by the mental-attentional mechanisms, such as executive schemes andM-and
I-capacities (Pascual-Leone, 1989, 1995; Pascual-Leone & Baillargeon, 1994).
Because in misleading situations the unsuitable strategy Y is more or less
automatized or overlearned, this is the first strategy to be mobilized and acti-
vated. Consequently, in order for the suitable strategy X to determine perform-
ance, application of the Y strategy must be averted by using active–central in-
hibition (i.e., mental-attentional interruption); and strategy X must be boosted
by efficiently mobilizing mental-attention. Misleading situations are common
in problem solving, cognitive development, and emotional–interpersonal de-
velopment, and they exhibit individual cognitive-style differences indexed by
the ability to cope well with them. For instance, Witkin’s field-independent
persons cope well; and despite having good developmental intelligence, field-
dependent persons often cope badly (Pascual-Leone, 1989; Wapner & Demick,
1991; Witkin & Goodenough, 1981).
Misleading situations also typically exhibit discontinuous or stage-wise
trajectories in their cross-sectional developmental traces of performance. Sta-
ble stages of development exist (contrary to Piaget’s claims) only in mislead-
ing situations. The reason for this restriction is that in misleading situations
misleading schemes must be interrupted (actively inhibited) and task-acti-
vated schemes not currently boosted byM-capacity (i.e., not in active work-
ing memory) will tend to be interrupted with them; consequently the schemes
needed to solve the task will have to be activated (directly or indirectly) byM-
capacity. In contrast, within facilitating situations task-relevant schemes are
not interrupted and remain active throughout, enabling solution of the task
without much need ofM-capacity use; thus facilitating situations provide
poor criteria for true developmental stages (caused by the maturational
growth ofM-capacity).^3
A common example of a misleading situation, in the affective–motiva-
tional domain, is the case of a child–student–scholar who in the midst of
working under a close deadline for an important and difficult assign-
ment–exam–paper, receives a visit from a dear friend offering a very tempting
opportunity to do something together. Strategy Y will then become doing the
appealing thing, and X will be to continue working on the exam–paper. To
210 PASCUAL-LEONE AND JOHNSON
3 3 In the neo-Piagetian Theory of Constructive Operators (Pascual-Leone, 1987, 1989, 1995,
1997; Pascual-Leone & Baillargeon, 1994)misleading situationsare those that strongly elicit
schemes that are inconvenient for the task at hand for two important reasons: (a) the result of
their application is detrimental to the required task performance; (b) these schemes are released
by features of the situation shared by other task-relevant schemes, thus when misleading schemes
apply and interpret–incorporate the features in question, the subsequent probability of activa-
tion of these other task-relevant schemes will tend to be lowered. Notice that adistracting situa-
tionis one that elicits schemes satisfying condition (a) but not condition (b). Afacilitating situa-
tionis one in which the schemes elicited are relevant to the task, so that they do not satisfy either
of the above conditions.