Analysis of students' cognitive structures concerning the topic of chemical bond based on word association test

The cognitive structure of "chemical bond" among first-year high school students was examined using lexical association tests, combined with semantic relevance analysis and cognitive structure diagram analysis. The results showed that most of the learned concept of "chemical bond" was included in the students' cognitive structure, but there were few associations about "the principles and essence of chemical bond formation", and the understanding of "different ways of chemical bond formation" was rather confusing. At the same time, the energy perspective under the theme of "chemical bond" needed to be developed and improved.