Impact Of Cognitive Complexity Research Articles

Transparency of cognitive complexity in performance assessments: A validity study

AbstractPerformance assessments (PAs) offer a more authentic measure of higher order skills, which is ideal for competency‐based education (CBE) especially for students already in the workplace and striving to advance their careers. The goal of the current study was to examine the validity of undergraduate PA score interpretation in the college of IT at a CBE online, higher education institute by evaluating (a) the transparency of cognitive complexity or demands of the task as communicated through the task prompt versus expected cognitive complexity based on its associated rubric aspect and (b) the impact of cognitive complexity on task difficulty. We found that there is a discrepancy in the communicated versus expected cognitive complexity of PA tasks (i.e., prompt vs. rubric) where rubric complexity is higher, on average, than task prompt complexity. This discrepancy negatively impacts reliability but does not affect the difficulty of PA tasks. Moreover, the cognitive complexity of both the task prompt and the rubric aspect significantly impacts the difficulty of PA tasks based on Bloom's taxonomy but not Webb's DOK, and this effect is slightly stronger for the rubric aspect than the task prompt. Discussion centers on how these findings can be used to better inform and improve PA task writing and review procedures for assessment developers as well as customize PAs (their difficulty levels) to different course levels or individual students to improve learning.

Challenging some common beliefs: Empirical work within the adaptive toolbox metaphor

AbstractThe authors review their own empirical work inspired by the adaptive toolbox metaphor. The review examines factors influencing strategy selection and execution in multi-attribute inference tasks (e.g., information costs, time pressure, memory retrieval, dynamic environments, stimulus formats, intelligence). An emergent theme is the re-evaluation of contingency model claims about the elevated cognitive costs of compensatory in comparison with non-compensatory strategies. Contrary to common assertions about the impact of cognitive complexity, the empirical data suggest that manipulated variables exert their influence at the meta-level of deciding how to decide (i.e., which strategy to select) rather than at the level of strategy execution. An alternative conceptualisation of strategy selection, namely threshold adjustment in an evidence accumulation model, is also discussed and the difficulty in distinguishing empirically between these metaphors is acknowledged.

The impact of cognitive complexity on project leadership performance

In today's complex development environments, the ability to integrate project components has been found to be a key responsibility for project leaders. This paper reports results of a preliminary experiment examining the importance of cognitive differentiation and integration (i.e. cognitive complexity) to project leadership performance. Results from this preliminary study show the importance of cognitive complexity to success in project leadership. Surprisingly, results suggest that leaders with lower levels of cognitive differentiation abilities (less information fragmentation) perform better on project definition tasks. Results also suggest that higher levels of cognitive integrative ability are associated with higher performance in project definition tasks. To this end, we suggest ways to improve complex thinking in project leaders. This study is important to IS managers responsible for identifying and training project leaders, and researchers seeking to understand factors important to successful project leadership.