On the Nature of Verbal Rules and Their Use in Problem Solving.

摘要

This paper develops the idea of a verbal rule as a propositional plan for performance. The first section discusses the psychological properties of verbal rules, the information contained in them, and shows, via a computational model, that 4 additional kinds of knowledge are needed to make them operational. The second section reports 5 principles about verbal rules that were derived from an empirical study of the use of verbal rules in problem solving. The first principle is that correct problem solving with verbal rules depends on an interaction between available parsing procedures and available verbal rules. Selection of rules can be affected by difficulty in executing parsing procedures and by verbal lables associated with the rule and the problem domain. Second, parsing difficulties can interface with successful execution of verbal rules. Third, mental procedures constructed from verbal rules can be structurally different from the instructed verbal rules, and may include knowledge from related domains not included in the instruction. Fourth, verbal rules tend to be used optionally and drop out of performance when a person becomes skilled. The final principle shows that verbal rule use can reappear when appropriate mental procedures are unavailable. A brief closing comment is made about the relation between verbal rules and plans in general. (Author)