Some types of cognitive tasks considered to be fulfilled in only one way. In reality, for example, when you ask somebody to count down successively subtracting 7 from 100, one can imagine the row of figures, another can do it by "-10+3", the third one can do the task in column etc. But the result cannot indicate the way of decision-making. Something about cognitive styles could be helpful. Can anyone give me an advice about some effective tests?
As far as I know such experiments are decided
by the time a proband needs for one test. For example,
if the task is to determine whether any element in a
list (which has been learned by heart previously)
has a certain property, and it takes time proportional
to the element's position in the list, then it is likely
that the proband's strategy was to enumerate the
list in the mind.
Regards,
Joachim
Thanks, Joachim. In the design you 've proposed only 1 alternative: to numerate or not the list, as I understood. I need the task with 3-6 variants, which I can identify by the result.
I've been working on a theory of cognitive styles since 1986 – the current result is at cognitivestyles.com. You probably want to look at the sections 1a Lateral Frontopolar, down to 1f Aspects of Depression.
Decisions are made by the lateral frontopolar on the left in the light of values in the medial frontopolar, reaching back into the dorsolateral on the left which interacts with the superior parietal in both hemispheres under monitoring by the inferior frontal on the left.
Soon, PNAS, Predicting free choices for abstract intentions, 2013 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625266/ confirms that calculations are initiated in the medial frontopolar/precuneus prior to consciousness and then performed in the angular gyrus about 4 sec later. The architecture for this decision-making has been distilled from a review of 380 recent neurological papers and is available at cognitivestyles.com (1a Lateral Frontopolar to 1f Aspects of Depression).
Arithmetic will probably be done, as you suggest, in differing ways by different cognitive styles. An important paper is Clauss, Jacqueline, Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci, Expectation and temperament moderate amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex responses to fear faces, 2011 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049952/ . Clauss speaks of an inhibited temperament, comprising 15% of the population, in which the amygdala does not habituate as normal. The architecture at cognitivestyles.com suggests that there are six more variants of humanity for a total of seven (7 times 15% equals 105%, consistent with an extension of Clauss’s estimate of 15% for the one variant). Each style will have its distinct way of doing arithmetic; which can presumably be measured and tested.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology
- Mental Processes
- Learning