Towards a psychology of syntactical readings: The case of applying a Cognitive Task Analysis method in acquiring and utilizing configuration- related knowledge

This paper explores architecture and urban design process and thinking through a Cognitive Task Analysis method employing a procedural pedagogical strategy. The aim is to capture a description of the knowledge patterns that students tend to develop at the stage of the coding process and reflect their own understanding of the systematic relations among different space syntax categories and concepts. During a semester course, the effort to establish an analysis of the cognitive inferences in the decisionmaking processes that emerge during a syntactical inquiry of the spatial properties reveal the initiatory knowledge used by the students as they develop compositional strategies for their proposals related to the restoration of an open public space in historic context. At the beginning, the research discusses the significance of interrogating narrative statements and reflections in order to frame the cognitive task analysis project. Later, it attempts to generate detailed information on the nature of those schematizing and non-representational processes that mark the shifting between the codification and the understanding of site-related knowledge. It is proposed that the integration of the method with the issue of underlying knowledge elicitation during a design studio course can be described as the extension of traditional teaching strategies to yield information about the representations of situated positions and the cognitive functions behind the understanding and production of shapes, forms and spatial arrangements.

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