Knowledge and choice of strategy in a complex learning task

Abstract

Lindahl, Maj‐Britt. Knowledge and choice of strategy in a complex learning task. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 39–43.‐Correlations between relevant knowledge as documented in matriculation marks and adopted strategy in a problem solving/concept learning task were found to be conditional upon task variables (164 subjects). The conditionality implied that a perceptually loaded strategy was preferred to a conceptually or knowledge loaded one as long as there existed in the task easily discriminable, recurring environmental contingencies of a type that it presupposed. The phenomenon was integrated into a pretheoretical description of the learning process, where knowledge was thought to affect (1) the individual's formulation of the problem to himself, and (2) his attempts at solution‐more the more these involved a search of missing informative elements in his conceptual rather than in his perceptual field.