Retro-active Training of Rational vs. Intuitive Thinkers

From thinking styles to retroactive practice

The wider project investigated how instructions to prioritise speed or accuracy interact with a participant’s thinking style. The task also allowed a question about retroactive practice: would responses to a shape be faster before that shape was selected for additional training? The paper explains this prediction in the context of earlier work on proposed retroactive influences on cognition.

The experimental design

Participants completed a baseline reaction-time task followed by two Go/NoGo sessions. In the first session, they responded to two of four shapes. In the second, they responded to one of those two shapes, selected by a software random-number generator. They received either speed or accuracy instructions before the second session. A thinking-style questionnaire provided a separate measure for comparing rational and intuitive participants.

Findings and the later publication

The conference report describes faster earlier responses to the shape that was subsequently practised, with the reported difference concentrated in the intuitive group. It also examines whether differences between the shapes offer an ordinary explanation for the pattern. The authors interpret the result as consistent with their retroactive-practice prediction, while recognising that explaining such a finding requires further research.

This is an early account of the experiment, not an independent confirmation of the 2014 paper. The later journal article expands the analysis and discusses ambiguities in the original research plan. Reading the two together provides context for how the study developed. The original conference manuscript remains available below, including its methods, tables and references.