Reflective cognition as secondary task

Our hypothesis is that reflective cognition is necessary to achieve expert level performance in certain skills, and that reflective cognition can be seen as a secondary task in skill acquisition. To investigate to what extent people use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of reasoning about others and natural language use, an experiment was conducted in which it was beneficial for participants to have a mental model of their opponent, and to be aware of pragmatic inferences. Individual differences in the use of complex skills and strategies, that support our hypothesis, were found.

Our hypothesis is that reflective cognition is necessary to achieve expert level performance in certain skills, and that reflective cognition can be seen as a secondary task in skill acquisition. To investigate to what extent people use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of reasoning about others and natural language use, an experiment was conducted in which it was beneficial for participants to have a mental model of their opponent, and to be aware of pragmatic inferences. Individual differences in the use of complex skills and strategies, that support our hypothesis, were found.

Proceedings of the Joint Symposium on Virtual Social Agents, 2005

To investigate to what extent people use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of reasoning about others and natural language use, an experiment was conducted in which it was beneficial for participants to have a mental model of their opponent, and to be aware of pragmatic inferences. It was found that, although participants did not seem to acquire complex skills during the experiment, some participants made use of advanced cognitive skills.

To investigate to what extent people use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of reasoning about others and natural language use, an experiment was conducted in which it was beneficial for participants to have a mental model of their opponent, and to be aware of pragmatic inferences. It was found that, although participants did not seem to acquire complex skills during the experiment, some participants made use of advanced cognitive skills.

Educational Technology Research and Development, 1992

This paper presents a four-component instructional design model for the training of complex cognitive skills. In the analysis phase, each skill is broken down into a set of recurrent skille that remain highly consistent over various problem situations, and a set of non-recurrent skills that require variable performance over different situations. Components 1 and 2 relate to analyses that are conducted to describe the recurrent skills in terms of specific rules or procedures and the non-recurrent skills in terms of heuristics or systulatic problem approaches. Components 3 and 4 relate to the knowledge analyses that are conducted to uescribe the facts and concepts that are prerequisite to perform recurrent skills or the complex schemata that are helpful to perform non-recurrent skills. In the design phase, instructional taftics are selected for each of the four components. Components 1 and 2 relate to the design of practice and the conditions leading to rule automation or schema acquisition. Components 3 and 4 relate to the design of information presentation. Finally, the composition of the training strategy is governed by selected instructional tactics, which pose constraints on the design of an interactive learning environment. The basic prediction of this model is that its application leads to "reflective expertise" and increased transfer performance, i.e., the ability to solve new problems on the basis of domain-specific procedures and heuristics. Applications of the model that support this prediction are discussed for the training of fault management, computer programming, and statistical analysis skills. (74 references)

A Cultural Framework, 2013

Reflective Practice, 2003

This paper presents some thoughts about the use of the word 'reflection' and the provocative statement that reflection seems not to be a spontaneous everyday activity in our professions or everyday life. The discussion focuses on the cognitive aspects of reflection. As reflection is regarded as a conscious activity the hypothesis of a conscious 'I' and an unconscious 'me' is discussed in the light of information theory and their suggested functions in understanding and grasping the world. It is suggested that as a consequence of short-term memory and our flashlight-like consciousness scanning our perceptive world, it is difficult to keep our consciousness focused on one thing for longer times. This is suggested to be of evolutionary survival value with the consequence that focused reflection needs active effort and energy, and thus is not a spontaneous activity. It is also suggested that the conscious 'I' and its capacity to reflect is of evolutionary and historic recent origin, arising in the dawn of modern society in association with the development of a free will. The reflective capacity is thus epigenetic and has to be learned and encouraged.

Erkenntnis, 2020

Hilary Kornblith argues that many traditional philosophical accounts involve problematic views of reflection (understood as second-order mental states). According to Kornblith, reflection does not add reliability, which makes it unfit to underlie a separate form of knowledge. We show that a broader understanding of reflection, encompassing Type 2 processes, working memory, and episodic long-term memory, can provide philosophy with elucidating input that a restricted view misses. We further argue that reflection in fact often does add reliability, through generalizability, flexibility, and creativity that is helpful in newly encountered situations, even if the restricted sense of both reflection and knowledge is accepted. And so, a division of knowledge into one reflexive (animal) form and one reflective form remains a plausible, and possibly fruitful, option.

Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 2008

In everyday life it is often important to have a mental model of the knowledge, beliefs, desires, and intentions of other people. Sometimes it is even useful to to have a correct model of their model of our own mental states: a second-order Theory of Mind. In order to investigate to what extent adults use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of Theory of Mind and the related skill of natural language use, we conducted an experiment. It was based on a strategic game of imperfect information, in which it was beneficial for participants to have a good mental model of their opponent, and more specifically, to use second-order Theory of Mind. It was also beneficial for them to be aware of pragmatic inferences and of the possibility to choose between logical and pragmatic language use. We found that most participants did not seem to acquire these complex skills during the experiment when being exposed to the game for a number of different trials. Nevertheless, some participants did make use of advanced cognitive skills such as second-order Theory of Mind and appropriate choices between logical and pragmatic language use from the beginning. Thus, the results differ markedly from previous research.

Current Psychology, 2013

Categorized among learning practices, reflection involves cognitive processing. Some people say they reflect often, whereas others claim they are less inclined to reflect on a regular basis. The present study examines reflection in an academic learning setting. In contrast with previous studies testing reflective task accomplishment, we are interested in personality traits that can predict reflection or a reflective outcome. By means of a survey university students are questioned about their learning practices when working on their final thesis. To test whether certain traits influence reflection and whether reflection produces cognitive outcomes at the individual level, we performed hierarchical regression analysis. In addition, structural equation modeling is used to test for the mediation effects of reflection. The data stress a mediating role of reflection in the relationship between particular personality traits and cognitive complexity.