The mystery of cognitive structure and how we can detect it: tracking the development of cognitive structures over time Dirk Ifenthaler Æ Iskandaria Masduki Æ Norbert M. Seel Received: 7 July 2008 / Accepted: 1 April 2009 / Published online: 16 April 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Many research studies have clearly demonstrated the importance of cognitive structures as the building blocks of meaningful learning and retention of instructional materials. Identifying the learners’ cognitive structures will help instructors to organize materials, identify knowledge gaps, and relate new materials to existing slots or anchors within the learners’ cognitive structures. The purpose of our empirical investigation is to track the development of cognitive structures over time. Accordingly, we demonstrate how various indicators derived from graph theory can be used for a precise description and analysis of cognitive structures. Our results revealed several patterns that helped us to better understand the construction and development of cognitive structures over time. We conclude by identifying applications of our approach for learning and instruction and proposing possibilities for the further development of our approach. Keywords Cognitive structure  Mental model  Concept map  Hierarchical linear model Introduction Many research studies have clearly demonstrated the importance of cognitive structures, which refer to how concepts within a domain are organized and interrelated within a person’s mind as the building blocks of meaningful learning and retention of instructional materials (Shavelson 1974; Snow and Lohman 1989). Ausubel (1963) highlighted the importance of this hypothetical construct as the principal factor in the accumulation of knowledge: ‘‘If existing cognitive structure is clear, stable, and suitably organized, it facilitates the learning and retention of new subject matter. If it is unstable, ambiguous, disorganized, or chaotically organized; it inhibits learning and retention’’ (p. 217). D. Ifenthaler (&)  N. M. Seel Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany e-mail: ifenthaler@ezw.uni-freiburg.de I. Masduki Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA 123 Instr Sci (2011) 39:41–61 DOI 10.1007/s11251-009-9097-6