Piaget suggested that children, and perhaps all learners, have an inherent desire to understand the world around them or at least to reach a point where they have some balance or organization of their understanding that they are satisfied with. Piaget called this state of feeling that one has a stable and sufficient amount of knowledge to explain what one is experiencing "equilibrium". In equilibration, a learner feels balanced and is content with what she knows. If a learner believes that her knowledge is sufficient, then she will not be motivated to learn more. Likewise, if the learner feels that she does not have sufficient knowledge to explain the world around her, then she will be motivated to fill that gap in her knowledge; this state is called "disequilibrium" – a state of unbalance or uncertainty. Therefore, motivation, according to cognitive psychology is an innate desire to make sense of the world around us and assimilate new experiences into our existing schema.

A sense of equilibration may be reached only when a learner assimilates a new experience that disturbed or challenged her existing knowledge or understanding of the world into her existing schema. For example, at an early stage of cognitive development babies may believe that the only things that exist are the things they see right in front of their face. Eventually when they get strong enough to turn their head they are surprised to find the scenery around them changing. They are amazed to see new things coming into existence and others disappearing. When they hear their mother’s voice and then turn their head to the direction of the sound they are amazed to find out that their mother appears. At this point it is necessary that they assimilate this experience into their existing understanding of the world around them. They may do this by actually experimenting with the world around them by moving their head and changing their view. Eventually they come to realize that things may still exist even if they cannot see them. For a learner such as this, making sense of the new experience may require that they change their entire understanding of the world around them. Until the learner makes sense of the new experience that challenges her, she may not be satisfied and is in a state of unbalance or "disequilibrium".

We can see the same process at work in children learning their first language. They may perhaps develop a concept on their own such as the concept of a dog (the four-legged furry creature in their house), and then test that concept out to find its semantic limitations. A child may at first experience a dog in her own home but know it only by its name, "Rex". Later, when the child is out with her mother she may see another dog for the first time. She may test her understanding by saying to her mother, "Look mommy! It’s Rex!" Her mother will of course respond by telling her child that it is not Rex but is "just another dog". This new experience will in turn pose a cognitive conflict for the child, throwing her into disequilibrium. She must then find a way to make sense out of this new experience and, if she is developmentally ready, may begin by testing the concept again. For example, when another dog comes she will ask her mother, "Is that a dog too?", and her mother will say "yes". Likewise, when she sees her first cat and asks her mother if it is also a dog, her mother will tell her "no". In this way, the child tests and redefines the world around her, constantly reorganizing her existing knowledge structure.

It is believed that this sort of motivation is innate and biologically programmed, but unlike other animals, our motivation is a desire to make sense of the world around us not just to fulfill our physiological needs. Many of the things we do are motivated purely by curiosity. Humans have a biological urge to explore or simply have fun with their knowledge by manipulating the world around them and testing what they know. This is in strong contrast to behavioral theories of motivation and learning because the cognitive view implies that learning need no reinforcement in order to sustain its motivation. The cognitive view of motivation is in that sense purely intrinsic although it is still believed that learning may be inspired or stimulated by the environment around it. Under ideal circumstances, learning is done for the sake of learning and self-discovery. In summary, the cognitive view does not believe it is necessary to reward students for learning, that learning is in itself a reward. This explains why learners continue to try to learn, even if they are not being rewarded and in fact may be getting punished for their persistence.

Therefore, in light of this definition of motivation, teachers can motivate their students by providing them with experiences that challenge their existing knowledge or understanding of the world around them and then help them to learn how to solve these problems and investigate these phenomenon on their own. In this sense, a teacher’s job is to pose a cognitive conflict to the learner that will put her in disequilibrium, and then give her the means to get out of it on her own. Bruner suggests that teachers let the students discover something that motivates them to want to know more about the topic, revise their perceptions about the topic or recognize gaps in their thinking or knowledge structure which they will in turn feel the need to fill. For example, in language learning, students can be motivated by authentic language situations in which they must do something with their language. When the learner realizes that she does not have the means to complete that task, she may be more motivated to learn the words or forms she needs to do so. Essentially, learners can be motivated simply by realizing that there is still more that needs to be learned.

