Chronometric Constructive Cognitive Learning Evaluation Model: Measuring the Construction of the Human Cognition Schema of Psychology Students

Abstract

This study measured the structural and organizational changes in the knowledge schema of human cognition in response to the learning achieved by 48 students enrolled in the second year of a psychology degree. Two studies were carried out based on the Chronometric Constructive Cognitive Learning Evaluation Model. This article deals only with the first one, which consisted of a conceptual definition task designed in line with the Natural Semantic Network technique. Participants defined ten target concepts with verbs, nouns, or adjectives (definers), and then weighed the grade of the semantic relationship between the definers and the target concepts. The data indicate that the initial knowledge structures had been modified towards the end of the course. The participants’ human cognition schema presented changes in terms of content, organization, and structure. This evidence supports the idea that the acquisition and transformation of the schemata learned in academic environments may be observed through cognitive science indicators.

The Measurement of Knowledge Construction in A Course of Diagnostic Evaluation of Learning Disorders in Psychology Students

“…Cognitive psychology includes a wide range of techniques used to create instruments that provide information about the state of a student's knowledge, before, during, and after a course. For example, Lopez-Ramirez and Morales-Martinez (2019), Lopez et al (2014), Morales & Lopez (2016), Morales-Martinez, Lopez-Perez, et al (2020), Morales-Martinez et al (2021), Morales et al (2017) and Morales-Martinez et al (2015) have proposed the Chronometric Constructive Cognitive Learning Evaluation Model (C3-LEM), which suggests the use of cognitive tools to measure the cognitive properties of knowledge schemas learned in an academic environment. For example, this model measures what content is in a student's memory, how it is organized and structured, the temporal and dynamic patterns of these knowledge structures, and other aspects of a student's knowledge state.…”

“…Constructive cognitive evaluation allows the changes in students' knowledge schema produced by the learning experiences to be measured. This kind of assessment involves applying a mental representation technique and computational simulations (Morales-Martinez et al, 2021;Morales-Martinez, Angeles-Castellanos, et al, 2020;Morales-Martinez, Lopez-Perez, et al, 2020). In this regard, the C3-LEM uses Natural Semantic Networks (NSNs) to explore the mental representation of academic knowledge.…”

“…Consequently, the construction of meaning from knowledge is a continuous process through time. The result of this learning process depends upon various factors as the prior knowledge that a student has at the beginning of a course (Morales-Martinez, Lopez-Perez, et al, 2020;Urdiales-Ibarra et al, 2018;Morales-Martinez et al, 2021), the student motivation to learn, the cognitive functioning level on which the course focuses (Morales, 2020), the distribution of topics during the course and the importance assigned to each topic (Morales-Martinez, Angeles-Castellanos, et al, 2020).…”

“…After the course, students have learned new information nodes, eliminated other nodes, and established new relationships between the nodes they assimilated from the course. These changes are specific indicators that the student has experienced a learning process due to the academic experiences during the course (Morales-Martinez et al, 2021). In addition, the NSNs technique has made it possible to identify difficulties in the integration of information in a unified schema in students with low academic performance and in beginners, when learning a topic (Morales-Martínez, Mezquita-Hoyos, et al, 2018;Morales-Martinez, Angeles-Castellanos, et al, 2020;Morales-Martinez, Lopez-Perez, et al, 2020;Urdiales-Ibarra et al, 2018).…”

“…Arieli-Attali (2013) points out that teaching exclusively for performance deprives teachers of valuable information which would allow them to make decisions about how to modify their instructional techniques. Therefore, the academic community has begun to recognize that the cognitive needs and characteristics of the student are central elements in the design of the teaching-learning-evaluation cycle (Morales-Martinez et al, 2021). In this regard, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2015) emphasizes that the design of learning evaluation tools demands a vision beyond knowledge measurement.…”