Principle 02
Elaborative Interrogation
Ask why the mechanism must be so.
- Function
- Deep semantic integration, gap detection
- Substrates
- Left inferior frontal gyrus · mPFC · ACC
- Intervention
- Targeted why / how prompts
- In transfer
- Catches false transfer before it hardens.
Generating an explanation forces a query into long-term memory. If the new fact cannot be seated in a schema, a prediction error fires — anterior cingulate, then a norepinephrine pulse that says: revise.
Passive reading can leave a fluent, empty model. A why-prompt makes the emptiness visible in the first ten minutes, when it is still cheap to fix.
In a transfer session the prompt is always comparative: why does this mapping hold, and under what deformation would it fail?
Pressley et al. 1987; Dunlosky et al. 2013; Craik & Lockhart 1972