Glaser & Pellegrino (1987). Aptitudes for learning and cognitive processes

For me, this chapter is about the development of symptom identification and intervention.  It's about pattern recognition... how symptoms are identified and how we can get better in identifying our symptoms... and intervene.

At the same time, from the perspective of the symptoms, don't we psychotics see linkages in the most irrelevant things? 


Glaser, Robert, & Pellegrino, James W. (1987). Aptitudes for learning and cognitive processes. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 267-288). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"It has been argued that rule induction process are similar to those demanded in concept formation, and that they are related to a major form of human problem solving that results in the acquisition of knowledge."

One major task involved in delusions is problem-solving... the emerging of ever-ending problems...  The learning to cope is simply the transfer of problem-solving demands in one dimension to another. 

The authors presented the following research on inductive reasoning:
Series completion problems: Training worked
Analogical reasoning problems: The authors addressed research three interrelated elements that appear to differentiate high- and low-skill individuals in analogical reasoning test task, including memory load, procedural knowledge of task constraints, and organization of an appropriate conceptual knowledge base.

• Figural analogie (memory load)

Good old cognitive load.

• Verbal analogies (procedural constraints)

"... because they involve increasingly detailed specification of the analogical rule and/or consideration of alternative conceptualizations of the rule, interactive solutions require more extensive processing than conceptually driven solutions... when low-ability individuals use the analogical solution procedure, they tend, more often than high-ability solvers, to evoke a sequence of processes corresponding to initial identification of the analogical rule; however, they do not subsequently modify that rule.  Although low-ability solvers are also capable of solving items interactively, they do so less often than high ability solvers.  On more difficult items, which are less likely to be solvable in the conceptually driven mode, low-ability solvers exhibit performance that violates task constraints." (p. 279)

"Skilled analogy solvers are characterized by more knowledge of task constraints, and by the ability to develop an understanding of the analogical rule in response to the item stem, the relationship involved, and the response options.

Sounds like a good way to explain the (hopefully) differences between how I handle my psychosis 10 years ago and today.

• Numerical analogies (Knowledge base influences)

"This knowledge correlates with and predicts analogy performance.  High-ability subjects use their knowledge of abstract number relationships to constrain the domain of permissible operations; this knowledge based determines the appropriate use of strategies. " (p. 285)

Though it might be too far a transfer... I think (or hope ) I am doing better in making use of the knowledge about my symptoms than, say, 10 years ago.  More practices and more unfortunately acquired knowledge about the behavior of my symptoms, I guess.

Implications

Training on:

• Training on mental processing skills can provide better methods for searching memory and elaborating connections, which would facilitate storage and retrieval.
• Training on knowledge strategy can help improve the ways a knowledge base is recognized and manipulated.  When highly skilled individuals learn something new or undertake a new problem of induction, they engage a highly organized structure of appropriate facts and relationships, and associated procedures and goal constraints.  Skilled individuals are skilled because of their knowledge of both the content involved in a problem and the procedural constraints of a particular problem form, such as inductive or analogical reasoning.