Connections Between Studies of Human Learning and Memory Processes in Modern Cognitive Psychology and Integrative Biology

Abstract

It appears that some of the educational theories and practices used in institutional education rest on a solid foundation derived from phenomenological studies in cogni-tive psychology and that this foundation is supported by the additional detail and clarification of concepts of learning and memory provided by studies in integrative biology. Modern integrative biology, for example, has detailed the concept, developed from studies in cognitive psychology, of information stored as both short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) (Sweller et al. 2011; Postle 2006, 2015), suggesting that this information is stored by adding to or altering neuronal and related structures that develop as patterns of connected information through the processing of environmental input (Edelman 2007; Sporns 2010, 2012). In addition, integrative biology supports the limitations on attention and working memory (WM) reported from cognitive psychology (Sweller 1988, 1994) through the delineation of the detailed function of neural pathways, where limits in activation processes have been documented, for example, in the effects of directional flow, neural bottlenecks and inhibition (Bouchacourt and Buschman 2019; Cotterill 2001; Marois 2005). Studies that combine integrative biology and network theory have indicated further that some such limitations are due to patterns of connectivity related to neural structures, such as those that occur within the modular small-world and scale-free circuits in the human nervous system (Sporns 2010, 2012). In light of such support, the aim of successful educational theories and practices is to provide for environmental input and behavioural feedback that assist in the modulation, formation and, sometimes, retention of patterns of neuronal connections in human memory, with some focus on the limitations inherent in the function of the human information processing system in interacting with novel environmental input (Woolcott 2010, 2013). This chapter outlines how studies in integrative biology have elaborated the cognitive architecture (developed within cognitive psychology) that is involved in environmental interaction through problem-solving, and the support for an information systems approach to the examination of human learning and memory processes.