The cognitive domain: Cognitive Domain – Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains: The Cognitive Domain

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Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often used when designing educational, training, and learning processes.

The Three Domains of Learning

The committee identified three domains of educational activities or learning (Bloom, et al. 1956):

• Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)

• Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)

• Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

Since the work was produced by higher education, the words tend to be a little bigger than we normally use. Domains may be thought of as categories. Instructional designers, trainers, and educators often refer to these three categories as KSA (Knowledge [cognitive], Skills [psychomotor], and Attitudes [affective]). This taxonomy of learning behaviors may be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” That is, after a learning episode, the learner should have acquired a new skill, knowledge, and/or attitude.

While the committee produced an elaborate compilation for the cognitive and affective domains, they omitted the psychomotor domain. Their explanation for this oversight was that they have little experience in teaching manual skills within the college level. However, there have been at least three psychomotor models created by other researchers.

Their compilation divides the three domains into subdivisions, starting from the simplest cognitive process or behavior to the most complex. The divisions outlined are not absolutes and there are other systems or hierarchies that have been devised, such as the Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO). However, Bloom’s taxonomy is easily understood and is probably the most widely applied one in use today.

Cognitive Domain

The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills (Bloom, 1956). This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and skills. There are six major categories of cognitive an processes, starting from the simplest to the most complex (see the table below for an in-depth coverage of each category):

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

The categories can be thought of as degrees of difficulties. That is, the first ones must normally be mastered before the next one can take place.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the cognitive domain in the mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the three most prominent ones being (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, Wittrock, 2000):

• changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms
• rearranging them as shown in the chart below
• creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix

The chart shown below compares the original taxonomy with the revised one:

This new taxonomy reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate. The new version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, with examples and keywords is shown below, while the old version may be found here

Table of the Revised Cognitive Domain

Cognitive Processes and Levels of Knowledge Matrix

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy not only improved the usability of it by using action words, but added a cognitive and knowledge matrix.

While Bloom’s original cognitive taxonomy did mention three levels of knowledge or products that could be processed, they were not discussed very much and remained one-dimensional:

• Factual – The basic elements students must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve problems.
• Conceptual – The interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together.
• Procedural – How to do something, methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods.

In Krathwohl and Anderson’s revised version, the authors combine the cognitive processes with the above three levels of knowledge to form a matrix. In addition, they added another level of knowledge – metacognition:

• Metacognitive – Knowledge of cognition in general, as well as awareness and knowledge of one’s own cognition. 

When the cognitive and knowledge dimensions are arranged in a matrix, as shown below, it makes a nice performance aid for creating performance objectives:

          The Cognitive Dimension

However, others have identified five contents or artifacts (Clark, Chopeta, 2004; Clark, Mayer, 2007):

• Facts – Specific and unique data or instance.
• Concepts – A class of items, words, or ideas that are known by a common name, includes multiple specific examples, shares common features. There are two types of concepts: concrete and abstract.
• Processes – A flow of events or activities that describe how things work rather than how to do things. There are normally two types: business processes that describe work flows and technical processes that describe how things work in equipment or nature. They may be thought of as the big picture, of how something works.
• Procedures – A series of step-by-step actions and decisions that result in the achievement of a task. There are two types of actions: linear and branched.
• Principles – Guidelines, rules, and parameters that govern. It includes not only what should be done, but also what should not be done. Principles allow one to make predictions and draw implications. Given an effect, one can infer the cause of a phenomena. Principles are the basic building blocks of causal models or theoretical models (theories).

Thus, the new matrix would look similar to this:

The Cognitive Dimension

An example matrix that has been filled in might look something like this:

Next Steps

• Affective Domain

• Psychomotor Domain

• Original Cognitive Domain (old version)

• SOLO Taxonomy

Review

• Introduction

• The Three Domains of Learning

• Cognitive Domain

• Revised Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain

• Cognitive Process and Levels of Knowledge Matrix

Useful Links

• Learning Strategies: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy

• Instructional Design Toolkit

References

Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.

Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl, D.R. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc.

Clark, R., Chopeta, L. (2004). Graphics for Learning : Proven Guidelines for Planning, Designing, and Evaluating Visuals in Training Materials . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.

