Cognitive perspectives and IRT models in the development of achievement tests: A preliminary exploration of information functions

Achievement tests are good tools to implement the new psychometric technolo gies which are playing an important role in the modern definition of achiev ement. The view of achievement has changed from the behaviourism, which use d to view it as the measurement of overt behaviours without reference to in ternal cognitive processes, until nowadays in which from both, Cognitive Ps ychology and Performance Assessment movements, the need to explore the inte rnal processes brought into play by the examinee is considered as necessary . From this current view achievement is assimilated to the measurement of t he mental structure of a knowledge structure. Item response theory is the b asic instrument for scaling individual knowledge. This is a preliminary stu dy in which we explore the information functions of several IRT models as s caling models of complex knowledge. We standardize the concept of mental mo del, coming from performance assessment, asking a relatedness (5 point scal e) judgement from the examinee for all pairs of a series of concepts. In th is work we explore and compare the information functions of several politom ous models, and one dichotomous model (two parameter model). Results show t hat generalised partial credit model is appropriate to measure this new con ception of achievement.