Using cognitive cases to establish incidence: The case of exaptative actions

The primary methodological approach in cognitive psychology is experimental. However, the case study seems to hold particular importance in the foundational concepts of higher cognitive functions. For example, theories of the cognitive changes that lead to spontaneous insights have their roots in moments such as Poincaré’s realisation about chaos theory while stepping onto a bus or Kohler’s description of the chimpanzee Sultan’s sudden discovery of how to reach a banana. Indeed, it makes sense for research that is interested in nonstandard cognitive processes to be founded on case studies. In this paper, we draw on detailed examination of single cases to illustrate exaptative actions. Exaptative actions are actions which have an initial goal not related to changing the problem space in an epistemically or pragmatically amenable way but accidentally reveal a pathway to the problem solution. We show that these actions are a common bridge between pragmatic and epistemic actions but also question the idea that there are easily identifiable distinct action forms over the course of a problem-solving episode. We finish with observations on the importance of qualitative, single case research to cognitive psychology.