Cognitive Model of Learning A Cognitive Model of Learning Figure 1, made by the author from Sharon Derry's review of cognitive learning theory, provides a starting place. Steps in Figure 1 are discussed in the following section. Such predictions may be simultaneous with the first decoding of the letters on the page, and, since a reader can be led to know what to expect by illustrations, the nature of the publication, or other contextual cues, such predictions may even precede reading. Most of this activity is unconscious and appears to be part of the way we orient ourselves in the world. Information alone, no matter how well written, does not create comprehension.
Comprehension depends on the reader's prior knowledge and reading strategies.
The sports fan has a large body of organized information about sports and can quickly fit new information into this framework. Another reader, with a different body of organized knowledge, may actively seek out a music review to find out how well a visiting chamber group played the opening fugue of Beethoven's C-Sharp Minor Quartet. The comprehension of new information requires a meeting of the new with the known. This meeting of the known with the new is one of the fundamental concepts of cognitive learning theory. Indeed, unless a reader is able to predict, to ask relevant questions, and to know how to find the answers, comprehension is not possible.