Serial and parallel processing:When a person is learning something new or working on a complex problem, information is apparently processed serially--that is, step after step. But in the case of weel-practiced, simpler tasks, two or more acts may be carried out in parallel, as in the case of a motorist lestening to the radio or talking with a companion while driving down the highway. Classical models of information processing tended to picture all cognitive and motor activity as serial.
Data-driven versus conceptually driven processes:In earlier chapters we met both empiricists and structuralists. Empiricists (Skinner, contextualists) propose that what we come to understand is determined primarily by the environment--that is, by the nature of the events people witness. Such a process of understanding can be labeled data driven. In contrast, structuralists (Piaget, Case, Fischer) emphasize the importance of people’s mental templates in fashioning the understandings derived from environmental encounters: people impose meanings on events they witness, so their understanding are conceptually driven. Ashcraft proposed that both of these processes operate in the cognitive system, with the particular relationship between a stimulus and the person’s memory structures determining which of the processes dominates at a given moment.