Linguistic markers of decision processes in a problem solving task

Two distinct decision processes, involved in the construction of chunks, were characterized from the cognitive interpretation of Culioli’s enunciative operations in 80 thinking aloud verbal reports for the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. The instructions presented the tower to 20 participants, 10 years old, during four consecutive trials, with two distinct verbal labels, either as a collection or as a class, i.e. as Tower vs. Disks. Two studies analysed the repartition of linguistic markers: enunciative Locations between consecutive moves, interpreted as markers of automatic entailments and of attentional focusing; and Starting Terms, as markers of a categorizing process, reconstructing external occurrences at a higher level of control, and regulating the access to abstraction. In the first study sections were demarcated on every solution path by the achievement of subgoals, and by points of obligatory passage, and, in the second one, two distinct batches of moves were distinguished. Results allowed to characterize micro-processes involved in the interaction between internal and external spaces. A process of internalization and externalization, entailing perseverations, was observed in the case of holistic structure, at the beginning in condition Tower, and later in condition Disks where the emergence of this structure was attested. A third study analyzed individual differences in performance, showing two mechanisms of generalization, one in interactive processing, the other along the optimal strategy in the external space. These exploratory results open the way to a number of issues going far beyond the case of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.