Good example, Oded

[From Rick Marken (931008.1200)]

Oded Maler (930907) --

Thanks. Sounds like a very good example of the test.

One flaw of this work, from your point of view, that
it is a sequential symbolic task belonging to higher level

I think testing for higher level variables is quite possible;
something like it is done all the time in clinical practice. I
would bet that the "flaw" in the Burton amd Brown "test"
(in terms of getting a clearcut indication of what students are
controlling) comes from the fact that they are dealing with a
learning situation -- where people are continuously reorganizing;
so it is unlikely that the learners will keep controlling the
same variable for very long, making it tough on the tester (T).
For example, in "water jar" problem solving, some people might
actually control for getting the current contents of the jars
to look like the goal contents (means/ends "strategy") but I
think they switch to other approaches (including just doing
ANYTHING to see what happens) when it is clear that this
strategy is not working.

Best

Rick