Bloom’s Taxonomy — York College / CUNY

_{Source: adapted from Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001, 4.1, page 46}  

• Factual: The basic elements a student must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve problems in it. (Terminology & specific details and elements)
• Conceptual: Interrelationship among basic elements in a larger structure that allows them to function together  (Classifications, categories, Principles and generalizations, Theories, models and structures)
• Procedural: How to do something, methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods. (Subject-specific skills/processes, Subject-specific techniques/methods, Criteria for determining when to apply procedure, technique, skill, etc.)
• Metacognitive: Knowledge of cognition in general, awareness and knowledge of one’s own cognition. (Strategic knowledge, Cognitive tasks, appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge, Self-knowledge) 

The Cognitive Process Dimension

_{Citations from Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition, New York : Longman. Table 5.1, pages 67-68}

The cognitive process dimension  (bottom up) begins from low to high order of thinking skills.  

An example of a measurable vs. non-measurable SLO using action verb from the cognitive process dimension:

Not Measurable SLO: Students will be able to understand the causes of unemployment and inflation.

Note: Understand is too vague, not an observable or measurable action.

Measurable SLO: Students will be able to explain the causes of unemployment and inflation

Sources:

_{Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition, New York : Longman.}

_{Davis, Scott, “Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Learning Outcomes (2014)”, Pearson Education accessed June 2017 http://www.pearsoned.com/education-blog/using-blooms-taxonomy-to-write-learning-outcomes/}

_{“Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy”, CELT, Iowa State University, accessed April 2017 http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/effective-teaching-practices/revised-blooms-taxonomy}

Cognitive research

Brain exercises are becoming more and more common for us every time. This comes from the fact that the more scientists learn about the functioning of the brain, the more we become aware of the importance of keeping our brain healthy as well as our body. And speaking of how the aging process affects the brain, there is good news and bad news.

The idea that aging leads to mental deterioration is not a recent discovery of cognitive research. As William Shakespeare wrote in his play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (‘Much Ado About Nothing’), “When age comes, intelligence goes.” The good news is that a recent study showed that this idea is not entirely correct. Today’s discovery suggests that the brain is a flexible and renewing organ and, despite age, can maintain and even improve its level of productivity, especially if a person leads an active and mentally stimulating lifestyle. nine0003

And then what is the bad news? Like everything in life, brain exercises require some effort. It is clear that our brain is not stupid at all, and since in our daily life there are many things that are repeated over and over again, the brain, being a highly efficient information processor, creates direct access to conduct these constantly repetitive cognitive tasks.

For example, when you learned to drive a car, it may be difficult at the beginning to carry on a conversation and drive at the same time because your brain has been busy processing new stimuli and running the cognitive tasks required to complete the driving process. And when you have already gained some driving experience, let’s say become an experienced driver, it becomes much easier for you to carry on a conversation with passengers, enjoy the scenery and drive a car, and do it all at the same time. nine0003

Naturally, it is good that many of the cognitive tasks in the process of driving become automatic, because. it allows your brain to divert attention and direct resources to other things. However, if you look ahead in time, this can create a lot of problems, because. the brain’s natural need to acquire new experiences and create a template for easier processing of daily information leads the brain to become lazy and less productive. With aging, this problem becomes more and more serious, because. it becomes more difficult to develop the performance of new activities that will give the brain a shake-up and pull it out of this lethargic state of automated life. For this very reason, execution plays a very important role for the brain. nine0003

Exercises for the brain in a way, like exercise. Just like your muscles, your brain needs constant exercise in order to stay fit and healthy. Many people think that doing sudoku, doing crossword puzzles, or playing bridge is good brain exercise. It is clear that this is better than doing nothing and it is true that these activities can help keep the brain in good shape, but if the same kind of brain exercises are constantly repeated, they will also turn into something ordinary and will no longer be train appropriately all the necessary attributes to maintain brain health and good physical health in general. The true key to optimal exercise for the mind, in order to constantly exercise all areas of the brain, is to do as many new and different cognitive activities as possible. This level of fitness requires a more complete and brain-training program. nine0003

The reason for this is that cognition is made up of different attributes working together. These include memory (your ability to remember and retrieve information), attention (your ability to focus on one or more tasks), perception (how well you perceive various stimuli from your environment), and hand-eye coordination (how well you translate visual information into body movements). Since we are all unique, single individuals, the type of exercise you will need will be different from the exercise for other people. So the most ideal mind training program is one that recognizes your strengths and weaknesses and creates a set of exercises specifically for you that will give you exactly the workout you need to keep your brain active and healthy. nine0003

Or as Shakespeare also said “Everything is ready if our minds are also ready.”

