Cognitive Flexibility in Complex Judgment Tasks 1 Running head: COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN COMPLEX JUDGMENT TASKS Critical Thinking Instruction and Contextual Interference to Increase Cognitive Flexibility in Complex Judgment Tasks

Learning predictive relationships between cues and outcomes is a central aspect of many cognitive tasks. Studies on judgment and decision making have provided knowledge of how experienced decision makers approach complex decision problems. It seems to involve at least two types of skill: (1) recognition skills based on subject matter expertise (i.e., acquired cognitive schemas), that is, knowledge of relevant cues, their mutual interrelationships and the relationships with the criterion value that needs to be predicted, and (2) higher order critical thinking skills that serve to increase understanding by means of generalization and abstraction. Targeting training at these skills may improve cognitive flexibility through elaboration of the content (e.g., by generalisation, discrimination, or abstracting away from it). We established that instructional methods for implementing critical thinking and contextual interference, separately and in combination, can increase transfer of judgment skills to new tasks and contexts