A Method to increase Students' Cognitive Potentialities using the Elementary Pragmatic Model

摘要

In this paper we present an innovative way to increase students' cognitive potentialities. The main assumption is that in pursuit of this goal it is possible to apply the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM), a model for the pragmatic of communication. The EPM allows a description of the relational patterns of the subject's -artificial and real - based on 16 fundamental styles. In addition, the model makes it possible to determine the formal result of the combination of patterns of interacting subjects based on a "paradoxes table." In the psychiatric sphere the EPM has given a theoretical foundation to the interactive therapies and has proved successful for over twenty years. The application of the model to electronic communication was first proposed at the end of the 1980s and it was most recently applied to define user models for web-based instruction. We foresee here its application in identifying alternative solutions to a given problem, thereby improving the most creative phase of a problem-solving approach. To this end it is possible to use a workbook designed to increase mental flexibility and that is suitable to be integrated in a web-based teaching environment.