The effect of instruction on the cognitive structure of statistical and psychometric concepts

Administered a questionnaire made up of pairs of concepts to be judged for similarity to 39 graduate students before and after they had taken a course on educational testing and measurement. The judgment of all possible pairs of 13 concepts was analyzed using an individual differences model for multidimensional scaling. Instruction produced a more highly organized and smaller cognitive structure than had existed previously. This result appeared to be due, at least in part, to the fact that many concept pairs were judged to be more dissimilar after the course than before. (French summary) (24 ref)