ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two examples of cognitive task analysis in some detail. One example considers knowledge for solving problems with structural understanding. The second example considers understanding of a general formal principle related to solutions of specific problems. The second example, involving understanding of a formal principle, analyzes implicit understanding of the principle of deductive consequence. The general strategy used was to choose some performance that provides persuasive evidence of understanding and to develop hypotheses about cognitive structures and processes that cause the performance to occur. Discussions of structural understanding such as those by Judd, Katona, and Wertheimer have distinguished meaningful learning from rote learning of problem-solving procedures. The goal of the theoretical analysis was to identify a set of learning processes and knowledge structures that could simulate acquisition of learning with structural understanding. For learning new productions, a process was developed for keeping a representation of the problem situation in working memory.
