In the study, it is aimed to reveal the cognitive perceptions of Social Studies pre-service teachers about the concepts aimed to be acquired in the subject of "Global Problems" in the "Global Connections" learning area, through word association test. The research is a descriptive study based on scanning model. The study group consists of 235 students studying at Fırat University, Social Studies Education in the 2020 -2021 academic year. The Word Association Test (WAT) prepared by the researcher was used as a data collection tool. In the WAT, thirteen concepts were used. Descriptive analysis technique was used in the analysis of the data. Concept networks were created by making use of the key concepts givento the students and the frequencies of the answer words obtained it was determined that students mostly associate the words related to the concepts related to human problems, while more information about nature-related problems was determined. It was determined that they produced few concepts. While this situation reveals that the students’ sensitivity to social problems and the concepts related to current events are more structured. It has been determined that pre- service teachers have generally cognitively structured the words in the global connections learning field.