The are various types of barriers to learning. Some barriers, are socio-economic (e.g. lack of funds and resources), some are psychological (for example post traumatic distress), some could be physical or physiological (such as a hearing impairment), some are cognitive.
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Barriers to Learning
The components of a barrier to learning may include physical, mental, emotional, cultural, and social factors.
When these elements are combined, a student is not able to fully participate in the learning process. In addition to preventing students from learning, these factors also cause a person to experience lower self-esteem.
However, with the help of a cognitive psychologist, a student can identify these elements and overcome them. This article will discuss the different types of cognitive barriers to learning and how to deal with them.
Cognitive psychologists study the internal workings of the mind, including memory, perception, learning, and language. They are interested in how people comprehend, identify, and solve issues as well as how they make judgments. These psychologists concentrate on the acquisition, processing, and memory of information.
Working Memory
When you are following instructions, you need to link items together. If you don’t have good working memory, you might forget part of an instruction before you can complete it. The same applies to reading a novel, which requires you to link various parts of a description together.
You will then be able to form an overall personality sketch with your long-term memory, but inadequacies in working memory can make this process difficult or even impossible.
There are some studies that have shown that working memory performance is improved as children get older. However, this growth has two components: primary and secondary.
Although children learn new concepts at the same pace, their working memory capacity may be more limited than it is in adults. Ultimately, this can pose a barrier to learning and may contribute to learning policies that are unhelpful. Nonetheless, the process of developing working memory is important and should not be neglected.
In order to gain more information about working memory, we must understand how it works. Working memory is a gateway between our long-term memory and our conscious mind. We need to make sure that information in working memory is in the proper form to be stored in the long-term memory. Depending on the modality, this may be different for different tasks.
The research of Baddeley, Papagno, and Vallar shows that people can have a very small verbal short-term memory span. The patient was able to function normally in most ways, but showed a selective deficit.
Perceptual Disabilities
Perceptual disabilities are conditions that impair a person’s ability to process information. They may cause a person to have problems understanding language, recognizing objects, sequencing, and relating information to prior knowledge. These conditions may also lead to seizures.
While many of these conditions are related, there are also a few specific types of perceptual disabilities that are separate from one another. In this article, we will briefly discuss some of these disorders and how they may impact learning.
A learning disability is a significant deficit in a person’s ability to process information. This can include difficulties in reading, writing, and speaking. It may also impair a person’s ability to perform mathematical calculations.
There are many different types of learning disabilities, including perceptual disabilities and brain injuries. School psychologists will often test for these issues to determine which ones are the most severe and which ones are treatable with special education.
Seizure Disorders
Educators must be aware of the cognitive barriers that a student with epilepsy faces. It is essential to ensure that the student has the support he or she needs.
For example, teachers must consider whether or not a student with epilepsy should take part in sports. In most cases, it is okay to include a student with epilepsy in a variety of activities, although clinicians recommend extra supervision during activities.
Participating in peer activities can improve a student’s social skills and self-confidence. Teachers and parents should work together to devise an individualized plan for each student with epilepsy.
In the time before a seizure, a child may have unusual behavior. This can include feeling sleepy, confused, or anxious. They may also have problems with memory and concentration. Some children experience post-ictal psychosis, where they see or hear things that aren’t true.
Their attention span can be disrupted for hours or even days. These problems can make it difficult for a child to concentrate or complete work.
In children with epilepsy, the most notable effect on cognitive functioning is memory impairment. This impairment can range from minor forgetfulness to gross clouding of consciousness and disorientation.
Children with epilepsy also experience other cognitive challenges. Seizures during the day can affect alertness and short-term memory. Nighttime seizures can interfere with the consolidation of memory and language functions. In some cases, a child will miss school or medical appointments due to seizures.
Inert Knowledge
Inert knowledge is information that we have acquired in the past but don’t understand or apply in practice. It can be something as simple as a grammatical rule or a vocabulary word, which we can unpack only with a prompt. However, inert knowledge can be a real problem for us, as we are likely to make errors based on it. Fortunately, there are some techniques that can help us overcome this cognitive barrier.
For instance, procedural knowledge consists of skills and algorithms used to solve a problem, and metacognitive knowledge includes the awareness of our own cognition.
Metacognitive knowledge, by contrast, involves knowledge about cognition in general and about how we use it. These are examples of knowledge that is inert, because we do not have the ability to apply or evaluate it. Moreover, knowledge about our own cognitive processes can also be inert.
To avoid this cognitive barrier, it is necessary to learn to engage with relevant information in a deep way. This involves trying to understand, apply, and evaluate it. This is a better strategy for learning than memorizing information and applying it only to an extremely limited extent.
In addition, deep engagement with knowledge can lead to a greater capacity for creating new things. Knowledge can also be transformed into new knowledge by applying it, summarizing it, or explaining it to others. It can also be used to make new connections among existing concepts.
Mayer’s Contiguity Principle Of Instruction
The Mayer’s contiguity principle is a foundational principle in educational psychology, which states that people learn best when they combine words and pictures.
This principle is applied to multimedia learning as well, and provides guidelines for constructing effective multimedia presentations for learning. This theory is grounded in cognitive psychology, and makes three key assumptions about how humans process information. These three assumptions provide a framework for designing multimedia presentations that are effective for learning.
The spatial contiguity principle is perhaps the most intuitive of Mayer’s principles. It advises that you place text near graphics, and present them simultaneously. By doing this, students can avoid spending a large amount of time aligning and connecting the meaning of the two elements.
Also, it allows you to avoid cognitive overload by presenting written text next to images. The redundancy principle also applies to the presentation of multimedia lessons, which should be presented in a sequence and with images.
The split-attention effect is another common cognitive barrier to learning. As such, instructors should integrate visuals and texts. This principle encourages learners to mentally depict critical spatial relationships by using cues such as underlining important information.
Additionally, the signaling effect recommends that instructors provide signals cueing essential information, and the transient information effect suggests that learners can segment video segments to make them easier to understand.
Designing Instruction For Students With Cognitive Disabilities
If your students have significant cognitive disabilities, you may consider implementing a universal design of instruction (UDI) approach to teaching and learning. This approach focuses on student-centered design, taking into account learning styles, native languages, and other factors.
This process addresses classroom climate, interaction, and delivery methods, as well as assessment and feedback. It can be used in a variety of contexts, including special education.
One of the most common ways to incorporate a ADA-compliant approach into your classroom is by using a variety of strategies and methods. A student with a learning disability will experience additional challenges when it comes to understanding text, for example.
They may have a hard time memorising what they have read. It is essential to develop strategies to help them keep information in their memory. Students with language delays or ASD may have difficulties understanding certain vocabulary. Some may also have problems making inferences.
Often, a student with a cognitive disability may not disclose their disability until a teacher has been hired. This can make a student feel anxious or embarrassed about disclosing sensitive information to an instructor.
In addition, students with disabilities are often subject to negative stereotypes about their abilities. One study by May & Stone (2010) found that undergraduates tend to rate those with learning disabilities as less capable than other students. While students with cognitive disabilities may have disabilities, they are no less capable than their peers. Instead, they simply process information in a different way.