Dual Process Research

Dual-process theory proposes that multiple independent but interacting processing systems underlie thought, judgment, and decision-making: Experiential and analytic. The experiential processing system is automatic, emotional, and cognitively economical. Experiential processing generally relies on concrete and contextualized task representations, rich in content from the situation, prior knowledge, experiences, or associations which, in turn, results in responses that are based on potentially misleading heuristics and beliefs. Analytic processing is formal, systematic, and cognitively effortful. Analytic processing may involve constructing decontextualized task representations, which require knowledge and skills that are acquired in culturally specific contexts, often resulting in responses that are normatively justified by formal logic or mathematics.

Research from my lab examines the nature and development of the ability for adolescents to regulate their  thinking (see Klaczynski, 2005). Our research has focused on the participants' metacognitive skills to distinguish between the dual cognitive systems and identify analytically-based responses on the ratio-biased task (Amsel, Klaczynski, Johnston, Bench, Close, Sadler, & Walker, 2008). This work has demonstrated that metacognitive skills a) develop from preadolescence to young adulthood, b) predict performance on the ratio-bias task, and c) are stable over trials and across different versions of the task. We additionally examined dual processes in the context of youth gambling behavior and found that those with a Poor metacognitive status engage in more gambling and do so more irrationally than those with a Competent status (Amsel, Close, Sadler, & Klaczynski, 2009).  In our most recent work we demonstrated the central importance on metacognitive status in predicting optimal decision making click here for a summary).

We are extending this works in the Spring of 2010 with new projects directly addressing metacognitive skills and its relation to a) priming of analytic processing through mathematics exercises, b) the task cueing hypothesis (Inbar et al., 2010), and c) recent work on the automatic detection of experiential/analytic response conflict (series of papers by De Neys)

Week 1:  Dual Process Theory:  Theory and Evidence
Stanovich & West (2000) (skim)
De Neys (2006)
Masicampo & Baumeister (2008)

Week 2. Metacognition, and Cognitive Regulation
Horgarth (2005)
Klaczynski (2009)
Thompson (2009)

Week 3. Implicit monitoring of analytic/experiential conflict
De Neys & Glumicic (2007)
De Neys et al (2008)
Franssens & De Neys (2009)
De Neys, Moyens & Wansteenwgen (2010)

Week 4:  Dual Process Theories of Adolescent Development:  The Case of Risk Taking
Rivers, Reyna, & Mills (2008)
Shaw, Amsel, & Schilo (in press)
Steinberg (2008)

Week 5.  Perspective Effects
Alonso & Fernadez-Berrocol (2003)
Epstein & Pacini (2000)
Kirkpatrick & Epstein (1992)
Klaczynski (2001)

Week 6.  Reaction Time Studies
DeNeys (2007)
Gillian et al. (2009)