The Influences of Cognitive Psychology 273THE EFFECTS OF INSTRUCTIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
The beginnings of instructional psychology as a field of study
are often traced to World War II and its demand for rapidly
trained soldiers and officers who could operate more techni-
cally advanced equipment. When Arthur Melton developed the
Air Force Human Resources Lab (AFHRL), he and the people
he trained and worked with, such as Robert Glazer and Robert
Gagne, helped to develop guidelines for learning, retention,
and transfer of new knowledge and skills based on psycholog-
ical principles. After the war, AFHRL remained a vibrant
research and development center, although many of its re-
searchers and developers went into academic positions. Their
work continued as the postwar era’s GI bill gave low-cost loans
and scholarships to returning military personnel to further their
education. Methods were needed to deal with this more di-
verse and expanded population of students in America’s high
schools, community colleges, and universities.
Another boost to funding and interest in instructional psy-
chology occurred when the Russians launched an unmanned
space vehicle,Sputnik,in 1957. Along with the fears that
America was losing its technological superiority was a call for
massive increases in science and mathematics curricula and
courses, and effective teaching/learning methods. Building on
techniques developed during World War II, new types of
audio-visual aids were developed, such as motion picture pro-
jectors and audiotapes (Glaser, 1962). Given the dominance of
behaviorism in psychology during much of this period, it also
witnessed the development of programmed-instruction teach-
ing machines and, ultimately, computer-assisted instruction.
However, this is also the period during which the trend began
toward adapting classroom practices to the needs of individual
students (Gage, 1964). The field of educational psychology,
which absorbed instructional psychology, was definitely on
center stage. However, there was a lingering feeling that even
with the modern technologies, perhaps we were missing a big
piece of the learning/education/transfer puzzle.
THE INFLUENCES OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Cognitive psychology has had a major influence on the devel-
opment of educational psychology. In a seminal chapter in the
Annual Review of Psychology,1977, Wittrock and Lumsdaine
pointed out the importance of a cognitive perspective and the
somewhat bankrupt contributions of behaviorism for further
development in instructional and educational psychology.
The chapter had a strong impact on educational psychologists.
Educational psychology was finally on the road to being a
discipline within psychology whose focus was on the psy-
chology of all components of educational processes and
practice. No longer was it only an application of other areas
within psychology (although these other areas continue to
influence it).
One reason the cognitive psychology revolution is viewed
by many as an improvement over the days of experimenting
with rats and pigeons is that it helped to focus researchers’
attention on realistic rather than artificial contexts. This shift
provided researchers with the opportunity to examine stu-
dents in their own environment—the classroom (Mayer,
2001). As Mayer notes, psychology needed something real to
study, and education provided it. This has, of course, proven
to be a symbiotic relationship, because psychology was able
to provide to education established scientific methodological
frameworks that education had previously lacked. Mayer’s
view of the historical relationship between education and
psychology in the twentieth century seems to be quite apt:
First, there was a time during which psychologists developed
theories and left it to educators to apply the theories; next
came a period during which psychology resolutely focused
on theoretical issues that were unrelated to educational is-
sues, and education resolutely focused primarily on practical
issues; and, now, we have an era in which psychology and
education seem to be working more hand-in-hand, combin-
ing the strengths of both groups to work for the mutual bene-
fit of each group, as well as for the public (Mayer, 1992, cited
in Mayer, 2001).
Even though the advent of cognitive psychology in the
1970s encouraged researchers to examine more realistic con-
texts and situations, many researchers still tended to decon-
struct their findings into isolated parts. Rather than viewing
students as a whole, they often broke students’ behaviors into
components, which might then be used to construct new
models, or even to reconstruct old models (Paris & Paris,
2001). Even the didactic methods and suggestions derived
from this work were often nothing more than isolated pieces
of advice. For example, common didactic methods for im-
proving students’ academic success included options such as
summarizing text, direct instruction for using specific strate-
gies, and a tendency to instruct students to employ the same
tactics and strategies across subjects and situations. And, in
spite of the rationale that cognitive psychology afforded for
using realistic situations, much of the research was still con-
ducted in laboratory contexts. It was only quite recently that
these methods changed.
Now, for example, the emphasis is more on examining
text from within the reader’s frame of reference than it is on
merely summarizing text; making strategies adaptive, func-
tional, and tailored to the individual learner is considered to