Cognitive structure can be understood as a mental process that people used to be able to understand the information they receive. The cognitive structure allows the organization of said information, in such a way that the person can learn and remember, that is to say that these structures integrate what is understanding and memory. In other words, the cognitive structure is seen as a set of ideas that a subject has about a certain area of knowledge and its way of organizing them in his mind.
Within the learning process, for the acquisition of new knowledge, it is very important to identify the cognitive structure of the student. Not only to know how much information you have, but rather what are the concepts that they know how to master, as well as their level of stability
Three classes of cognitive structures are known:
- The first are comparative thinking, such as memorization and classification.
- The second are those of symbolic representation, such as dance, music, mathematics and gestures.
- The third is the logical reasoning, such as reasoning, cause and effect, assessment and solution of problems.
If you were to ask different people what is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about flying, you will likely have different answers. What is this about? Because all individuals think differently and do so, because they have different cognitive structures.
As people learn and learn, they store all that information in an orderly way in their memory and each time they assimilate new knowledge, they proceed to store it in their memory.
The cognitive structure is characterized by not being rigid, but rather increases over time, as new knowledge is obtained or a new link is discovered between two previously saved knowledge.
