INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Running head: INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Information Cognitive Processing Theories:

Week 2 Synthesis
Grover L Welch
Arkansas State University

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Literature and Policy Review

Information Cognitive Processing Theories
In the later part of the 20th century educational research moved away from the psychological
processes of conditioning and reinforcement to look instead at the forces affecting learning
happening within the brain neurology. This field of study sought to inform a more cognitive
influenced approach to learning, which included attending to how the brain assigned meaning
and organization to the learning it received. These models have gone on to be refered to as
cognitive models of learning and help us to understand what the mind does with information in
order to facilitate retrieval and activation of knowledge. These Cognitive-processing
perspectives of reading seek to describe the underlying mental processes inherent in the act of
reading. (Tracey & Morrow, p.151) These models are frameworks which look at the individual
minds of readers and seek to explain the complex mechanisms that form memory and learning.
Though the true goal of the field is to understand how complex tasks in general are learned and
mastered using the same underlying mechanisms (Tracey et. Al. 2010) no one model is
comprehensive enough to explain all functions so multiple models exist that can be applied in
particular scenarios and situations specific to learning and reading.
Some of these models are: Information-processing Perspectives (Atkinson &Shiffrin,
1968), Goughs Model (Gough, 1972), the Automatic Information-Processing Model
(LaBerge & Samuels, 1974), the Interactive (Rumel-hart, 1977) and InteractiveCompensatory Models (Stanovich, 1980), the Phonological-Core Variable Difference
Model (Stanovich, 1988), the Parallel Distributed Processing Model (Coltheart, Curtis,
Atkins, & Haller, 1993), The Double-Deficit Hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, 1999) and
neuroscience (Goswami, 2004; Shaywitz, 2003).(p.151)

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Information-Processing Theory
The Information-processing theories and models describes how the brain comes into
contact with knowledge then processes, stores, and upon stimulus retrieves that knowledge from
the mind. This model has been greatly affected by the researchers Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968,
who proposed a model suggesting that information moves through stages and systems as it is
processed, reflected upon, learned, saved, and retrieved. (p.152) The model suggests that
information is put under the control of an overarching process called Executive control which
coordinates the systems of the model. This control process guides information as it enters the
mind through some type of sense interaction with the learners environment. The Sensory
Memory then moves into the system of perception that utilizes rapid, almost instantaneous,
sorters to process this into working memory, also known as short-term memory. The short-term
memory system is where all information begins its process of moving into knowledge and
learned information. Short-term, working memory, process all cognitive interactions with the
environment through sensory perception. Here the memory is uses a rehearsal mechanism called
the articulatory loop. This loop rehearses the information until the brain decides to transition in
to long-term memory. Here large amounts of information can be stored for long periods of time.
(p. 153) once encoded, the information is placed into a series of parallel structures that theorists
have labled Schemata. Schemata are structures in the abstract, and categorize and organize
memory into systems that are easily indexed for cognitive retrieval. Though effective the
Information-Processing Model suggests that long-term memory structures can decay and that
information once learned can be pushed out as new schema or information is learned. This can
account for the cognitive ability to change perspectives upon learning new knowledge.
Goughs Model

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Goughs model builds upon the earlier model, but informed it with a strategy that is
called Bottom-up informational-processing. Gough utilizes the cognitive processes of the
earlier model but suggests that as it also flows through a lower order to higher order stage.
Stanovich writes:
There was a strong tendency in early cognitive theorizing to depict information
processing as a series of discrete stages, each performing a specific transformation on its
input and passing on the new recoded representation as an input to a subsequent stage
Since the sequence of processing operations proceeds from the incoming data to higher
level encodings, such conceptualizations have been termed bottom-up models. It is not
surprising that, since these models were so influential in the early development of
information processing theorizing, they were the first to be applied to reading. (p. 21 ) (p.
154)
Gough essentially created smaller filters that lie within each of the earlier proposed stages. These
utilize new systems to help classify sensory perception and can be different depending on sense
organ interaction. He suggested if you see something the brain may have different means of
categorizing and processing the information, and different coding systems to compare it to, than
if you smelled something. So in the reading process your eye captures the input from each letter
of printed text. This image processes through the scanner briefly before progressing to the
character register. Here it is decoded and a definition of the object is added to the initial input,
then the code book sends the image to be identified and compared to the phonemic tape to be
identified. This is then constructed into language by the librarian where meaning is ascertained
and sentences are constructed. Then it is processed on into primary meaning, then the Merlin
goes to work. This is where final meaning of the sentences are construed using syntactic and

