Gaschler, R. , Vaterrodt, B. & Frensch, P. A.
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Psychology
Theoretical as well as practical concerns render it highly relevant to understand how and why people spontaneously search for and apply shortcut strategies. Here we report skill acquisition research with adults as well as eyetracking data on mental calculation in children to make the case that people can (a) pick up easily and (b) transfer very broadly a general notion that shortcuts can be found and applied in task material. Similar to the concept of “learning to learn” we argue for “learning to search” as a key means in (a) understanding top-down contributions to strategy change in skill acquisition and (b) foster or impede the spontaneous application of shortcut strategies depending on practical goals. The results show that simplification of task processing transfers across items within a task as well as across tasks involving different stimuli, responses and operation rules. In many cases strategy change seems to be driven by a conscious and voluntary decision to apply the knowledge about task regularities acquired incidentally. In primary school mathematics, offering material with regularities that can be found and exploited rather easily seems to be an effective intervention to spark a general search for efficient ways of calculation.