Jerome Bruner — Cognitive Learning
Meet Chef Jerome Bruner
One of the world’s greatest cognitive psychologist was born on October 1, 1915 to two Polish Jewish immigrants: Herman and Rose Bruner.
Although born blind from cataracts, Jerome Bruner underwent surgery at the age of two to receive sight.
He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Duke University in 1937, a master’s degree in psychology in 1939, then a doctorate degree in psychology in 1941 at Harvard University.
From his first psychological article on the effect of thymus extract on the sexual behavior of female mice to serving on the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force committee during WWII, Bruner dedicated years of his life to teaching and most importantly research on cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, language development, and narrative construction of reality.
Theories:
Let’s look inside Bruner’s cookbook. Here are some of the main ingredients, followed by some examples of interactive design.
Cognitive Psychology — Cognitive Learning Theory
In Bruner’s research of cognitive development of children in 1966, he proposed three modes of representations — enactive, iconic, and symbolic.
Enactive Representation
This type of representation happens in the very young (birth to age 1). It involves encoding action based information that is then stored into our memory. Examples are muscle memory like that of shaking of a rattle. Children in this age group represent their past events through motor responses. Infants will shake a rattle expecting the accustomed sound. Actions on physical objects and the outcomes of the actions form the enactive representation of learning.
Dust Example: Balloonimals
Although the game has accustomed sounds there is no movement to indicate that the sounds are related to the objects on the screen.
Magic: Baby Phone Games for Babies
This app illustrates how an action of clicking a specific icon or animal gives a different sound. The action is finger driven, and the buttons appears to be very “crisp” and responsive. Although the same action is used, the tapping of the screen, the child will understand that difference in the animal on each button based on the corresponding sound.
Iconic Representation
This type of representation happens in children between 1–6 years old. Information in this age group is stored visually in the form of images. When learning subjects it is easier to develop strength in the subject when diagrams and illustrations are coupled with verbal information. Models and pictures are what form the iconic representation of learning.
Dust: Nancy Drew 31: Labyrinth of Lies
The laying of the pieces of the puzzle has too similar of a sound. Although the diagrams of puzzles make it reasonable to solve, the sound for the correct placement and the incorrect placement can get confusing.
Magic: Crazy Gears
Gears are used to represent models and diagrams. The verbal response here that indicates success is the chime when correctly assembled gears pull the board for the next level. The absence of this chime and illustration, the moving of the board, informs the child that the assembly is incorrect.
Symbolic Representation
This type of representation happens in children between 7 years old and older. In this stage of life information is stored in the form of code or symbols such as language. The use of words and symbols are combined to describe experiences. Developing a capacity to think in abstract terms forms the iconic representation of learning.
Magic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Developmental Psychology — The Spiral Curriculum
The spiral curriculum is when ideas are presented in repeated learning opportunities over the course of time. These learning opportunities start simple then increase in difficulty and are examined in relation to one another. Bruner believed that learning information in a spiraling way helps children organize knowledge into a structure that’s accessible and usable in different stages of life in addition to the presented learning situation.
Dust: I am Bread
Although you are granted the buttons to move the toast the sensitivity of the game make it nearly impossible for repetitive actions to work the same way they did before. Using the same bottoms do not produce the same actions.
Magic: Think Rolls 2
The movement of tap and dragging helps users understand that this is the way you move things, whether your thinkroll, eggs, barrels, or accordion platforms.
Educational psychology — Theory of Education
In The Process of Education (1960) Bruner laid out the four basic parts of the process of education: structure, readiness for learning, intuitive and analytical thinking, and motives for learning.
Bruner believed that curriculum should foster the development of problem-solving skills instead of memorizing facts through processes of inquiry and discovery and that learning should begin with the direct manipulation of objects. Subject matter should be represented in terms of the child’s way of viewing the world. He also believes that the mastery of one skill should lead to the mastery of another powerful skill. He felt that teaching by organizing concepts and learning by discovery.
Structure — when children and even adults grasp the structure of a subject, it enables them to relate to other subjects that before seemed unrelated. In The Process of Education, Bruner explained how elements of tropism in biology such as “… [the] swarming of locusts where temperature determines the swarm density in which locusts are forced to ravel…” can enabled the learner to understand other phenomena. In other words, understanding how a baby is formed in the womb can lead to understanding how trees grow and how relationships work; a seed or relationship must be nurtured to grow to produce more seeds or strengthen the bond.
Readiness for Learning — as we learn our consciousness begins to evolve. Bruner believes that “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.
Intuitive and Analytical Thinking — Bruner believes that we can all distinguish between in articulate genius and articulate idiocy. There are things we understand and things we don’t understand. This explains why some people are good in mathematical subjects and others in literature.
Motives for Learning — Interest in the material one has to learn is the best was to stimulate learning, rather than just getting a good grade or having competitive advancement. Bruner felt that “… the motives for learning must be kept from going passive… [and] they must be based as much as possible upon the arousal of interest in what there it to be learned, and they must be kept broad and diverse in expression.
Dust: JumpStart Adventures
Although JumpStart Adventures game has structure to collect all of the items on the list and demonstrates motives for learning by having a “follow the directions” gameplay type, it does not provide readiness for learning or intuitive and analytical thinking.
First, the picture needed did not contain 3 skulls. Secondly, there is a lack of difficulty upon level advancement.
