The representational redescription model: what is it and what does it propose?

Summary of this explanatory model of psychological processes created by Annette Karmiloff-Smith.

Do you know the representational redescription model?

It is a cognitive model created by the professor and researcher in neurocognition Annette Karmiloff-Smith. This model tries to explain how our mind operates when obtaining and transforming knowledge.

What is the representational redescription model?

The representational redescription model is a model proposed by neuroscientist Annette Karmiloff-Smith. It is a model of cognitive development, which offers insight into the cognitive aspects that develop during the acquisition and development of human language..

What the Representational Redescription Model promotes is the establishment of new systems of relationships between the different representations we have, at a mental level, of reality (of ourselves, the context, circumstances, relationships, objects, etc.).

The model also defends the importance of making explicit two elements that are part of our mental representations: the object or attitude, on the one hand, and the agent of representation, on the other..

Characteristics

In terms of its characteristics, one of the functions of the representational redescription model is to change the person's view of the world, as well as the theories, ideas or knowledge that he or she has acquired about his or her surroundings.

Through her model, Karmiloff-Smith deviates from the structuralist tradition and opts for an approach where the key element is hypotheses.According to Karmiloff-Smith, hypotheses are theories in action that allow us to formulate, define (and redefine) our way of thinking.

Her model gives great importance to the vital stage of childhood; specifically, the theory underpinning the Model of The theory underpinning the representational redescription model states that children's mental activity is singularized by the process of making explicit certain implicit representations, to certain implicit representations into explicit ones, through different phases where an internal reorganization takes place in the child's mind.

Theoretical bases

At the theoretical level, the bases of the Model of representational redescription are: innatism and constructivism.

Innatism is a doctrine that establishes that certain types of knowledge are innate (not acquired through experience or learning). For its part, constructivism is a pedagogical current that suggests that we are the ones who build our own knowledge, in a progressive and active way.

On the other hand, the representational redescription model also takes the developmental perspective, without leaving aside the innate part (more of a Biological nature) of every human being.

Importance of explicit learning

In the representational redescription model, the concept of "explicit learning" acquires great relevance. This type of learning involves a restructuring of the knowledge we have in a given field..

In this way, the fact of making implicit knowledge explicit would be done from the redescription of such knowledge in a new theoretical framework.

On the other hand, we must bear in mind that in every process of knowledge acquisition, whatever type it may be, we are greatly influenced by culture; in this way, when we acquire new knowledge (or representational system), we do so through cultural systems that influence us..

Representational Redescription

To better understand how the representational redescription model works, let us learn what this last concept (representational redescription; RR) consists of.

Representational redescription is a way of obtaining knowledge through our mind; it is a way for our mind to exploitThe idea is that our mind exploits, internally, the information it has already stored, through a process of redescription of mental representations. In other words, it is a matter of re-representing (redescription) the representations we have of things, in different formats.

In this way, through this process, an implicit representation becomes knowledge.. In addition, this process also allows us to construct our "I-agent", a concept of psychotherapy that consists of the identity we are building at a cognitive level.

Levels of knowledge representation

According to Annette Karmiloff-Smith we can find up to four different levels through which we represent knowledge, and on which the model is based. These levels are:

1. implicit level (1)

These are representations of a procedural nature representations of a procedural nature that would not be accessible to other parts of the cognitive system.. This type of implicit representations is interpreted in connectionist terms.

Explicit level (1)

These are the representations that become symbolic representations ("packets of information"), and would be stored in our memory in a "compact" form.. They are both explicit and implicit; explicit because they are in our memory, and implicit because we cannot report them.

Both these representations and the previous ones (implicit level, 1), are effective in situations where an automatic, fast and immediate response is required.

Explicit level (2)

It encompasses that information packaged in our representation system in a stable and lasting way.. In other words, it is the information we have in our memory. This information can be retrieved and updated through new representations.

4. Explicit level (3)

Finally, the explicit level (3) of the model of representational redescription encompasses the true explicit representationsi.e. those that are not only available, but also accessible to others at the explicit level (consciously).

These representations, as well as the previous ones (explicit level 2), are the ones that allow dealing with new situations, where the response required (or needed) is not automatic, but flexible.

Operating processes and learning

It is worth mentioning two processes that are developed within the representational redescription model.. These processes are, in fact, two complementary directions that our learning takes:

1. proceduralization

The process of procedimentation is a gradual process, which allows our mind to make, from existing knowledge, a kind of our mind to make, from existing knowledge, a more automatic (and, at the same time, less accessible) type of knowledge. (and at the same time, less accessible). An example of learning that we carry out from this process is learning to solve a Rubik's cube.

2. Explicitness

In the second process, knowledge becomes more and more accessible to our mind; in this case, we are talking about explicitly representing implicit information, as far as procedural representations are concerned. An example of this would be learning to play the piano.

Bibliographical references:

• Merani, A. (1979). Diccionario de Psicología. Mexico: Grijalbo.
• Moreno, E.Z. (2015). Reflection on the theoretical proposal of the Karmiloff-Smith Representational Redescription model. La Tercera Orilla, (15). National University of Córdoba-Argentina.
• Tolchinsky, L. (1996). Beyond Annette Karmiloff Smith's modularity or how to make developmental psychology a relevant science. Anuario de psicología, Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Psicología, 69: 199-211.