other areas that have seen tremendous growth and refinement in the past 25 years. Similarly, the strong impact of curriculum materials and activities based on a thorough cognitive analysis of the task has been extended to the use of technological tools for learning, such as intelligent tutors and complex computer based instructional interfaces. Both the shift to conducting a significant portion of the cognition and instruction research in real classrooms and the increased collaboration between academics and educators have brought the role of the social context to center stage.

First published in 1987. The author argues that information-processing psychology has come to dominate the experimental study of complex human behaviour. Such rapid success suggests that the approach will have as much of an impact on psychology in the field as it has had on psychology in the laboratory. The chapters in this volume indicate the extent to which this potential has already begun to be realized. The book is divided into four parts. The first three parts include sets of research contributions followed by discussions, and the fourth part contains three chapters that offer critiques, syntheses, and evaluations of various aspects of the preceding papers.

Originally published in 1976, the authors present a theory of cognitive development based upon an information-processing approach. This approach leads to the presentation of precise models of performance on a number of tasks derived from a set of critical quantitative concepts: elementary quantification, number concepts, conservation and transitivity. These models encompass both early and late developmental stages, and a process model of the developmental mechanism itself is outlined. Here is one of the first attempts to apply the information-processing view of cognitive psychology to developmental issues raised by empirical work in the Piagetian tradition. It includes an extensive analysis of the processing demands of several of the classic tasks and describes the development of a system capable of performing a wide range of other tasks, including the ability to be self-modifying. It provides an introduction to general concepts and detailed properties of cognitive models stated as production systems. It will be most valuable for students in cognitive development and related courses in developmental, cognitive, and educational psychology, as well as computer science.