COGNITIVE SCIENCE • Great Russian Encyclopedia

Authors: BM Velichkovsky

COGNITIVE SCIENCE, explores the cognitive (cognitive) processes of the brain functioning and the mechanisms of behavior regulation in humans and animals. K. n. includes a number of areas of psychology (primarily cognitive psychology), computer science (especially development in the field of artificial intelligence, computer vision and neural networks), linguistics (cognitive linguistics), philosophy, neurophysiology, anthropology and other sciences, being, like natural philosophy , a large-scale attempt to create a unified science about the relationship between nature and human thinking. A distinctive feature of the cognitive approach is the emphasis on the decisive role of knowledge in the regulation of behavior. Knowledge is understood as internal representations (mental models) of the environment and the organism itself, which can be both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit). The word “cognitive” in a narrow sense refers to the processes of acquiring, storing and using knowledge. In the broad sense of the word, it also includes “metacognitive” knowledge about knowledge, the content of perception, sociocultural norms and stereotypes, and sometimes brain mechanisms, emotions, behavior. This ambiguity reflects the diversity of contexts of cognitive research, the existence of several paradigms, the ratio of which changes in the course of the development of cognitive science. nine0003

The term “K. n.” appeared in the 1970s; the first conference on K. n. took place in 1979 in San Diego (USA). In its origins, K. n. goes back to rationalism. traditions in the formulation of problems of cognition, represented by the concepts of R. Descartes, G. W. Leibniz and I. Kant. At the same time, representatives of K. n. are guided by the methodology of positivism, emphasizing the importance of empirical, primarily experimental, research that has been developed in physiology and psychology. An important source of K. n. associated with logico-mathematics. and semiotic. works that laid the foundation for the emergence of cybernetics and the computer revolution of the 2nd half. 20th century nine0003

Initially, the unification of disciplines took place within the framework of the computational approach, in which any theory had to be explicitly constructed as a mathematical one. model or computer program. Center. position in K. n. worked in the arts. intelligence aimed at modeling memory functions, representation of language meanings and problem solving processes. Neurophysiological The mechanisms of these and other cognitive processes were practically of no interest to researchers, since it was believed that the software implementation does not depend on a specific substrate (similar to the relative independence of software from a computer device). With the appearance in con. 20th century new methods of three-dimensional mapping of the brain (English brain imaging), the situation has changed. Cognitive neuroscience has come to the fore, such tasks as identifying the patterns of development of the functional systems of the brain, their connection with the phenomena of consciousness and cognitive activity. Modeling began to be carried out preim. with the help of the arts. neural networks that allow elementary forms of learning and context. In connection with the decoding of the human genome, interest in the search for genetic basics cognitive functions and individual differences (cognitive genomics). There is a convergence of K. n. with sections of neurophysiology and biology that study the emotional and motivational regulation of behavior (affective neuroscience), as well as with the search for social mechanisms for the translation of cultural and historical information. experience (cultural-historical psychology). nine0003

Development Ph.D. stimulated by a number of general scientific and philosophic problems associated, for example, with clarifying the role of rational thinking in decision-making (G. Simon and D. Kahneman). Dr. a group of problems is related to the study of the nature of mental representations of the surrounding world. According to one of the leading representatives of cognitive linguistics, J. Lakoff, all meanings are based on bodily sensations. Representatives of the so-called. ecological approach (J. Gibson and his followers) tend to abandon the concept of “mental representations” altogether, reorienting research according to the principle “Do not ask what is inside your head, but ask what is inside your head”. Actual for K. n. remains classic. the problem of the subject of activity, in particular, as a hypothetical. an internal observer who “considers” mental representations of external objects (one of the variants of this problem is the problem of understanding speech: if we understand the speech addressed to us, translating it into a hypothetical language of thought, then how do we understand this language of thought?), as well as the problem free will and responsibility of a person for his actions (in connection with the study of neurophysiological mechanisms for making decisions and initiating voluntary and involuntary actions). nine0003

Along with funds. research is increasingly developing practical. applications K. n. Thus, cognitive neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry play a leading role in the rehabilitation of patients with brain damage and diseases of the central nervous system. The task of cognitive ergonomics is to optimize graphics. and speech interfaces that provide human-computer interaction.