Moment-by-moment variation in experts' analytic and intuitive cognitive activity

Moment-by-moment variation in the use of intuitive and analytical cognition by experts engaged in a complex judgment task is analyzed. Six highway engineers were asked to think aloud while producing formulas that expressed their knowledge of how highway aesthetics, safety, and capacity are determined by sets of relevant factors. Each engineer's statements were measured with multiple indices of the use of intuitive or analytical cognition, thus producing a moment-by-moment measure of the engineer's cognitive activity. Measures reflecting the rate of alternation between intuition and analysis, as well as patterns of change over time, were derived from this. The subtask the engineer was engaged in at each moment was also measured.>