The Misleading Concept of Cognitive Competences

Abstract

Descriptions of action/cognition can be given at various different levels. For heuristic purposes, three levels are identified: the behavioural, the information-processing and the level of summarizing what an individual is capable of (competences). In cognitive psychology competences, principles, rules or strategies are commonly attributed to individuals by way of `explaining' their accomplishments. The present paper argues that such attributions have value mainly as a form of shorthand, but otherwise tend to mislead. Various controversies concerning the attribution of cognitive competences (inference-making, number competence, mnemonic strategies, theory of mind) are analysed and are shown to be empirically unresolvable because they involve the conflating of different levels of description. It is suggested that the temptation to make attributions of cognitive competences follows from three habits of mind; these involve the nominalist fallacy of reifying classificatory terms, and the mistaking of the reified entity for an individual endowment. A similar argument has been made in the case of `intelligence' by Howe (1988, 1990). The most effective challenge to the idea of attributing competences to individuals comes, in fact, from within cognitive psychology itself, yet the idea persists and even thrives. By citing examples of research which clearly demonstrate the misleading nature of the idea of individual competences, it is intended to encourage future avoidance of it.