Recall of Key Words as a Function of Bloom's Cognitive Level |
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| Authors: | Gaye Rosen Robert Solman |
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| Institution: | University of New South Wales , Australia |
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| Abstract: | Two experiments were designed to pursue the levels of processing analysis of Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain proposed by Kunen, Cohen & Solman (1981). In the first experiment four groups of students processed 20 principles at the levels of knowledge, application, synthesis and evaluation respectively. The times required by students in the first two of these groups were significantly shorter than the times required by the last two groups, but in conrast to the Kunen et al. study, no mathematical problems were included to correct for these differences. The percentages of correctly recalled principle names showed the same pattern of differences as previously obtained by Kunen et al. for their Australian sample and it was concluded that the interpolated problems used by these authors had not interfered with performance. However, since the levels of performance did not differ for application and synthesis (although they were superior to the levels obtained for knowledge and evaluation), the results did not unambiguously indicate that synthesis should occupy the pinnacle of the hierarchy. It was suggested, therefore, that a precise ordering of the taxonomic levels required further investigation including all six categories. Also, observation of the questions used for the knowledge category, suggested that the recall scores obtained at this level were an underestimate of incidental memory, and, as a consequence, these questions were revised for use in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the revised knowledge questions improved recall and the actual level of performance did not differ significantly from the levels obtained for comprehension, synthesis and evaluation. The percentage of recalled words obtained in the synthesis category was, however, observably superior to all other levels and this was consistent with the similar Kunen et al. finding. However, since the results of both of the present experiments failed to support a hierarchical arrangement of the taxonomic levels, it was suggested that the Kunen et al. results should be interpreted with caution. |
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