Definition of mentefacto – What it is, Meaning and Concept

Mind is a concept that is not part of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). The term, however, is used in our language to refer to the graphic representation It is used to reflect different values ​​and ways of thinking of the human being.

This term is formed by the union of the two terms mind and fact. The first refers to the brain and the second to facts. Thus, the mentefactos are used to represent the structure of the thoughts and values ​​that a human being has.

Mind as capacity and as schema

This word can also be used to talk about the intellectual capacity that makes it possible to examine and interpret concepts to represent them graphically and increase their understanding. In this sense, a facto mind is a scheme or conceptual map reflecting an interpretation and involving various operations. Despite this, it is necessary to clarify that among the conceptual maps (graphic form formed by nodes and arrows to express the thread of a certain concept) and the mentefactos there are clear differences, marked above all because the latter have a somewhat more complex composition.

To create a mentefacto, four functions originally proposed by Aristotle are carried out that allow the content to be organized intellectually. These operations are given the following names: superordinate (find the closest or greatest gender), Exclude (distinguish a class from the concept that is addressed in the diagram), infraordinate (detect subclasses) or isoordinate (find characteristics of the essence) ideas. Once they are done, knowledge is abstracted to the point that explaining a theory could be absolutely simple.

The notion in conceptual pedagogy and developmental psychology

In the conceptual pedagogy Mindfacts are a graphic instrument that greatly helps the development of this science. In it, three types of factual minds can be distinguished: conceptual (which graphically represent the concepts), the notional (a visual representation of the notions) and the propositional (like conceptual and notional ones, they are graphic representations but, in this case, of propositions)

Inside of conceptual pedagogy Mindfacts are one of the ideograms (characters that represent an idea or word graphically) that serve to structure the existing concepts in the human mind. Ideograms consist of a metacognitive method that can be used in any area of ​​knowledge to facilitate learning. Through a mind-fact, certain ideas can be sketched as is done in a synoptic table.

With all this we can say that those mind facts that are used to represent certain concepts are called conceptual mindfacts and they belong to a higher level than the so-called concept maps.

Mind to learn

The usefulness of the mentefactos within pedagogy lies in their potential, they allow to extract the basic ideas of a topic and create a visual representation of them in order to improve their understanding; For this, it is essential to listen or read, understand the information, make an abstraction and apprehend what is necessary and then carry out a didactic transposition of the concepts, so that students or potential interested in understanding the idea can get to receive the information as neat as possible. In order for the idea to be presented clearly and efficiently, it is necessary to organize it into categories.

It can be said that mind-facts are considered an innovative way to acquire new knowledge in an autonomous and highly enriching way.

Finally, the mind-facts are also linked to the developmental psychology, a division of the psychology which is dedicated to studying the psychological and behavioral modifications of human beings.