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

semantic rules. Once understood the sentences are sent to long term storage and placed within
schema.
Laberge and Samuelss Automatic Information-Processing Model
In this model the authors again utilized a bottoms-up approach to cognitive-processing.
This model became a foundational principal in the 1980s of textbooks and teachers. This reading
model proposed five major components to reading: visual memory, phonological memory,
episodic memory, semantic memory, and attention. These each allow for a differing processing of
information as it is contacted be the senses during reading. Visual memory is actuated when
graphic images or input are processed by the reader. This involves recognizing the shapes,
angle\s, and curves of letters, and numbers, so as to identify the meaning of these as text.
Exposure and practice are keys to the minds ability to respond to these stimuli. (p.157)
Following this phonological memory where sound was assigned to each visual image. In the
episodic memory context is applied to help the brain target the information and what it pertains
to. Finally the knowledge is stored in the semantic memory. The model depends on one final
element of attention. Attention is explained as two fold. First internal attention, the unobservable
attention is what is happening inside an individuals mind. Attention includes alertness,
selectivity, and limited capacity each affecting the ability of the reader to perform a task of
reading. These worked together to form automaticity or the ability to perform a task while
devoting little attention to it. The role of attention is at the center of this model and informs the
process by creating a set guide of reading habituation needed to perform the task. External
attention becomes more of the physicality of the reading place and habit. Eye movement
observable is an observer, trouble with text models, and other factors can affect these observable
attention factors.

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Interactive and Interactive-Compensatory Models

Following Labege and Samuels bottoms-up model theorist Rumelhart proposed the first
nonlinear model for reading process in 1977. This model moved away from the straight line
processes of earlier theorists and posited a process that allowed the information to be informed
be higher level thinking and processes that helped the mind assign deeper levels of meaning to
sentences through comprehension and identification. The Interactive Model suggests instead that
information is processed by the mind through the visual text input as Gough and Laberge and
Samuels had suggested. (p. 160) Rumelhart however suggests that a number of processes happen
around this visual information simultaneously, rather than linear. Syntactic information and
semantic information are also paired with orthographic and lexical information to create both
higher and lower level processes to happen at the same time. In Rumelharts Interactive Model
the reading process is one that utilizes all the brains faculties in a near simultaneous process that
not only informs but catalogues and informs schemata. It suggests that the cognitive processes
that take place during reading are more than stage-by-stage conceptual paradigms but instead a
multi-tiered attenuation of cognitive functions that allow multiple meanings to be determined in
synchronistical fashion. Key to these functions are the word order within a sentence, the
messages construction, visual cuing, and word knowledge that work in concert to produce
understanding.
A Compensatory Model
Stanovich writing in 1980 suggested that rather than bottom-up, top-down, and
interactive models of the reading process theorists should consider that the reader,
simultaneously uses information that is provided from multiple sources during the reading
process. (p.162) Stanovichs model would suggest that the interactive model of reading requires

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

a cognitive element of each of the theories. Allowing readers to draw on semantic information in
a linear fashion, while using orthographic and lexical information in a reverse flow even
engaging higher level and lower level processes mutually during the process in ways that are not
directional but transactional. However, Stanovich suggested that the interactive-processing
models of the researchers are compensatory to each other and all serve to inform the cognitive
ability of the reader.

Critical Reflection
Alignment of My Professional Practice with Research
Reading is a complicated task that happens inside the head as well as outside the mind in
the classroom. By teaching proper attenuation skills to readers as a teacher we inform these
processes. I look around my classroom for the external cueing of reading success: directional
flow from left to right, page turning, and engagement with text in a physical manipulative
manner. The previous models help me to understand several factors that will help my students
deepen learning. Core to these are the five attenuation skills Stanovich mentions. I need to
inform my students lexical knowledge through word vocabulary and exposure to new and
different material. I need to work on orthographic information by attending to student
understandings of grammar and form. I teach secondary students but there are still essential
elements of syntactic and semantic information I need to attend to. I need to insure the students
can read the material I give them so a proper understanding of phonemic and grapheme
awareness is a necessity. I also need to create semantic constructs that mimic the reading and
help readers to use higher level thinking skills such as those in Blooms Taxonomy to create
knowledge. I relate specifically to Stanovichs suggestion that no one model is compensatory,

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

rather that readers rely on many differing skills to access text and these flow from bottom to top
to transactional relationships seamlessly in the mind.

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Resources
Alexander, P. A., & Fox, E. (2004). A Historical Perspective on Reading Research and Practice.
Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 33-68.
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering; a study in experimental and social psychology. New York:
Macmillan.
Gough, P.B. (1972). One second of reading. In J.F. Kavanaugh & I.G. Mattingly (Eds.),
Language by ear and by eye: The relationships between speech and reading (pp. 35-48).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
LaBerge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in
reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323.
Morrow, L. M. (2002). Preparing young learners for successful reading comprehension: Laying
the foundation (M. Pressley & C. C. Block, Eds.). In D. H. Tracey (Author), Reading
Comprehension instruction (pp. 219-233). New York: Guilford Press.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (2004). The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing. Theoretical Models
and Processes of Reading, 1363-1398.
Rumelhart, D. E. (1977). Toward an interactive model of reading. In S. Dornic (Ed.), Attention
and performance (Vol. 6, pp. 573-603). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rumelhart, D. E. (1994). Toward an interactive model of reading. In R. B. Ruddel, M.R.
Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.),Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed., pp.
864-894). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Stanovich, K.E. (1980). Toward an interactive-compensatory model of individual differences in
the development of reading fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32-71.

INFORMATION COGNITIVE PROCESSING THEORIES

Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2006). Lenses on reading: An introduction to theories and
models. New York: Guilford Press.
Unrau, N., & Alvermann, D. (2013). Literacies and Their Investigation Through Theories and
Models. Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 47-90.

10