Cognitive Learning: Benefits, strategies and examples

Key takeaways

• Cognitive learning is an active approach that focuses on understanding, retaining and applying knowledge – not just memorizing it.
• It has three components: comprehension, memory and application.
• Two theories explain what shapes it: social cognitive theory (external factors, such as learning from others) and cognitive behavioral theory (internal factors, such as thoughts and emotions).
• Employees with strong cognitive skills acquire, retain and process information faster, which boosts their output.

What is cognitive learning in psychology?

• Cognition: Describes the brain’s process of acquiring and retaining knowledge.
• Cognitive learning: Is an active psychological practice that helps you maximize your brain’s ability and enhance the way you learn. It is a branch of psychology that studies the brain’s processes and methods in which to strengthen them.

How can cognitive learning help my business?

Employees that have strong cognitive skills are able to acquire, retain and process information at a greater rate.

This can boost the output of your company considerably, as employees will be able to work through tasks quickly and effectively. It is imperative that you continually expose them to ways in which they can improve their cognitive learning.

Components of cognitive learning

Cognitive learning is split into 3 parts:

1. Comprehension
2. Memory
3. Application

Where traditional learning focuses a lot on memory (studying for a test for example), cognitive learning instead focuses on the complete mastery of a topic or skill. It focuses on not simply understanding information – but retaining and, importantly, applying it in a practical way.

1. Comprehension

Comprehension means gaining an understanding of what you are learning and why you are learning it. This is crucial to effective cognitive learning.

2. Memory

Having a deep understanding of what you are learning greatly improves your ability to retain the information and apply it elsewhere. Cognitive learning rejects the cramming of information, favoring a more bitesize approach to learning.

3. Application

Cognitive learning gives you more than the ability to retain and regurgitate information. It allows you to apply what you learn to various situations, maximizing your learning experience.

Cognitive learning theories

Whilst breaking down the process of learning, cognitive learning theory looks at what factors have an influence on our cognitive ability.

These factors can be both internal and external factors. From these, two branches of cognitive learning theory have been created: social cognitive theory and cognitive behavioral theory.

Social cognitive theory

• External factors will influence how someone learns
• Usually associated with observational learning or learning from your environment

Cognitive behavioral theory

• Internal factors will influence how someone learns – mental processes, thoughts and emotions
• Internal factors are viewed as links in a chain, suggesting that your thoughts and emotions can influence behavior and outcomes

Cognitive learning strategies

There are 4 cognitive learning strategies created by psychologists that can be implemented in a working environment:

• Learner-centered strategy
• Meaningful experiences strategy
• Learning through discovery strategy
• Personalized learning strategy

Learner-centered strategy

Developed by Jean Piaget, this strategy does what the name suggests: it puts the learner at the center of the learning process.

Piaget believed that learning means linking new information to the learner’s pre-existing knowledge. According to Piaget, there are three components to learning:

• Accommodation: Making room for new information
• Assimilation: Arranging this new information alongside pre-existing knowledge
• Equilibration: Balancing the new information and the pre-existing knowledge

Here are some key points to take from this strategy when building an L&D program:

Develop programs based on employees’ pre-existing knowledge – this could look like simulated environments, systems or processes, for example.

Link any new information back to the pre-existing knowledge – think of this as ‘knowledge stacking’.

Meaningful experiences strategy

Developed by psychologist David Ausubel, this strategy focuses on making new information meaningful by connecting it to what learners already know. Ausubel argued that learning sticks when new concepts are anchored to relevant existing knowledge, rather than memorized in isolation.

Consider these points when building an L&D program:

Introduce each new topic with a short overview that shows how it connects to what employees already know.

Use realistic, job-relevant scenarios so new knowledge has an obvious place in day-to-day work.

Learning through discovery strategy

Built on Piaget’s learner-centered approach, Jerome Bruner developed the learning through discovery strategy.

Bruner’s theory suggests that the most effective way of learning is through doing (we’d be inclined to agree). The learner, armed with their pre-existing knowledge, navigates their way through problems and discovers new information along the way.

This way of learning promotes employee engagement, and the autonomous aspect can lead to improved problem solving skills.

Consider these points when building an L&D program:

The program should simply be a guide to employees, putting them in situations where they can discover their own solutions to tasks – examples include problem based learning and simulation-based learning.

Challenge employees to complete tasks that are real problems faced by the company.

Personalized learning strategy

These strategies all point to a personalized method of learning. Each employee has their own strengths and weaknesses, and a generalized L&D program is an ineffective way to maximize your workforce potential.

A learning process that is centered around the learner has been found to be more effective in maximizing their levels of achievement.¹

Modern technology can provide the learning environment that companies look for. For example, simulation based learning allows employees to experiment with different solutions to problems, without any real-world consequences. They can then apply what they’ve learnt in the real world.

The right mix of these approaches will depend on your people, their roles and what they need to learn – but they all work best when learners can put new knowledge into practice.

Discover more on modern L&D solutions with Attensi.