A Vygotskian approach to assessment is proposed by invoking the distinction between the development of lower and higher psychological functions. Higher psychological functions are specifically human and develop with the use of cultural tools via mediation. Accordingly, a distinction is made between tests that are based on association, which have…

Three experiments investigated the learning of simple associations in a color-word contingency task. Participants responded manually to the print colors of 3 words, with each word associated strongly to 1 of the 3 colors and weakly to the other 2 colors. Despite the words being irrelevant, response times to high-contingency stimuli and to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how associationism mistakenly assumes that direct experience is possible; that is, there is expectation-free observation and association without prior expectation. Thus, associationism assumes that learning involves the absorption of information from the environment itself. However, contrary…

The present research approached a problem which has a twofold aspect: the concept of angle and the techniques needed to represent how pupils construct that concept in their cognitive structure during their years in school. In order to access the knowledge of the concept of angle, we used the pathfinder associative networks. This technique provided…

The contributions of psychology, theoretically and experimentally, to university teaching are examined from the perspective of educational epistemology. The most basic theoretical contribution that psychology has made to cognitive learning has been the delineation of a unit of thinking, the concept, which acts as an organizer of experience. The…