ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the salient taxonomic and methodological issues that confront the study of everyday cognition. Everyday problem solving has at least three defining characteristics: the application of cognitive abilities and skills, within naturalistic or everyday contexts, to problems that are complex and multidimensional. The chapter discusses the thorny issues of assessing and measuring everyday cognition. It examines two questions: What methods or procedures are useful in assessing everyday cognition, and how is the adequacy of performance on everyday tasks to be judged? The question arises whether the mental abilities and processes traditionally studied by psychologists are even relevant to the study of everyday cognition. The distinction has been made between the "mechanics of intelligence," involving basic mental abilities and cognitive processes, and the "pragmatics of intelligence" concerned with everyday cognition. The question of convergent validity is to determine whether the dimensions of everyday cognition represent a coherent domain.
