Postcognitivist Discourses

Information Processing Theory combines Cognitivism and Developmentalist Discourses. As it aims to offer an account of mental development in which information-processing notions are applied literally (i.e., the mind is asserted to be a computer) to interpret growth, maturation, and evolving abilities to make sense of the world. (Compare Information Pickup Theory.)

There is a long history of interpreting learning in terms of the latest technologies. Examples include writing on a tablet, taking photographs and films, and making connections on a telephone switchboard. Brain-as-Computer Discourses represent an uncritical continuation of this trend, through which knowledge is reduced to information and learning is cast as inputting and manipulating that information.

Complex Systems Research focuses on systems comprising sets of agents that form unified wholes in their interactions, relationships, or dependencies. Their emergent, global behaviors cannot be predicted on the basis of the rules governing the individual agents. Definitions and descriptions of complex systems revolve around such terms as emergent, adaptive, nonlinear, irreducible, noncompressible, non-decomposable, multi-level, self-organizing, context-sensitive, and adaptive.

Cognitivism is explicitly developed around the metaphor “brain as computer.” It thus focuses on how information is acquired, processed, and organized. Learning is seen in terms of integration of new information into existing structures through processes of internal codification.

The study of mind and behavior.