Tracing Embodied Narratives of Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking (CrT) is generally characterized as an abstract thinking process, detached from the (bodily) actions one engages in during the process. Though recent cognitive theories assert that all thinking is action-based, the embodied and distributed cognitive processes underlying CrT have not been identified. We present preliminary findings from the first iteration of a design-based research project which involves probing possible connections between CrT and one’s (bodily) action sequences. We performed sequential pattern mining and qualitative analysis on the study participants’ actions logs to find differences in participants CrT processes. Our analysis showed that only a subset of participants contextualized their assumptions, inferences, and implications in the different information resources available in the environment. A majority of participants’ actions performed within the interface were incoherent. These results have implications for automated analyses of the CrT process, and for the design of AI-based scaffolds to support CrT development.