Cognitive Conflict
In case of long academic texts or presentations, it is frequently difficult to keep the attention of the reader. For this reason, it is particularly recommendable to trigger the curiosity of the reader already at the beginning of the text in order to motivate her/him to go on reading. This works well by exposing her/him to a cognitive conflict. Cognitive conflicts are evoked by innovation, surprise, uncertainty, inconsistency (incongruency), which may also lead to doubt, perplexity and confusion at the part of the reader
(Christmann und Groeben 1999, p. 190).
A cognitive conflict is evoked by confronting learners with experiences not corresponding to their expectations. This leads to the consequence that they have to reflect the reasons why their expectations were not met. This may enhance the comprehensive understanding of contexts or strategies.
TU München, Definition Kognitiver Konflikt
By those methods, the presented content becomes more relevant for the reader/ auditor.
- Conflict generating questions:
They assume little prior knowledge on the part of the reader and provoke speculative answers. One such question could be:
What vegetables do ants grow in underground farms?
This arouses the reader's curiosity to find out whether their guess is correct. - Incongruent reference to the familiar:
Here, the reader is presented with information on a topic about which they already have prior knowledge that contradicts their existing knowledge. This encourages the reader to pay attention in order to resolve the contradiction by reading the text.
- Contradictory alternatives:
A cognitive conflict can also be triggered by offering contradictory problem alternatives - regardless of prior knowledge. Here too, reading motivation is triggered by an interest in the resolution of the contradiction.
- Novelty and surprise:
And finally, an introduction with surprising or new information can arouse interest and a
desire for more
.
During a lecture resp. presentation, the motivation of the audience to listen/ to follow may additionally being enhanced by encouraging the audience to develop ideas or assumptions on how to solve the cognitive conflict.
However, also in this case it is crucial that the cognitive conflict is obviously related to the own research question in order to make it more relevant and comprehensible.