A Mechanism That Necessarily Exists in Humans: The Learning-and-Cognition Instinct — What It Does in Growth
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Everything an adult can do and know was added after birth. Between nothing and something, a mechanism must perform the addition. This paper names it, provisionally, the learning-and-cognition instinct, and argues that it necessarily exists: innate equipment leaves the third slot blank — no inborn knowledge, cleverness or diligence. Take the mechanism away and the blank bin has no supplier: an infant who cannot register who feeds him or which sound means danger cannot learn at all, and does not live past his first months. The mechanism runs in three layers. Intake: the five senses are doors, and the doors standing open is observation — cognition itself; see a tree, and the tree is just as it is: self-arriving. Processing: comparison, summarization and induction remake the material; this layer opens untaught — it is driven by the learning instinct, its companion. Application: analysis and judgment assign the remade item; its exit is behaviour. Unprocessed intake serves neither growth nor work nor study, hence the layering. Cognition and thinking are not one road: thinking is a complex, person-driven process working on items already stored. Cognition decides the warehouse thinking draws from; thinking never goes restocking. Language acquisition is the whole-course example: four steps, none through a classroom, errors wrong by the book. Schoolwork is the same mechanism taking new piecework; when it fails, check the chain, not the child's talent. Falsifiers are handed over item by item; no timetable, no normative value.
Author: Wu, Yang
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225465850