Development of cognitive abilities during training

Insofar as cognitive abilities are a deciding factor in the individual's adaptation to the requirements of his/her job, their development within training has become, during the last decades, a main objective of vocational training. Appeal to cognitive education methods is now widespread. The authors propose an analysis of the main features of those methods aimed at enhancing individuals' intelligence. They present empirical data evaluating the efficiency of these methods applied to adults' vocational training settings. The results pre discussed by comparing them with the current knowledge concerning cognitive psychology of learning. The appraisal is rather disappointing. The authors stress how difficult it is to get people to acquire general thinking procedures which are task-content independent. They suggest training systems should associate together cognitive and conative factors of learning on the one hand and should rely strongly upon technical knowledge peculiar to the domain which is subject to training on the other hand.