Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 130, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 11-30
Cognition

Goal neglect and knowledge chunking in the construction of novel behaviour

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.013Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Fluid intelligence links closely to goal neglect in novel behaviour.

  • Neglect increases strongly with task complexity.

  • The task complexity effect is bounded by task-subtask structure.

  • We argue that complex behaviour is controlled in a series of attentional episodes.

  • A new account of fluid intelligence is based on episode construction.

Abstract

Task complexity is critical in cognitive efficiency and fluid intelligence. To examine functional limits in task complexity, we examine the phenomenon of goal neglect, where participants with low fluid intelligence fail to follow task rules that they otherwise understand. Though neglect is known to increase with task complexity, here we show that – in contrast to previous accounts – the critical factor is not the total complexity of all task rules. Instead, when the space of task requirements can be divided into separate sub-parts, neglect is controlled by the complexity of each component part. The data also show that neglect develops and stabilizes over the first few performance trials, i.e. as instructions are first used to generate behaviour. In all complex behaviour, a critical process is combination of task events with retrieved task requirements to create focused attentional episodes dealing with each decision in turn. In large part, we suggest, fluid intelligence may reflect this process of converting complex requirements into effective attentional episodes.

Keywords

Working memory
Goal neglect
Chunking
Intelligence
Cognitive control

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