A heuristic framework for assessing factors influencing knowledge acquisition

The authors describe a heuristic framework for understanding and investigating factors influencing cognitive malleability and, consequently, knowledge acquisition efforts. To examine their framework, they investigated the effects of modifying task materials and goal availability on engineering problem-solving performance and the nature of the knowledge acquired. For one set of four engineers, the dynamic group, any manipulations made by an engineer to a component parameter would be immediately followed by an analysis of the effects of the manipulation. The static group (also four engineers) received no feedback