Thinking outside the box: How to monitor and when to use our environment to help us think?

• Applicant: Patrick Weis, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 463896411

In the modern highly technologized world, human performers can often choose between internal mechanisms (IMs, e.g. doing mental arithmetic) and extended mechanisms (EMs, e.g. using a pocket calculator) to process the information necessary for solving a given task. The choice carries weight: Preferring one mechanism over another can impact immediate, long-term, and transfer performance as well as perception of one’s own abilities. Prior research suggests that performers frequently exhibit biases towards IMs or EMs which can result in suboptimal performance. Based on a working model, the present project aims to reveal how two interrelated factors—performance monitoring and choice strategies—shape IM/EM preferences. The project is subdivided into three work packages (WPs). WP1 focuses on potential prerequisites for efficient monitoring, such as the amount and type of required external performance feedback and spare working memory capacity. WP1 also includes investigating potential benefits of deliberately omitting performance monitoring. WP2 focuses on choice strategies, which often appear maladaptive at first glance. For example, previous research suggests that a large proportion of human performers decide for a specific IM or EM only once and further on perseverate on that mechanism. WP2 focuses on potential reasons for such choice strategies, i.e. interindividual performance differences or avoidance of switching costs. Finally, WP3 seeks to reveal efficient interventions to remediate maladaptive IM/EM preferences and thus reduce associated negative consequences. In a nutshell, the project will portray a detailed picture of the cognitive processes that enable human performers to resolve a problem of increasing prevalence and societal relevance, namely whether to process information with or without external support.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants