Análisis de procesos cognitivos en el comportamiento de estudiantes de último curso de bachillerato y primer curso de carrera involucrados en tareas de clasificación, cálculo, memorización y categorización de información

Abstract

This paper offers and analysis of the cognitive processes entailed in classification, mathematical calculation, memorization and categorization tasks. Empirical studies of information seeking behaviors commonly ask participants to do complex tasks. As a result, only general cognitive strategies may be deduced about information seeking behaviors. To these question in greater depth, this research breaks down the information behavior into atomized tasks reflecting cognitive processes. Three data collection techniques were employed: log files, video recording and in-depth interviews. Grounded Theory was employed as a data analysis method, allowing researchers to discern the behaviors of subjects. The study uncovered several cognitive processes as the main components of simple information-seeking tasks. Moreover, these cognitive processes constitute the core of the subjects’ behaviors of the participants. This study supports the furtherance theoretical models of behaviors for several information-seeking tasks, understood as chain of cognitive processes. Some of these cognitive processes apparently are common to entirely distinct tasks, such as classification, memorization and categorization.