A COGNITIVE THEORY OF SCHOOL LEARNING’

DAVID P. AUSUBEL
City University of New York

The distinctive features of a cognitive learning theory as a theory of how learn-

ing takes place in school and similar learning environments, in my opinion, are that
it both (a) deals primarily with meaningful as opposed to rote learning, and (b)
emphasizes the salient role of the learner’s existing structure of knowledge in defining
the conditions, determinants, and outcomes of the acquisition and retention of
knowledge. I will devote most of this paper to the conditions of meaningful learning,
including the role played by cognitive structure in these conditions, and to the
significance of meaningful learning in acquiring knowledge, and discussing only
briefly, the attributes or variables of cognitive structure, or other cognitive variables,
that influence meaningful learning and retention.

THECONDITIONS OF MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Meaningful learning involves the acquisition of new meanings, and new mean-
ings, conversely, are the products of meaningful learning. That is, the emergence of
new meanings in the learner reflects the completion of a meaningful learning process.
The essence of the meaningful learning process is that symbolically expressed
ideas are related i n a nonarbitrary and substantive (nonverbatim) fashion to what
the learner already knows, namely, to some existing relevant aspect of his structure
of knowledge (e.g., an image, an already meaningful symbol, a concept, or a proposi-
tion). Meaningful learning presupposes both that the learner manifest a meaningful
learning set, that is, a disposition to relate the new material nonarbitrarily and
substantively to his cognitive structure, and that the material he learns be potentially
meaningful to him, namely, relatable to his structure of knowledge on a nonarbitrary
and nonverbatim basis (Ausubel, 1961). Thus, irrespective of how much potential
meaning may inhere in a particular proposition, if the learner’s intention is to
memorize it arbitrarily and verbatim (i.e., as a verbatim series of arbitrarily related
words), both the learning process and the learning outcome must be rote or meaning-
less. And, conversely, no matter how meaningful the learner’s set may be, neither
the process nor the outcome of learning can possibly be meaningful if the learning
task is not pot,entially meaningful, i.e., if it is not nonarbitrarily and substantively
relatable to his cognitive structure.
One reason why pupils commonly develop a rote learning set in relation to
potentially meaningful subject matter is because they learn from sad experience
that substantively correct answers, lacking in verbatim correspondence to what they
have been taught, receive no credit whatsoever from certain teachers. Another
reason is that because of a generally high level of anxiety, or because of chronic
failure experience in a given subject (reflective, in turn, of low aptitude or poor
teaching), they lack confidence in their ability to learn meaningfully, and hence
perceive no alternative to panic apart from rote learning. This phenomenon is very
familiar to mathematics teachers because of the widespread prevalence of “number
‘Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco,
September, 1968.
332 DAVID P. AUSUBEL

shock” or “number anxiety.” Lastly, pupils may develop a rote learning set if they
are under excessive pressure to exhibit glibness, or to conceal, rather than admit
and gradually remedy, original lack of genuine understanding. Under these cir-
cumstances it seems easier and more important to create a spurious impression of
facile comprehension, by rotely memorizing a few key terms or sentences, than to
try to understand what they mean. Teachers frequently forget that pupils become
very adept a t using abstract terms with apparent appropriateness -when they have
to-even though their understanding of the underlying concepts is virtually non-
existent.
Whether the learning task is potentially meaningful (nonarbitrarily and sub-
stantively relatable to the learner’s structure of knowledge) is a somewhat more
complex matter than meaningful learning set. At the very least, it obviously de-
pends on the two principal factors involved in establishing this kind of relationship,
that is, both on the nature of the material to be learned and on the nature of the
particular learner’s cognitive structure. Turning first to the nature of the material,
it must self-evidently be sufficiently nonarbitrary or nonrandom itself that it could
be related on a nonarbitrary and substantive basis to correspondingly relevant
ideas that lie within the real-m of human learning capability (i.e., to correspondingly
relevant ideas that a t least some human beings are capable of learning if given the
opportunity to do so). This property of the learning task itself that determines
whether or not it is potentially meaningful is referred to as logical meaningfulness;
it seldom, if ever, is sufficiently lacking in school learning tasks to preclude potential
meaningfulness, since subject-matter content, almost by definition, is logically
meaningful. Such is not the case, however, with respect to many laboratory and
everyday learning tasks (e.g., telephone numbers, paired adjectives, scrambled
sentences, lists of nonsense syllables) which are relatable to anyone’s cognitive
structure on only an arbitrary and verbatim basis.
The second factor determining whether learning material is potentially mean-
ingful is a function of the learner’s cognitive structure rather than of the learning
material. The acquisition of meanings as a natural phenomenon occurs in particular
human beings-not in mankind generally. Hence, for meaningful learning to occur
in fact, it is not sufficient that the new material simply be nonarbitrarily and sub-
stantively relatable to correspondingly relevant ideas in the abstract sense of the
term (i.e., to correspondingly relevant ideas that some human beings could learn
under appropriate circumstances) ; it is also necessary that such relevant ideational
content be available in the cognitive structure of the particular learner. It is ap-
parent, therefore, that insofar as meaningful learning outcomes in the classroom are
concerned, the availability, and other significant properties, of relevant content in
different learners’ cognitive structures constitute the most crucial and variable
determinants of potential meaningfulness. Thus it follows that the potential mean-
ingfulness of learning material varies not only with prior educational background,
but also with such factors as age, I&, occupation, and social class and cultural
membership.
What, precisely, is meant by the statement that for learning material to be
logically meaningful it must be nonarbitrarily and substantively relatable to cor-
respondingly relevant ideas that lie within human learning capacity? The first
criterion-nonarbitrary relatability-as suggested above, simply implies that if the
 A COGNITIVE THEORY OF SCHOOL LEARNING 333

