Effects of concurrent verbalization on a time-critical, dynamic decision-making task

The authors investigated the effects of concurrent verbalization on student s' performance on a time-critical, dynamic decision-making task After train ing on Fire Chief (a computer microworld that simulates fighting a forest f ire; M. M. Omodei & A. J. Wearing, 1993a), 60 research participants were al located randomly to 1 of 3 experimental conditions: silence, associative ve rbalization, or procedural verbalization. Participants who verbalized the b ases of their decisions (procedural verbalization) performed significantly worse on average than participants in the silence condition. There was a sm all but nonsignificant decrement in the performance of participants who ver balized thoughts other than the bases of their decisions while performing t he task (associative verbalization). Their average level was between the le vels of participants in the silence and procedural verbalization conditions .