ABSTRACT
Not all cognitions are alike-some of them have acquired imperative qualities in the individual’s mind. This means that in some cases s/he feels that “I must do…”, “It must not happen that,” or “They really ought to….” Sometimes these imperative cognitions are violated or in conflict with each other; then the individual feels to be in a subjective dilemma and then her/his thinking processes start going round in circles. This phenomenon we have called a ‘knot’. Fifty-six students and seven teachers in 6th grade were asked to recall what had been going ‘through their mind’ in class using the method of ‘Retrospectively Thinking Aloud’ which had been developed for this purpose. The resulting data were analyzed sentence-by-sentence with respect to imperative and nonimperative cognitions on actions and the resulting ‘knots’ in thought processes. Some of the results of the study and implications for further research are presented.
