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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

I had to look the defninition of Non-Cognitive skills. Below is an example.

https://blog.udemy.com/non-cognitive-skills/

Once I understood what they were I realize that I have encountered the behavior in my life anecdotally. Also, I realize the ones that I am deficient in.

EDIT: The study has a definition that I missed when reading it. See tboyd47's comment below.

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It doesn't seem that the skills in that link are relevant to this study:

> The non-cognitive score is based on behavioral questions in a 20-minute interview with a trained psychologist. On the basis of the interview, the draftee is scored along four separate dimensions (see Mood et al. (2012)): (i) social maturity, (ii) psychological energy (e.g., focus and perseverance), (iii) intensity (e.g., activation without external pressure) and (iv) emotional stability (e.g., tolerance to stress). There is also an overall non-cognitive score on a Stanine scale, which ranges from 1 to 9.

To clarify, this quote (posted by tboyd47) is the text describing "non-cognitive skills" from the body of the linked PDF. It seems somewhat related to the concepts shared on Udemy, but it's obviously better to use the definition provided in the paper itself.

They seem to define "non-cognitive skills" as "social skills". Not manual skills, such as those needed for carpentry. This is confusing. Is this a translation from Swedish?

Not just social skills: for example, intensity and stress tolerance. I think "emotional skills" would be a better way to describe what they're getting at.

Yes, it's confusing and no, it isn't due to a translation. There is quite a bit of other unnecessarily convoluted jargon and grammar in the report as well, so I think it's just that one or more of the authors has misguided ideals about academic writing style.

>Not manual skills, such as those needed for carpentry

Those skills are still cognitive. You need to know what you're doing to do carpentry. It's not like your hand moves by itself.

In terms of these I find that (ii), (iii), and (iv) do seem to fit the term "non-cognitive" in that they're things we build up with experience and practice but don't really think about consciously. But social maturity surprises me, perhaps it's a technical term that means something different than I think, because at least for me maturing took quite a bit of thought. The "overall" score seems kind of mysteriously thrown in.

Wait, how are problem solving and critical thinking not cognitive skills?

Thanks, I initially took it to mean soft skills more along the lines of interpersonal relations.

The definition of "non-cognitive skill" actually used by the researchers does seem to include some interpersonal aspects such as "social maturity."

Thanks for this. I was wondering the same thing. Terrible term, for sure.

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