Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

Cognition and Our Environment [WLOs: 1, 2, 5] [CLOs: 1, 4, 5, 6]

Prior to engaging in this discussion, read Chapter 4: Cognition, Learning, and the Environment in your required text, review the article Socially Situated Cognition in Perspective and the instructor guidance, and view the video What Are Schemas? (Links to an external site.)

Cognition incorporates numerous variables that may affect how we learn. For this discussion address the following:

• Explain social cognitive theory (SCT).
• Evaluate the applicability of SCT to a real-life experience.
  • Hint: Is there something you know about or a behavior that you display that was learned from your social environment? Were you modeled this behavior? Did the learned knowledge or behavior have consequences that encouraged you to adopt it?
• Evaluate your example by answering the following questions:
  • How does your learned knowledge or behavior potentially affect your developed schemata?
  • What if you learned that this knowledge or behavior was not accurate?
  • How hard would it be to adapt or accommodate?
• SCT suggests that the environment affects our knowledge or behaviors. What does reciprocal determinism suggest and why is this important?
• Share an example from your own experiences of reciprocal determinism.

Your initial post should be between 350 and 400 words. You must support your discussion by citing the required textbook. Cite all information from your sources according to APA guidelines as outlined in the APA Citing Within Your Papers (Links to an external site.) resource. List each of your sources at the end of your posting according to APA Style as shown in the sample page for APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource.

Guided Peer Responses: Read several of your classmates’ posts and respond to at least two of your classmates, and at least one of your classmates’ responses to your initial post, by Day 7 (Monday). Each peer posting should be a minimum of 200 words. Monitor this forum throughout the week to create interactive dialogue to help develop your knowledge.

Discuss the following:

• Determine if your peers’ examples are accurate.
• Discuss how the information you have learned this week has built on the concepts from previous weeks and why this understanding helps to build your expertise.
• Share resources that you used to help you understand the content more effectively.

Instructor Responses: Review any instructor feedback on your postings. Often feedback is shared to help you to elevate your level of critical thought or make corrections. Reply based on this feedback to advance your understanding of the content addressed.

In addition, observe the following guidelines for all responses:

• Remember that discussion forums should be conversations; dialogue is encouraged throughout the course.
• Provide a courteous and interactive learning environment.
• Continue to monitor this discussion through 5:00 p.m. (Mountain Time) on Day 7 of the week, and reply to anyone (instructor or classmate) who has chosen to respond to your original post.
• Your grade will reflect the quality of your initial post, the depth of your peer replies, and your active support of forum dialogue.
• Your responses should demonstrate that you have read the existing replies in the forum. (In your response, mention information and viewpoints already expressed by existing responses to the same post.)