Relatore: Professor Bruno OSIMO - Bruno Osimo, traduzioni ...

“This means that people are able to slow down the normal process to
synchronize it with verbalization” (Someren, Barnard and Sandberg 1994: 33).
When the subject has completed the task, part of the information moves
on to LTM, leaving behind retrieval cues in STM: in such cases, it has been
found that post hoc verbalization is difficult and often incomplete (Ericsson
and Simon, 1993). Moreover, under these circumstances, it can be extremely
problematic to exclude the possibility that a subject is interpreting his own
thought processes or even generating them anew, instead of retrieving them
from LTM.
Secondly, to make sure that the subject actually reports his mental states
without distorting them, it is important that he does not feel he is taking part
in a social interaction: although conversation is obviously a natural situation,
it involves reworking thoughts to conform them to socially established norms;
this process might sensibly alter the information attended to (Bernardini
1999). Emotional and motivational factors can produce a cognitive process
different from the process that would take place without thinking aloud.
“There is not much evidence that thinking aloud adds much to the effect of
being studied and evaluated that is inevitable in knowledge acquisition and
experimental settings” (Someren, Barnard and Sandberg 1994: 33). The
interaction between subject and experimenter (or between subjects) should
therefore be avoided or at least reduced to a minimum. There is one other
cause for concern: if the subject keeps silent for a long time, the verbalization
will become useless, because significant parts of the cognitive process in STM
may not be tracked down. To avoid this, the experimenter is allowed to repeat
to the subject to think aloud with a short and non-intrusive reminder; Ericsson
and Simon propose to use the phrase “keep talking” (Krahmer and Ummelen
2004).
Thirdly, “practice and experience may affect the amount of processing
carried out in STM, so that fewer mental states will be available for
verbalization to subjects experienced in a task” (Bernardini 1999: 2). This
process, known as ‘automation’ refers to the fact that “as particular processes
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