Karen is three months old. Her father holds her in his arms and says: "It's time for lunch, your bottle is ready." This scene is repeated over and over, and Karen soon associates the word “bottle” with a white object that is filled with a delicious liquid! Encoding this word required energy and the creation of new links between nerve cells. However, Karen’s brain considered that this was “worth it”. For Karen, the word bottle is first associated with a single object.

A few days later, her parents buy brand new ergonomic bottles. This poses a cognitive conflict for Karen as the encoded links need to be modified to accommodate this new reality: a bottle is no longer a single object, but a group or class of objects. Karen’s brain has to adjust by creating a group of objects identified by the label bottle. It also needs to select identification criteria to recognize bottles, i.e. objects that contain a “tasty, warm white liquid.”

This definition is kept until the day somebody asks “Can you pass me the bottle of wine?” This poses a new cognitive conflict and requires the construction of a new definition.

The brain refines its definition to accommodate this new information so it will recognize the next bottles of wine. We could go on with a ketchup bottle, a pill bottle, etc. Each time, a cognitive conflict requires the brain to redefine how it perceives a bottle to adjust to the new reality.

This example illustrates the following points:

• Bottle is the label associated with a group of objects; this group forms a concept (or declarative knowledge).
• The concept of bottle is not engrained all at once and forever; the definition of a concept is slowly and gradually refined based on information received from the environment.
• The brain has to do a lot of work to construct the definition of a concept.
• The brain needs to encode a lot of information and it can save its energy by creating a concept that groups together many objects.
• The definition of a concept is often constructed based on distinctive features.

Educational implications

This simple and telling example is inspired by one of the modern theories of learning: constructivism.

The example shows that declarative knowledge (also called concepts or notions) can be fairly difficult to integrate, depending on the level of abstraction. However, even for concrete concepts, acquisition is not necessarily simple.

Take for example the concept of table. You might say it’s an easy one, but it’s not really… We will all agree that this refers to a flat, horizontal surface, but then things get a bit more complicated. How high is it? That depends on the function: drawing table, coffee table, changing table, ping pong table… What does it stand on? That depends on the style and function… What is it made of? What are the differences between a piano bench and a coffee table? Yet, we recognize those objects easily… We can add expressions such as “sitting down at the table”, which can be used in the literal or figurative sense. And then there are other uses, such as: addition table, light table, turn table, operating table, round table, orientation table, Holy table, and so on.

It’s not so easy to define the concept of table…

We can see that this concept, even though it is a concrete one, can require several adjustments before it becomes anchored in our brains. We can therefore infer that abstract concepts such as liberty, faith, nation, meta-cognition and rhetoric will require a lot of processing.

This also demonstrates that when we teach a new concept, we need to pay attention to the following steps:

• Introducing the concept through an analogy
• Explaining the FEATURES of the concept
• Offering several contextual EXAMPLES of the concept
• Giving COUNTER-EXAMPLES, i.e. cases or examples that do not illustrate the concept, in order to facilitate gross differentiation
• Giving NEAR-MISS EXAMPLES, i.e. cases or examples that are similar to the concept without illustrating the concept per se, in order to facilitate fine discrimination
• Finally, proposing several activities that consist in recognizing the concept, defining it, using it within a given context and explaining it to one’s colleagues.

What is the best educational technique to teach concepts? It’s undoubtedly the Socratic dialogue (written or oral), which taps into all the steps described above.

Stay tuned for more information on this…

Françoise Crevier, Ph.D.
Instructional Designer