Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigated how people examined the self or anothers learning history using a complex dynamic control task. Thirty-eight undergraduates were assigned to self or self-as-instructed-other conditions. Participants were asked to performthe task twice and describe their thinking as they examined the learning history provided in the second session. Theparticipants in the self condition were provided with their own learning history, whereas those in the self-as-instructed-other condition were presented with their learning history as if it were anothers. We compared their performance on thecontrol and structure tests between conditions. The results showed that performance on the control test improved oversessions regardless of the condition. The results also showed that the participants in the self-as-instructed-other conditionengaged in evaluation or guessing more often than those in the self condition, suggesting that there are differences in howpeople examine a persons learning history depending on its source.