Invited Lecturers

Pablo Nájera is a prominent representative of the emerging generation in contemporary psychometrics. In his keynote lecture, he will introduce cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs). These models, so far used primarily in the assessment of knowledge and skills, offer a different perspective on what may underlie responses or performance in a test. Rather than assuming that people differ mainly in the degree to which they possess a single continuous characteristic, CDMs work with several categorical characteristics. The benefits of this approach are twofold. At the diagnostic level, CDMs classify individuals into different latent classes based on their specific combination of characteristics. At the theoretical level, they make it possible to assess how these characteristics relate to one another, either through hierarchical structures or specific patterns of interaction.

The lecture will thus loosely follow up on the keynote from the previous conference, which introduced network models as another way of thinking about the relationship between psychological characteristics and their observable manifestations. Once again, the main aim will not be to explain the mathematical details of the model. Instead, the goal is to introduce CDMs to psychologists as an established approach worth considering whenever our theories suggest that observed behaviour, performance, or responses may be better understood as the result of a particular combination of several important characteristics rather than as manifestations of having more or less of a single continuous construct.