Diagnose lernabhängiger Veränderung mentaler Modelle : Entwicklung der SMD-Technologie als methodologisches Verfahren zur relationalen, strukturellen und semantischen Analyse individueller Modellkonstruktionen

Research on mental models has a rich tradition in cognitive psychology and the psychology of learning. Johnson-Laird (1983) and Gentner & Stevens (1983) were the first authors to attrib-ute special significance to mental models in their publications. Seel (1991) then expanded on these ideas in the German-speaking world with an extensive treatise on Knowledge of the world and mental models. The significance of this research approach has since been confirmed in numerous subsequent publications (Dinter, 1993; Dutke, 1994; Seel, 1999a; Al-Diban, 2002; Held et al., 2006). In the present study, I would like to contribute to this discussion from a methodological per-spective. The central assumption of the study is that an objective, reliable, and valid diagnosis of learning-dependent change in mental models requires not only theoretical examination of the construct of mental models but also the development of an instrument for their diagnosis (see Ifenthaler & Seel, 2005). The newly developed SMD technology enables the automated and com-puter-aided diagnosis of externalized models independent of content domain. The externalized models are diagnosed on three levels, each with a different focus. The central research question as to whether, and if so how, mental models change in the course of the learning process is investigated in three experimental studies (N = 106). The longi-tudinal design of the studies enables a precise diagnosis across a total of seven points of meas-urement. In addition, experimental variations and differences between study groups allow an analysis of pedagogical interventions during the learning process. The results demonstrate that the SMD technology enables a precise diagnosis of learning-dependent changes in mental models on all three levels: surface structure, matching structure, and deep structure. It was possible in the three experimental studies to detect a learning-dependent change in mental models on the relational and the structural level. Additionally, the semantic structure of the externalized models proved to be more closely similar to the explanation model than to the expert model. The study concludes with a discussion of the empirical findings and a research outlook which clearly demarcates their range of application. Last but not least, it is shown that the empiri-cal findings open up further fields of research and potential for promising developments in men-tal model research.