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how information is encoded and retrieved and that retrieval cues can be very context-
specific. Proactive interference may have also had a role. Every weekend on Sunday, I
need to mail out the same documents with updated information. Memories about all
the previous weeks may have prevented me from remembering that I had not yet mailed
out my documents on that particular weekend.
Example 2: Problem Solving from a Dear Grandma Letter
Dear Nanna,
In my cognitive psychology class we recently discussed some interesting theories
about how we solve problems. ... Apparently we aren’t as efficient at these things as
you’d think. For example, we tend to approach problem solving in a familiar, expected
way, even if it’s better to “break set,” or break from the obvious approach. The word
used to describe sticking to a familiar, but less effective routine is “einstellung,” which
you should understand, being German! ... I was heading downtown (south) to meet a
friend for dinner. Even though temperatures were sub-zero, I waited for a bus because
I didn’t want to splurge on a cab. After about 15 minutes, by which time my feet had
frozen, I saw a northbound bus approaching. ... It stopped long enough to for me to
catch it but I resisted going in the opposite direction. ...
This reminds me of a “problem” we discussed in class that requires “backtracking” at
one point [to solve it]. Most people resist this decision, because it appears to move them
away from the desired goal. If I hadn’t resisted the idea of backtracking, and instead
broke set, I’d have spared my feet! As it turned out, I had to wait for that bus to turn
around and head southbound. Stay warm!
Although the styles of these two student responses differ greatly, they both show that the
students were trying to apply the concepts from the course to make sense of the cognitive
mechanisms responsible for their own, everyday behavior.
Analysis of Activity
We coded open-ended responses on an end-of-term evaluation item that asked students
from Pellegrino’s classes to offer comments about the best and worst aspects of the
Cognition in Daily Life Report assignment from three semesters (Spring 2004, Fall 2004,
and Spring 2006). Reactions were mixed, with a majority being positive; the most fre-
quent comments related to how the task helped students learn the content and see how it
related to their daily lives. For example, one student wrote, “Even after the assignment was
turned in, I continued to think about things in my life that pertain to class.” Negative
comments were mostly about task logistics such as difficulty associated with keeping track
of the diary entries and complaints about the complexities of having to write about three
events relating to each of two or three themes. For example, one student wrote, “Many of
the cognitive events that I observed weren’t related and this made it very difficult to com-
bine them when writing the paper.” Ratings on two questions that asked students to rate
how much they learned from and enjoyed the assignment on a 5-point Likert scale
were consistently above 3.5, suggesting people enjoy and learn from these assignments.