The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View
In 1963 an initial attempt was made in my The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning to present a cognitive theory of meaningful as opposed to rote verbal learning. It was based on the proposition that the acquisition and retention of knowl edge (parti
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The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View
by
David P. Ausubel Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Graduate School, The City University of New York, U.S.A.
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-90-481-5536-1 ISBN 978-94-015-9454-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9454-7
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
To the memory of George Richard Wendt who first introduced me in 1938 to the intellectual excitement of postulating explanatory mechanisms for the psychological processes of human learning and retention, which eventually became assimilation theory.
Alphorism for Fly-Leaf
Knowledge is meaningful by definition. It is the meaningful product of a cognitive ("knowing") psychological process involving the interaction between "logically" (culturally) meaningful ideas, relevant background ("anchoring") ideas in the particular leamer's cognitive structure (or structure of his knowledge), and his mental "set" to learn meaningfully or to acquire and retain knowledge. The author
CONTENTS
ix
Preface Chapter 1.
Preview of Assimilation Theory of Meaningful Learning and Retention
1
Chapter 2.
Scope and Objectives
19
Chapter 3.
Preview of Basic Concepts of Meaningful Reception Learning and Retention
38
Chapter 4.
The Nature of Meaning and Meaningful Learning
67
Chapter 5.
Assimilation Theory in Meaningful Learning and Retention Processes
101
The Effects of Cognitive Structure Variables on the Acquisition, Retention, and Transferability of Knowledge
146
Practice and Motivational Factors in Meaningful Learning and Retention
181
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
vii
PREFACE
In 1963 an initial attempt was made in my The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning to present a cognitive theory of meaningful as opposed to rote verbal learning. It was based on the proposition that the acquisition and retention of knowledge (particularly of verbal knowledge as, for example, in school, or subject-matter learning) is the product of an active, integrative, interactional process between instructional material (subject matter) and relevant ideas in the leamer's cognitive structure to which the new ideas are relatable in particular ways. This book is a full-scale revision of my 1963 monograph, The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning, in the sense that it addresses the major aforementioned and hitherto unmet goals by providing for an expansion, clarification, differentiation, and sharper focusing of the principal psychological variables and processes involved in meaningful learning and retention,
