Memory content of scientific concepts in beginning university science students Geral Mateus a and Jose Otero b * a Departamento de Lenguas, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia; b Universidad de Alcalá, Física, Alcalá de Henares, Spain (Received 2 October 2010; final version received 26 May 2011) This study examines the characteristics of the content of scientific concepts stored in memory by beginning university science students. The features of this representation are examined and compared to the memory content of abstract non-scientific concepts shown by previous studies. Property generation task, a tool extensively used in identifying conceptual content, was used for this pur- pose. The findings show that the content of scientific concepts stored in memory by beginning university students is characterised by a predominance of entity properties along with, to a lesser extent, situation and introspective properties. This stands in contrast to previous findings about non-scientific abstract con- cepts, where situation properties are predominant. The implications of this find- ing on the acquisition and use of scientific concepts are discussed. Keywords: scientific concepts; concept properties; knowledge representation; memory content Concepts are fundamental entities in cognition. Accordingly, much research has been done on their structure and on the processes involved in their acquisition and use, both in psychology and in education (Carey, 1985; Margolis & Laurence, 1999; Medin & Rips, 2005; Murphy, 2002; Ram, Nersessian, & Keil, 1997; Scott, Asoko, & Leach, 2007; Vosniadou, 2008). Many studies have specifically dealt with scientific concepts. Among them, those studies involving students at the secondary or tertiary level have focused on two main types of problems. The first type includes the numerous studies, mainly descriptive, about spontaneous or naïve con- ceptions that interfere with scientifically accepted concepts (for reviews see Duit, 2010; Monk & Osborne, 2000; Wandersee & Mintzes, 1994). In the other main group of studies there is less emphasis on describing students’ misconceptions, and, instead, authors examine the identification and application of scientific concepts in particular situations or in problem-solving tasks (Ploetzner & VanLehn, 1997; Reif, 1987, 1995; Reif & Allen, 1992). This study examines the features of scientific concepts from a different perspec- tive. The memory content of scientific concepts is analysed using a property genera- tion task and this is compared with results obtained in similar analyses performed on non-scientific concepts. The purpose is to shed light on how scientific concepts *Corresponding author. Email: jose.otero@uah.es Educational PsychologyAquatic Insects Vol. 31, No. 6, October 2011, 675–690 ISSN 0144-3410 print/ISSN 1469-5820 online Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2011.592489 http://www.informaworld.com