Magic: Assassin’s Creed 2
Assassin’s Creed 2’s structure is present by the historical setting and interaction with historical figures.
You learn about Leonardo De Vinci’s inventions like his tank and flying machine. In the state of combat you have the ability to either flee or to fight everyone head on. This proves one’s the amount of idiocy or genius depending on their skill level in playing such a game. Completing each objective in each level helps you to complete the story which makes each
Language Development — Scaffolding Theory
Scaffolding describes the type of interaction that occurs within the Zone of Proximal Development of Vygotsky. It means that the instructor, the one teaching the subject, provides the support for those that are learning. An example used is riding a bike. The instructor holds and pushes the bike as the learner pedals and steers.
Dust: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Navi)
Although Navi serves as a guide she mysteriously leaves Zelda’s side throughout the game. She leaves in times where Zelda does not know what to do next. Her cues like, “Hey Listen!”, are very annoying to the point you don’t even want her help even if you are stuck; a type of unprofitable redundancy.
Magic: Portal
GLaDOS gives you the challenge and guides the player through the experiment. Her voice gives you the indication that you’re on the right path.
Narrative Construction of Reality
One of Bruner’s biggest concepts was that culture and narrative play a huge role in how you build knowledge. He expresses that “[t]he central concern [in learning] is not how narrative as text is constructed, but rather how it operates as an instrument of mind in the construction of reality.” With this in mind he constructs the ten features of narrative.
1. Narrative Diachronicity — This feature of narratives illustrates an illusion that time is passing within a story. Although some illusions are linear in occurrence, narrative diachronicity can include leap forwards and flashbacks.
2. Particularity — Bruner views stories as a representation of a large range of general types or numerous genres of stories. Stories fall into more general types such as those with romance deals with the males giving gifts; tokens and emblems. “Particularity achieves its emblematic status by its embeddedness in a story that is in some sense generic.”
3. Intentional State Entailment — This narrative feature means that we must have a sense of a character’s internal motivation. “This might not explain what happens in a story — this might often be in conflict with the ‘intentional state’ of the character — but rather, what we understand through the ‘intentional state’ are the reasons why a character acts as they do.”
4. Hermeneutic Composability — This terms means that there exists text or a text’s analogue that has a meaning someone is trying to extract. With these two meanings, what’s meant and what the hearer believes is meant, implies that there is a different between what’s expressed and what the expression might mean. A text can only exist in the relation with the author’s intention. The author’s intention then must be ‘de-cipherable.’
5. Canonicity and Breach — This is feature of narrative is the breaking point of making the reader understand the significance of the events of the story such that they gain new insight through the each new portion of the narrative.
6. Referentiality — This feature of narrative defines “[t]he relation between the things described in fiction and their interaction with our own knowledge of a world external to the narrative.”
7. Genericness — This feature refers to the different conventions of text types and how they differ in acceptability. This means that there exists different forms of ‘reality’ in a specific genre, that the narrative is willing to accept as real.
8. Normativeness — This feature expresses that there exists a construction in a tale that is viewed as and accepted as culturally normal.
9. Context Sensitivity and Negotiability — This feature presents a negotiation between our presumptions about what a text might mean and what we believe the reader meant it to mean. This negotiation depends on the context and different elements involved when making the presumption, like time and place.
10. Narrative Accrual — Expresses that the narrative read can somehow fit into a wider context of other stories previously read. This connection or accrual helps us depict different parts in other stories and what we believe should happen next.
Dust: Fallout 4
The motive for doing all the things the character does doesn’t make sense in the terms that he is able to do accomplish different tasks in a new world where he is a novice. You go on the same quest repeatedly. Not enough referentiality, genericness, and variety in the quest to provide narrative accrual.
Magic: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher 3 follows the story of Geralt of Rivia on his quest to find his adopted, missing daughter Ciri. He wants to save her from supernatural beings who want to use her magic to kill everyone. The story itself is based off of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski and his influence of the stories came from Polish folklore. Point of views alternate between him and his daughter’s forming different perspectives that are then able to be pieced together to form Ciri’s trail. When you’re trying to find her his magic helps him pick up pieces of where she’s been. Since they’re not in order when switching to her perspective you get to experience her view of the pieces and clues her dad found with his magic
Bruner’s Very Large Kitchen
With this analysis of Jerome Bruner’s work, one can see how bits and pieces of his ingredients have been part of many types of interactive media.
Although his passing on June 5th of last year was a sad day for many who cherished Bruner and his work, he left behind a vast legacy for many psychologists and cognitive scientists. Of one of those psychologists is Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist famous for his Multiple Intelligence Theory.
Gardner expresses his strong influence he developed from working with Jerome Bruner. He expressed how “intellectual curiosity” was a strong force in their continuance in their learning theories.
It takes intellectual curiosity to make interactive media.
Work Cited; Informative Reads:
2. https://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bruner
4. https://sheldonclark.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/jerome-bruner-teaching-learning-and-the-spiral-curriculum2.pdf
5. http://edci770.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/45494576/Bruner_Processes_of_Education.pdf
6. http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04132007-101339/unrestricted/Burch_dis.pdf
7. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/L470/Bruner_1991.pdf
8. https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/hi-text-narrative-construction-reality-jerome-473225
