Cognitive Connie
Let's explore Learning Theory
Go beyond conditioning to explore how humans learn through observation, construct meaning, find motivation, and develop the skills to regulate their own learning.
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Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory, developed principally by Albert Bandura, proposes that much of human learning occurs not through direct experience and reinforcement — as classical and operant conditioning suggest — but through observation of others. By watching models in our social environment and noting the consequences of their behaviour, we acquire new behaviours, attitudes, and emotional responses without having to perform them ourselves first.
Motivation & Learning
Motivation is the force that initiates, directs, and sustains behaviour. In the context of learning, understanding what motivates students and learners has profound implications for education, training, coaching, and self-directed development. Decades of research have overturned simple behaviourist accounts of motivation-as-reward and replaced them with richer frameworks that attend to meaning, autonomy, and the quality of engagement.
Metacognition
Metacognition — literally "thinking about thinking" — refers to an individual's knowledge and regulation of their own cognitive processes. Introduced as a formal concept by developmental psychologist John Flavell in the 1970s, metacognition has since been identified as one of the most powerful determinants of academic and professional performance, with effects on learning outcomes that rival or exceed those of domain-specific knowledge in some studies.
Reward-Based Learning
Reward-based learning addresses one of the most fundamental questions in psychology: how do the consequences of our actions shape what we do next? Edward Thorndike's Law of Effect (1898) provided the first systematic empirical answer. Working with cats in puzzle boxes, Thorndike observed that responses followed by a "satisfying state of affairs" were more likely to be repeated, while responses followed by an "annoying state of affairs" became less likely. This deceptively simple principle — that outcomes feed back to strengthen or weaken the behaviours that produced them — became the cornerstone of an entire research tradition in learning psychology.
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