Cognitive learning (CL) is an active learning style that emphasizes helping learners to maximize their brain performance. Cognition implies the brain’s procedures of absorbing and retaining information via experience, sense and thought. The development of child’s cognitive skills through training enhances learning experience and ability to juggle complex tasks without the requirement of a supervisor. In this regard, performance evaluation has to be responsive to cognitive learning milestones.
Cognitive Learning Behavior of Teenagers
Intense brain development happens during adolescence. Some brain regions grow, whereas others reduce. Unlike children who utilize their imaginations for play, adolescents use their imagination to fully comprehend and subjects. Adolescents learn abstract thinking because they lack a need for concrete objects to manipulate thinking. The imagination of hypotheticals develops during the stage (McGuire & Storch, 2019). As such, adolescents have increased capacity for deductive reasoning, decision-making, subject selection, autonomous learning, and memory. As such, their knowledge retention capacity grows, thereby requiring improved learning milestones over a limited period. Teenagers learn to see multiple parts in a single problem, futuristic thoughts, and self-reflection.
Optimizing Cognitive Learning through Typical and Atypical Learning
Typical learning implies the normal cognitive progression curve in an adolescent. The relevance of a normal curve is forming a scaffolding that supports the next developmental stage through psychosocial support systems. However, atypical learning helps adolescents with cognitive development challenges navigate development. Such adolescents require special intervention because they exhibit lagged response to development milestones that their counterparts suffice (McGuire & Storch, 2019). Even so, several factors influence the appraisal of cognitive development milestones. For example, parents and teachers should observe the time, sequence and relevance of cognitive skill development milestones according to age requirements.
Reference
McGuire, J. F., & Storch, E. A. (2019). An inhibitory learning approach to cognitive-behavioral therapy for children and adolescents. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 26(1), 214-224. Web.