Marcos P. Sivitanides’s research while affiliated with California State University, San Marcos and other places

Research suggests that two methods of introducing dissent, the dialectic inquiry (DI) and devil's advocate (DA) methods, show promise for increasing the cognitive complexity of decision makers. We investigated the joint effects of formalized dissent and group cognitive complexity by manipulating the formalized dissent method (DI or DA) used by 25 interacting groups engaged in a complex, ill-structured planning task. Participants were classified as either high or low cognitive complexity and assigned to stratified groups with members of homogeneous complexity. Results indicated that: (1) DA groups produced higher quality assumptions but took longer to generate plans than did DI groups, (2) high complexity groups generated more recommendations relative to low complexity groups, and (3) DA groups with low complexity members produced lower quality recommendations and participated less equally in decision making than did the other groups. We conclude by discussing the implications of the results for formalized dissent, cognitive complexity, and assessing managerial performance.

Software development is moving from procedural programming towards object-oriented programming (OOP). Past studies in cognitive aspects of programming have focused primarily on procedural programming languages. Object-oriented programming is a new paradigm for computing. Industry is finding that programmers are having difficulty shifting to this new programming paradigm. Findings in prior research revealed that procedural programming requires Piaget's formal operation cognitive level. New from this research is that OOP also requires Piaget's formal operation cognitive level. Also new is that OOP appears to be unrelated to hemispheric cognitive style. OOP appears to be hemispheric style friendly, while procedural programming is preferential to left hemispheric cognitive style. The conclusion is that cognitive requirements are not the cause for the difficulty in shifting from procedural to OOP. An alternative possibility to the difficulty is proactive interference of learning procedural programming prior to learning object oriented programming.

This paper formulates a theory that investigates the possible effects of two human cognitive characteristics, on the difficulties of learning specific programming languages. The two human cognitive characteristics are Piaget's cogni-tive development and McCarthy's cognitive hemispheric style. This paper consolidates prior research and accepted cognitive theory. It then presents a formulation of a theory that relates cognitive requirements of different computer programming languages and programmers' cognitive characteristics. If the cognitive requirements for a programming language are beyond the cognitive characteristics of a programming student, the student may burn out. If the cognitive requirements are below the student's cognitive characteristics the student may be bored. If they are similar to them, the student is able to meet the challenges. Motivation, interest, self-esteem and success may thus be optimized. Differ-ent programming languages are more suited for different cognitive characteristics. This theory extends prior research in cognitive theory and cognitive requirements of computer programming.