material itself exhibits sufficient nonarbitrariness (or nonrandomness), an adequate

and almost self-evident basis exists for relating it in nonarbitrary fashion to the kinds
of correspondingly relevant ideas that human beings are capable of learning. Logic-
ally meaningful learning material could thus be nonarbitrarily relatable to speci$caZZy
relevant ideas as examples, derivatives, special cases, extensions, elaborations,
modifications, qualifications, and more inclusive generalizations; or it could be
relatable to a wider array of relevant ideas in the sense of being generally congruent
with them.
The second criterion-substantive relatability-implies that if the learning
material again is sufficiently nonarbitrary, an ideationally equivalent symbol
or group of symbols could be related to cognitive structure without any resulting
change in meaning. In other words, neither meaningful learning nor emergent
meaning are dependent on the exclusive use of particular signs and no others; the
same concept or proposition could be expressed in synonymous language and would
convey precisely the same meaning. Thus, for example, “canine,” hund, and chien
would elicit the same meanings as “dog” in a person who has a fair command of
English, German, and French; and “All of the internal angles of a triangle equal a
straight angle” would mean the same to most geometry students as “All of the
interior angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees.”
Rote learning tasks, of course, are not mastered in a cognitive vacuum. They
are relatable to cognitive structure but only in an arbitrary, verbatim fashion that
does not result in the acquisition of any meanings. Since, for example, the particular
stimulus and response members of a given pair of adjectives in paired-associate
learning are linked together in purely arbitrary fashion, there is no possible basis for
nonarbitrarily relating the learning task to anyone’s cognitive structure; and the
learner must also remember verbatim the response to each stimulus word (i.e., he
cannot use synonyms). This arbitrary and verbatim relatability of rote learning
tasks to cognitive structure does, of course, have certain significant consequences
for learning. First, since human cognitive equipment, unlike a computer, cannot
handle very efficiently information that is related to it on an arbitrary and verbatim
basis, only relatively short learning tasks can be internalized in this fashion, and
these can be retained for only short periods of time unless greatly overlearned.
Second, arbitrary and verbatim relatability to cognitive structure makes rote
learning tasks highly vulnerable to interference from previously learned and con-
currently encountered similar materials.
RELATIONSHIP OF MEANING TO MEANINGFUL LEARNING
Our discussion of meaningful learning thus far leads to the conclusion that
meaning itself is a product of the meaningful learning process, and refers to the
differentiated cognitive content evoked in a given learner by a particular symbol,
or group of symbols, after either of these expressions has been meaningfully learned.
Why this is the case can be deduced directly from what is involved in meaningful
learning. At the very onset of such learning, we start with a symbolic expression
that is only potentially meaningful to the learner or as yet has no actual meaning for
him. This expression is then nonarbitrarily and substantively related to, and cor-
respondingly interacts with, relevant ideas in his cognitive structure. At the con-
clusion of the learning process, therefore, it follows that the product of this inter-
334 DAVID P. AUSUBEL

action (which product is itself a differentiated cognitive content) constitutes the

meaning of the newly learned symbolic expression, and will henceforth be evoked
when the latter is presented.

