Personalized Training by Profiling Learners to Enhance Cognitive Flexibility

Abstract: People need to be cognitively flexible in order to be successful in the dynamic, ever changing society of today. Previous studies found that a carefully designed training program can help people to think and act in a more cognitively flexible fashion, leading to a better performance. This finding asks for more research into the instructional strategies that helps learners to utilize their cognitive flexibility. This paper presents a study investigating whether personalized instruction is more helpful than a standardized instruction. A pattern analysis was conducted on participants’ data from our previous training study. Three categories of learners were found: those having difficulty to detect that flexibility is needed; those who found it difficult to decide upon a flexible response; and proficient adapters. These categories were used to specify learner profiles with associated instructional strategies. A study is proposed to investigate the importance of personalizing learning. Implications, challenges and future directions are discussed. Award Best papers by Country: the Netherlands.