The Basics of Procedural Items

Now that you can distinguish between procedural and declarative knowledge, let's try and apply this knowledge to the following example: Suppose you want to learn the keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting text (in Windows):

Q: Keyboard Shortcut: Copy (text or image)

A: Ctrl+C

Q: Keyboard Shortcut: Paste (text or image)

A: Ctrl+V

Would this be procedural or declarative knowledge? As I tried to show in the previous post, it depends on how you answer the question. If you answer in your head, then it's declarative (I'm assuming this is non-deductive knowledge). If, however, you want to learn this knowledge procedurally, so that it becomes "second-nature", you should instead answer this question by physically placing your fingers on the correct keys in front of you. Amazing! You've just turned a declarative item into a procedural one - possibly your first true procedural item! If you think back to the definitions you will see that when you place your fingers on the keyboard you are performing the task; when you only think of the answer in your head, you are only recognising the correct action to take.

The reason why it is possible to change a declarative item into a procedural one without changing the text is because of the principle of representation in declarative knowledge. Since the words only represent knowledge, we can change the underlying meaning and/or interpretation without needing to change the formulation at all.

As practice, you may wish to go through your collection and re-memorise your keyboard shortcuts as procedural items. I certainly have. The result is that when I want to copy something, I just let my fingers find their place on the keys, rather than thinking the words "Ctrl+C". Naturally, this is also the preferable way to learn a musical instrument, and it IS how I learn the violin. However, more on that later.

For those of you that have pronunciation items in your collection (i.e. items that ask for you to actually say a particular word out loud) you may be surprised to know that such items are already procedural. Answering such an item is of course different to just saying the answer to any old item out loud - it requires a performance of the answer.

Finally, some maths (apologies to those who don't like the subject, but this is just basic arithmetic). Before we get to the procedural part, let's just look at some basics. Firstly, your 12 x 12 times tables are most likely all declarative. That is, you don't "work out" the answer, you just recall it. Also, lots of simple 1-digit sums such as "1 + 1", "6 + 3", "4 + 9" would all also be declarative. In answering such questions you wouldn't need to work them out on your fingers or an abacus, you could simply recognise the answer from the question.

So far I have tried to use examples that: a) you may already have in your collection, b) you can easily transform into procedural items, simply by answering the questions through performance, and c) are easy to formulate.

Since these simple examples demonstrate the meat of the method, if you have any queries, you should best ask them here before you move on to more advanced topics.