The behavioral view of motivation in human learning is essentially one of extrinsic motivation, one in which the learners continued effort is completely dependent upon the outcomes. In the behavioral view, learners are taught or "conditioned" by stimuli in their environment. In that sense, their motivation is merely a response to their environment as they learn may be how to get desired stimuli or escape unpleasant stimuli. The most extreme of these "conditioning" models of learning is respondent conditioning, then comes operant conditioning and social learning in which the learner’s motivation becomes more a matter of choice and preference as to how she would like to exercise her will.

Respondent conditioning, also known as Pavlovian conditioning, explains motivation merely as environmental stimuli that control the responses of the learner. In this view of learning, the learner plays no role except to react, often involuntarily to some stimuli. Motivation in this sense could be candy in one case or electric shock in another. For example, Pavlov in his experiments discovered that if a dog heard a bell ring each time before he was fed, the dog would soon start to associate the bell with eating and eventually start salivating merely at the sound of the bell. In this sense, the dog’s learning is nothing more than its being conditioned to respond to the bell by salivating. The dog may do so involuntarily and it is not necessary for the dog to even know why it is salivating. Likewise, Pavlov believed that human learning could be "scientifically" explained much the same way. It was believed that children could systematically be taught to act appropriately if they were rewarded or punished for their behavior. A human example of this kind of learning would be to make sure children always have fun and enjoy their English class so they will eventually learn to associate English with fun and enjoyment; and therefore, be more motivated to learn English in the future. As appealing as this model may seem, it comes short of explaining human motivation and learning because it describes the learner only as a passive entity in the process of learning, merely being taught to respond and in no way creative, inventive or willful.

Operant conditioning however stresses the role of the learner in learning how to operate on her world, but still requires that her behavior be reinforced for her motivation to continue. B.F. Skinner believed this model of learning could be used to design a scientific method of education in which good behavior and even creativity would be reinforced. In his model of learning, the learner acts on the world around her to either get something (i.e. positive reinforcement) or to avoid something (i.e. negative reinforcement). For example, a young girl might learn that she can get candy from the locals by speaking to strangers. Each time she is successful, her habit is further reinforced. In other cases she might learn that she can avoid doing her homework by pretending to be sick. Each time she succeeds in getting what she wants, her habit is further reinforced. This model of human learning has a flaw however, it cannot explain why some people continue to do something when they are no longer being reinforced or why some people continue to do something even though they are being punished. This model of learning’s shortcomings may arise out of its narrow focus only on extrinsic motivation and its lack of concern over what is going on in the mind of the learner.

Bandura’s social learning theory stresses the role of imitation and modeling and by doing so broadens the narrow vision of behaviorism to include human relationships as a source of motivation, but still however, attempts to explain all motivation in terms of extrinsic factors. For example, if a student likes a particular teacher very much, then she may try to be more like that teacher. The same example could be used in language learning to explain that learners who admire or respect a certain person who speaks another language will be much more motivated to speak that language. This type of motivation, although still extrinsic, borders on the types of integrative motivation mentioned by cognitivists such as Gardener or Schumman but maintains its behavioral nature in that the learner is not creating but merely imitating someone and is still dependent upon her environment to provide the motivation to learn.

Critics of the behavioral models of learning look negatively towards its failure to account for intrinsic motivation and those learners who continue to be motivated despite the complete lack of encouragement in the environment. Learners such as those who come out of the ghetto reading books despite pressures from their peers or even their families to stop cannot be explained only by extrinsic motivation. Without intrinsic motivation, we cannot account for people such as Galileo, who continued to learn, motivated purely by a desire to understand their universe, even at the risk of being accused of witchcraft and killed.