Question

Describe the behavioral domains of learning. What is the difference between atomistic, analytic, and holistic behavioral assessments?

Answer 1

There are three domains of learning-

1. Cognitive (thinking),

2. Affective (emotion/feeling), and

3. Psychomotor (physical/kinesthetic).

1. COGNITIVE

Behavioral objectives that dealt with cognition could be divided into subsets-

Remembering: The first subset is remembering, which means recognizing or recalling knowledge from memory. Remembering is when memory is used to produce or retrieve definitions, facts, or lists, and also includes reciting previously learned information.

Understanding: This subset includes the construction of meaning from different types of functions be they written or graphic messages, or activities like interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, or explaining.

Applying: Here, we carry out or use a procedure through executing, or implementing. Applying relates to or refers to situations where learned material is used through products like models, presentations, interviews or simulations.   

Analyzing: This includes breaking materials or concepts into parts, determining how the parts relate to one another or how the parts relate to an overall structure or purpose. Mental actions included in this function are differentiating, organizing, and attributing, as well as being able to distinguish between the components or parts.

Evaluating: Evaluating includes making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing. Critiques, recommendations, and reports are some of the products that can be created to demonstrate the processes of evaluation.  

Creating: Crating includes putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing. It requires users to put parts together in a new way, or into something new and different thus creating a new form or product. This process is the most difficult mental function.

2. AFFECTIVE

This domain is concerned with feelings and emotions and can be divided into the following subsets-

Receiving: This refers to how sensitive and responding the learner is to a stimuli, based on the awareness of the stimuli, the sensitivity to receive and selected attention. It includes feeling, sensing, capturing, experiencing and pursuing, attending and perceiving a new stimuli.

Responding: This refers to the learner's attention to a stimuli and their motivation to learn, including feelings of satisfaction, acquiescence, and willing responses. It includes how cooperative the learner is, how much s/he contributes and enjoys.

Valuing: This includes the learner's beliefs and values, and his/her acceptance, commitment and preference to a value.

Organisation: This includes the learner's internalization of values and beliefs. As the beliefs and values get internalized, they also get organised according to priority.

Characterization:   This relates to the learner's behavior that reflects his/her generalized set of values and a philosophy of life. The learner is now capable of acting upon his/her belief system.

3.PSYCHOMOTOR

Psychomotor objectives are those specific to physical functions, reflex actions and movements. These objectives are concerned with physically encoding information, with movement and/or activities, where the muscles are used for expressing information.

Reflex movements

This include reflexes that involve the spine (e.g., involuntary muscle contraction). These movements are involuntary, being present at birth or emerging through maturation.

Fundamental movements

This refers to movements or behaviors related to walking, running, jumping, pushing, pulling and manipulating. They are components for more complex actions.

Perceptual abilities

This area includes skills related to kinesthetic (bodily movements), based on the sensory organs, that is, visual, auditory, tactile (touch), or coordination abilities as they are related to the ability to take in information from the environment and react.

Physical abilities

This area is related to endurance, flexibility, agility, strength, reaction-response time or dexterity.

Skilled movements

This area refers to skills and movements that must be learned for specific skills like games, sports, dances, performances etc.

BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT

Behavioral assessment is a method used in the field of psychology to observe, explain, predict and control behavior. It is mainly used in clinical settings.

In atomistic approach to behavior assessment, a broad array of personality characteristics are derived from distinct behavioral features of the subject. In this approach, one analyses each specific behavior into parts and then integrate them to arrive at a conclusion. Here, each specific behavior is understood in great detail, and then combined to form a whole. Then, the behavior is assessed and explained.

On the other hand, in holistic approach does not recognize a single psychoanalytic or behavioral explanation for every behavioral problem. A holistic approach attempts to assess the whole behavior. This approach assesses the behavior by employing multiple assessment instruments and procedures and not just one partisan approach. Each of the approaches may provide information about different facets of the problem. Another feature of the holistic approach is that, the behavior is evaluated in more than one setting, such as in the classroom, at home, or on the playground. It is important to know if the behavior problems are situation specific or generalized. It requires that assessment be considered an ongoing process.

The analytic approach involves using methods of behavior change in a conceptually systematic and explicit way to help students acquire, maintain, and generalize behavior. For example, a teacher trying to teach students to orally read a passage correctly may involve (1) the teacher presenting the student with a passage and modeling how to read it aloud, including sounding out difficult words, followed by asking the student to read the passage (stimulus); (2) the student orally reading the
passage (response); and (3) the teacher providing immediate explicit performance feedback on the number and types of words read correctly and incorrectly (consequence).This process is repeated until the student improves enough so that it is meaningful to him or her and noticeable from a social and practical perspective.