A studie in Scarlete

I senaste numret av The Psychologist ger sig två kognitionsforskare i kast med mästerdetektiven Sherlock Holmes. André Didierjean and Fernand Gobet menar i en artikel att det går utmärkt att använda citat ur Sir Arthur Conan Doyles romaner för att illustrera och förklara kognitiva mekanismer bakom expertis, till exempel hur experter löser problem och hur deras sätt att tänka skiljer sig från icke-experter. På samma sätt som vi med Psykologifabriken tycker att det går utmärkt att förklara ACT-principer med Yoda-citat.

Ett exempel är när Sherlock Holmes i En studie i rött berättar om sitt arbetssätt för Watson, en fin illustration av abduktivt resonemang menar forskarna:

‘In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.’ ‘I confess’, said I, ‘that I do not quite follow you.’

‘I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically.’

Via: Mindhacks