Cognitive task analysis focuses on the operator’s mental representation of the knowledge and skills required to perform tasks and is also a tool for exploring how operators’ cognitive processes come into play during task performance.

Cognitive tasks are those undertakings that require a person to mentally process new information (i.e., acquire and organize knowledge/learn) and allow them to recall, retrieve that information from memory and to use that information at a later time in the same or similar situation (i.e., transfer).

Some of the steps of a cognitive task analysis are: the mapping of the task, identifying the critical decision points, clustering, linking, and prioritizing them, and characterizing the strategies used (Klein, G. A. (1993). Naturalistic decision making: Implications for design.

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) is the study of what people know, how they think, how they organize and structure information, and how they learn when pursuing an outcome they are trying to achieve. The Analysis phase includes capturing the skills required for performance.

Below are two examples of task analyses. Skills taught using a task analysis (TA) include daily living skills such as brushing teeth, bathing, dressing, making a meal, and performing a variety of household chores.

A task is an activity or piece of work which you have to do, usually as part of a largerproject. Walker had the unenviable task of breaking the bad news to Hill. She used the day to catch up with administrative tasks. Synonyms: job, duty, assignment, work More Synonyms of task.

How to Conduct a Task Analysis

1. Identify the task to be analyzed.
2. Break this high-level task down into 4 to 8 subtasks.
3. Draw a layered task diagram of each subtasks ensuring that it is complete.
4. Produce a written account as well as the decomposition diagram.

When writing a task analysis, we try to break the skill down into very specific steps, to create manageable steps. A task analysis often goes hand in hand with chaining. Chaining = a set of teaching procedures used to teach a task analysis.

Chaining breaks a task down into small steps and then teaches each step within the sequence by itself. For example, a child learning to wash his/her hands independently may start with learning to turn on the faucet. Once this initial skill is learned, the next step may be getting his/her hands, etc.

Another strategy OTs typically recommend is something called “backward chaining.” Backward chaining is working backward from the goal. For example, the goal is put on a T-shirt.

Examples of Shaping You might start by teaching him to pull the blankets up on his bed. Then, after he does that consistently for a few days, you might work on making his bed more neatly. Then, after a few days, you might work on making his bed and picking up his toys.

Examples of Shaping

• Language Development.
• Getting a rat to press the lever (B.F. Skinner)
• Animal training.
• Rehabilitation (O’neil & Gardner, 1983)
• Voice Volume (Jackson & Wallace, 1974)
• Self-injurious behavior (Schaeffer, 1970)

Shaping is the use of reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behavior. Specifically, when using a shaping technique, each approximate desired behavior that is demonstrated is reinforced, while behaviors that are not approximations of the desired behavior are not reinforced.

A discriminative stimulus is the antecedent stimulus that has stimulus control over behavior because the behavior was reliably reinforced in the presence of that stimulus in the past. In the example above, the grandma is the discriminative stimulus for the behavior of asking for candy.