Educational Psychology: Concept Formation and Concept Assimilation-2020 Tianjin Teacher Recruitment

(1) What is concept formation

Concept formation refers to the process by which people grasp the same essential characteristics or attributes of similar objective things or phenomena and their internal connections. The operational definition of concept mastery is that a person has learned to correctly classify similar objective things according to certain rules. For example, primary school students are presented with various relationships between two straight lines, telling them which ones are vertical and which are not vertical. When they can correctly distinguish vertical (positive) and non-vertical situations (negative), they have mastered the relationship between? The concept of vertical? Discovery learning is the typical way concepts are formed.

Concept formation is not static. With the progress of society and the development of science and technology, the connotation and denotation of concepts will also undergo great changes. For example, in ancient times, people thought that the earth was flat, but later realized that it was spherical. In the past, atoms were regarded as the smallest unit of matter, but now they realize that atoms can be divided into more microscopic structures. Not only will the existing concepts become increasingly perfect, and false concepts such as "phlogiston" and "ether" will be eliminated, but also with the continuous discovery of new substances and the rapid development of science and technology, many new concepts will also be produced.

Concept formation generally goes through three stages:

The first stage: abstraction. The first thing to form a concept is to understand the attributes or characteristics of objective things, so it is necessary to abstract the various characteristics and attributes of specific things. If someone lacks this abstract ability, the concept cannot be separated from the specific thing itself, and it cannot generalize other similar specific things.

The second stage: generalization. People classify various attributes and characteristics of objective things. To master concepts, in addition to extracting identical attributes or characteristics from specific things, it is also necessary to classify similar attributes or characteristics. When making generalizations, the similarities or similarities of certain attributes or characteristics of objective things must be classified, while the differences in non-essential characteristics or attributes between things must be ignored.

The third stage: identification. The individual's ability to distinguish objective things is an important step in mastering concepts. Discrimination permeates the entire process of concept mastery, from discovering the attributes or characteristics of objective things (abstraction), to identifying with these attributes or characteristics (generalization), and then transitioning to understanding the differences between the attributes or characteristics of objective things (abstraction) distinguish).

(2) Concept assimilation

The main form through which students acquire concepts is concept assimilation. The so-called concept assimilation is a way of using the original concepts in the learner's cognitive structure to directly prompt the learner with the key features of the concept in a defined way, so that the learner can acquire the concept. Receptive learning is a typical way of conceptual assimilation.

Presentation of example questions

1. Learners can analyze various examples of similar things and compare the differences with other things, thereby discovering the unique and key characteristics of such things. . This method is called ( ).

A. Concept learning B. Concept formation C. Concept assimilation D. Concept acquisition

Answer B. Analysis: Concept formation refers to the process in which people grasp the same essential characteristics or attributes of similar objective things or phenomena and their internal connections. The question stem is the definition of concept formation.

2. The process of students judging whether certain animals are reptiles based on the key characteristics of reptiles is ().

A. Abstraction B. Generalization

C. Generalization D. Differentiation

Answer B. Analysis: Generalization theory means that by generalizing existing experience, the transfer from one situation to another can be completed. The question asks middle school students to judge whether certain animals are reptiles based on the key characteristics of reptiles, which is the generalization theory. Option B is correct. Item A: Abstraction is the action or process of visually extracting or considering the same properties or characteristics of several different objects in isolation. If it does not match the question, it will be excluded. Item C: Generalization is a thinking method that summarizes general concepts, principles or conclusions from many individual things. If it does not match the question, it will be excluded.

Item D: Differentiation refers to the process of making an organism learn to respond differently to conditioned stimuli and stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus through selective reinforcement and extinction. If it does not match the question, it will be excluded. Therefore the correct answer is B.

Analysis