Think-Aloud Methods

History

Early pioneers of scientific psychology, such as William James, Wilheim Wundt, Alfred Binet, and Edward Titchener, used introspective reports of subjective experiences to provide insight into human consciousness, learning, and problem solving. However, the lack of reproducibility of findings from the analysis of introspective reports [Page 1505]resulted in its marginalization and scientific psychology's emphasis turned from consciousness to observable behavior.

However, it should be noted that James Watson, whose seminal paper “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” provided the impetus to remove introspection from scientific study, advocated the use of think-aloud methods to understand cognitive processes. Gestalt psychologists also used think-aloud approaches to better understand cognitive processing during problem solving. Furthermore, Jean Piaget's seminal studies of the development of cognitive abilities relied on children's verbal descriptions of their responses to various experimental tasks. Contrary to the analytic introspection research that required participants be trained in self-observation or provide immediate retrospective reports of thoughts, participants were now being asked to simply “think aloud” their thoughts as they emerged while performing a task.

Psychology's embrace of information-processing approaches to understanding behavior in the 1950s onward resulted in the re-emergence of think-aloud methods as a valued research tool. The method gained popularity through Allen Newell and Herbert A Simon's use of think-aloud data to inform their work on computational processes in problem solving. Contemporary use of the think-aloud method is informed by k Anders Ericsson and Simon's protocol analysis of verbal reports.

Protocol Analysis

In a think-aloud study, participants are asked to verbalize thoughts that emerge as a task is being completed. The method aims to elicit the information required for task performance and consequently, the verbalizations should reflect the thoughts being attended to at the time. Participants should not provide an explanation of such thoughts, because to do so, they have to draw on additional thoughts and explanations that are not related to the task at hand and might alter the structure of the thought processes under study. Successful elicitation of the focal thoughts requires participants to attend uninterrupted to the completion of the task presented.

As people often feel that they have to explain or justify their thoughts in a social interaction, many strategies are used to minimize such possibilities. Participants often complete simple warm-up tasks to practice attending completely to a given task while verbalizing their thoughts only. It is also recommended that the researcher sits behind the participant to remove the social interactive element of the procedure. The researcher monitors the verbalizations and reminds the participant to speak if there has been a period of silence.