The Cognitive Growth Process and Knowledge Acquisition among Scientific and Humanitarian Majors at Qassim University in Light of Some Variables

Abstract

The study aimed to examine the learning and cognitive growth factors as two correlated concepts that transfer knowledge from its primitive state to a final stable state that reflects in successful activities adults are able to perform. The difference between weak and fluctuating performance at the beginning of the learning and cognitive growth exists. To find the difference the current study attempted to answer the following questions: (a) What is the level of knowledge acquisition among the students of Qassim University? (b) Are there significant differences at (α=0.05) between means of participants responses on the knowledge acquisition test attributed to the type of the major (scientific or humanitarian), academic level (third or seventh academic) and their interaction? The author selected (240) female participant by the simple random sampling method from the third and seventh academic levels in both majors scientific and humanitarian. To achieve the goals of the study the author constructed a test to measure knowledge acquisition. The first question means results range between (3.11-3.50), the mental processes ranked first and its mean scored (3.50) degrees, symbolic systems ranked last, and its mean scored (3.11) degrees. The overall mean of the test scored (3.30) degrees. The second question results illustrated significant differences at (α=0.05) attributed to the academic level, f-value scored (735.554) and a significance of (0.000) in favor of the seventh academic level. Significant differences at (α=0.05) attributed to major appeared, f-value scored (3411.658) and a significance of (0.000), in favor of the scientific majors. The impact of the interaction between the major and academic level differences proved to be significant at (α=0.05).