An extensive review of the research on training lower aptitude personnel conducted prior to, during, and after Project 100,000 synthesizes a large body of military research concerned with a functional context approach to technical and literacy training.⁶ Spanning almost half a century, the military research on education and training, when integrated with research in contemporary cognitive science provides an empirical base for a functional context theory of cognitive development, learning, and instruction. This theory is sketched in broad outline below.

Functional Context Theory

The functional context theory (FCT) of cognitive development, learning, and instruction stands in contrast to theories that maintain that cognitive or intellectual development proceeds in a predetermined manner through a series of stages or phases that are similar to those of embryological growth and are relatively independent of the environmental context in which the person is living. The earlier Piagetian theory, and strong hereditarian theories of intelligence are examples of contrast theories to FCT (see Rogoff⁷ for an extended discussion of the limits of "embryological" theories of cognitive growth and the importance of context in cognitive development ).

Briefly stated, FCT maintains that the biological make-up of human beings, the environmental contexts in which they function, and the psychological context of their minds determines what will be learned, how it will be learned, and how the reaming will be used (transfer). Cognitive development is the change in the cognitive system that results from changes in the anatomy and physiology of the human brain as it grows, develops, and deteriorates in later life, from the processing of information by the brain but manifested in a mental context called the mind and from the processing of information extracted from the environment in which the person lives. There are, therefore, three concepts of "context." Two of these are "inside" the person. One is the biological, physiological context of the body and brain. The second is the mental context of the mind in which the person's psychological life is constructed. The third concept of context refers to the world "outside" the person. This is the physical and social world in which the person lives; the external environment.

The internal environment or context, which is generally referred to as "mind," is both the result of and the cause of cognitive development through experience. In FCT that aspect of mind involved in learning and cognitive development is referred to as the human cognitive system, and includes three major components of the cognitive system: the sensory-perceptual-memory subsystems (see Figure 5.1). The memory subsystem is further analyzed into two aspects: the knowledge base or long term memory, and the working or short term memory. The working memory is where active thinking takes place. Thinking processes lead us to pick-up information from the outside environment and the internal knowledge base and combine these two sources of information to construct our understanding of the world at a particular moment. These cognitive information processing activities are preceded by, accompanied by and followed by psychophysiological processes that provide an emotional context for learning and behaving.