Review Questions: Representing Procedural Knowledge
Identify the kind of processes illustrated in the numbered scenarios (1-4):
A. Automated processes B. Controlled processes
Questions 1-4 refer to the following event: A very experienced surgeon continually told golfing jokes as she performed open heart surgery.
1) What specific kind of knowledge was most important as the doctor considered which of the many golfing jokes she knew which she would select to tell?
2) What specific kind of knowledge was most important as the doctor made a simple incision while she was telling the jokes?
3) What specific kind of knowledge was most important as the doctor pronounced the words she spoke?
4) What kind of knowledge did the doctor’s audience (medical interns) use to understand the techniques she used?
Identify the kind of procedural knowledge illustrated in the numbered scenarios (5-12):
A. Domain-specific skill B. Domain-specific strategy C. Domain-general strategy
5) Lisa had never taken a long overseas vacation before. She sat down and planned out how she would handle all the myriad details.
6) Having just learned borrowing (in subtraction), Ed learned, much to his consternation, that it did not apply to division.
7) Although he had not solved this kind of physics problem before, Sam relied on the 5-step procedure that his physics teacher had given the class for solving physics problems.
8) Antonio, a 4th grader, had developed an approach to learning concepts in all of his school subjects. He used the examples his teacher gave to develop a list of the defining features of each of the concepts and then began to work out a system for correctly identifying new examples of the concepts.
9) Ellen was an accomplished water color artist who did not have to think about how she held or used her brushes as she painted extraordinary pictures.
10) In order to find his way around the city, Bill generated a mental image of a street map that allowed him to “look” at where his car was located and then plan how he would reach his desired location.
A. Domain-specific skill B. Domain-specific strategy C. Domain-general strategy
11) Rene learned to approach all word problems in her 6th grade math class by quickly estimating the approximate amount of the solution to the problem and then checking her solution against the estimate.
12) Alberta’s better students were using an approach to solving problems where they would clearly specify how they knew the problem would be solved and then they looked for analogous problems and solutions in different areas of their experience. They would then apply the solutions to the new problem.