Learning begins with our senses. Our brain receives stimuli from the world around us through our senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. The stimuli that we receive are then transmitted to our brain. After passing through a series of operations, the stimulus is brought to the brain-mind interface, where it is filtered by our individual learning processes.

The make-up of our learning patterns forms the mesh through which the stimulus is communicated to the mind. Therefore, persons with different learning patterns are going to react very differently to the same stimulus. For instance, let us say that the stimulus is a story being read out. The stimulus is going in through the sense of hearing. A person with high precision (wide mesh/filter) will ‘hear’ the details and the use of words within the story. If that same person has low sequence (narrow mesh/filter) he/she will not pay attention to the sequence of events in the story. On the other hand, a person with high confluence will ‘hear’ the ideas of the story, and so on. Of course, the four learning patterns of an individual have to be taken into consideration.

The stimulus which makes it through this interface is then passed on to our working memory to become part of our consciousness or sub-consciousness.

The Interactive Learning Model depicts our learning patterns as having a unique culture of Cognition, Conation and Affectation within each of them. Dr. Johnston asserts that these three faculties of the mind are Interactive, and the nature of this interaction builds the basis of the learner’s motivation.

Cognition is where we process information. Cognitive aptitude includes evidence of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1995) and an array of a person’s life experiences.

Conation guides performance. The learner has his/her own pace of performance, his/her own level of energy. It also consists of an individual’s natural skill and the desire to work alone or in groups.

Affectation is the sense of self when learners are engaged in assignments. There is an increasing movement in research maintaining that feelings strongly affect the Learning Process. While closely related to self-esteem, affectation is a measure of confidence. When the learner is given occasions to use conative tools in conjunction to the cognitive process, the learner develops willingness to continue learning.