THESIGNIFICANCE
OF MEANINGFUL
LEARNING
IN ACQUIRING
KNOWLEDGE
Meaningful learning is important in the process of education because it is the
human mechanism par excellence for acquiring and storing the vast quantity of
ideas and information represented by any field of knowledge. The acquisition and
retention of large bodies of subject matter is really a very impressive phenomenon
considering ( a ) that human beings, unlike computers, can apprehend, and im-
mediately remember, only a few discrete items of information that are presented
just a single time, and (b) that memory for rotely learned lists receiving multiple
presentations is notoriously limited both over time, and with respect to length of
list, unless greatly overlearned and frequently reproduced.
The tremendous efficiency of meaningful learning as an information-processing
and storing mechanism can be largely attributed to its two distinctive character-
istics, i.e., to the nonarbitrariness and substantiveness of the learning task’s re-
latability to cognitive structure. First, by nonarbitrarily relating potentially mean-
ingful material to relevant established ideas in his cognitive structure, the learner
is able effectively to exploit his existing knowledge as an ideational and organiza-
tional matrix for the incorporation, understanding, and fixation of large bodies of
new ideas. It is the very nonarbitrariness of this process that enables him to use his
previously acquired knowledge as a veritable touchstone, for internalizing and
making understandable, vast quantities of new word meanings, concepts, and pro-
positions, with relatively little effort and few repetitions. Because of this factor of
nonarbitrariness, the potential meaning of new ideas as wholes can be related to
established meanings (concepts, facts, and principles) as wholes to yield new mean-
ings. In other words, the only way it is possible to make use of previously learned
ideas in the processing (internalization) of new ideas is to relate the latter non-
arbitrarily to the former. The new ideas, which become meaningful, in turn, also
expand the base of the learning matrix.
When, on the other hand, learning material is arbitrarily related to cognitive
structure, no direct use whatsoever can be made of established knowledge in internal-
izing the learning task. At the very best, already meaningful components of the
learning task can be related to existing unitary ideas in cognitive structure (thereby
facilitating indirectly the rote learning of the task as a whole); but this in no way
either makes the newly-internalized arbitrary associations themselves relatable to
established content in cognitive structure or makes them usable in acquiring new
knowledge. And because the human mind is not efficiently designed to interiorize
and store arbitrary associations, this approach permits only very limited amounts of
material to be internalized and retained, and then only after much effortful repetition.
Also, the very fact that a new idea becomes meaningful (i.e., becomes a clear,
differentiated, and sharply articulated content of awareness) after it is meaningfully
learned, presumably makes it intrinsically less vulnerable, than internalized arbi-
trary associations are, to interference from other arbitrary associations, and hence
makes it more retainable.
 A COGNITIVE THEORY OF SCHOOL LEARNING 335

Second, the substantive or nonverbatim nature of thus relating new material to,
and incorporating it within, cognitive structure circumvents the drastic limitations
imposed by the short item and time spans of rote memory on the processing and
storing of information. Much more can obviously be apprehended and retained if
the learner is required only to assimilate the substance of ideas rather than the
precise words used in expressing them.

THEROLEOF COGNITIVE STRUCTURE IN

MEANINGFUL LEARNING AND RETENTION
It follows from the very nature of accretion to the psychological structure of
knowledge, through the assimilation process, that existing cognitive structure ikelf-
both the substantive content of an individual’s structure of knowledge and its
major organizational properties in a particular subject-matter field at any given
time-is the principal factor influencing meaningful learning and retention in this
same field. Since logically meaningful material is always, and can only be, learned
in relation to a previously learned background of relevant concepts, principles, and
information, which make possible the emergence of new meanings and enhance their
retention, it is evident that the substantive and organizational properties of this
background crucially affect both the accuracy and the clarity of these emerging
new meanings and their immediate and long-term retrievability. If cognitive struc-
ture is clear, stable, and suitably organized, accurate and unambiguous meanings
emerge, and tend to retain their dissociability strength or availability. If, on the
other hand, cognitive structure is unstable, ambiguous, disorganized, or chaotically
organized, it tends to inhibit meaningful learning and retention. Thus, it is largely
by strengthening relevant aspects of cognitive structure that new learning and
retention can be facilitated.
It is, therefore, a commonplace that the details of a given discipline are learned
as rapidly as they can be fitted into a contextual framework consisting of a stable
and appropriate body of general concepts and principles. When we deliberately
attempt t o influence cognitive structure so as to maximize meaningful learning and
retention, we come to the heart of the educative process.
In my opinion, the most significant advances that have occurred in recent years
in the teaching of such subjects as mathematics, chemistry, physics, and biology
have been predicated on the assumption that efficient learning and functional re-
tention of ideas and information are largely dependent upon the adequacy of cogni-
tive structure. And since existing cognitive structure reflects the outcome of all
previous assimilation processes, it, in turn, can be influenced, substantively, by the
inclusiveness and integrative properties of the particular unifying and explanatory
principles used in a given discipline, and, programmatically, by methods of present-
ing, arranging, and ordering learning materials and practice trials. How this is done,
however, is a long and as yet undetermined story, and in any case, the subject for
another paper.

REFERENCE
AUSUNEL,I). P. In defense of verbal learning. Edllcatiacrl Theory, 1961, 11, 15-25.