METHOD FOR STUDYING THE INVARIANT KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURE OF ACTION - CONCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION OF AN EVERYDAY ACTION

A method is described for analyzing the cognitive structure inherent i n an everyday action. This structure includes not only units of the ac tion and their serial order, but also the aggregation of these units i nto various higher level units that function as components of the acti on. It is hypothesized that a special kind of unit, the crux, function s at every level of the action as an organizing center for units at th at level. The method developed here begins with actual performances of a task, deriving the units of action within that task from consistenc ies across different subjects' performance in order to identify units that are invariant across everyday variations in styles of performance . A description of the task in terms of these units was given to naive adults who were required to make either local judgments of similarity among these units or a global judgment concerning how the units aggre gate to organize the task. These judgments were analyzed in several wa ys to try to find invariant patterns of aggregation of the units. The evidence suggests that, at least for the task under study here (toothb rushing), such invariant hierarchical patterns are found and that they are based on cruxes.