Think-aloud approaches to cognitive assessment and the articulated thoughts in simulated situations paradigm.

In addition to widely used endorsement methods, one way to get at people's thoughts is to have them verbalize while engaged in a task or situation. The articulated thoughts in simulated situations (ATSS) paradigm is a think-aloud approach to cognitive assessment that has several advantages: an unstructured production response format, on-line rather than retrospective assessment, situational specificity and control, and flexibility of situation and cognitions. The authors review experiments that have examined articulated thoughts in clinically relevant contexts. ATSS does have certain limitations and further research into its psychometric properties is needed, but it seems promising as a versatile and adaptable method of cognitive assessment, especially when little is known of the cognitive terrain of interest.