Expertise in an expedient strategy blocks later restructuring — unless the better structure is available from the start

The blocking result: participants who learned to rely on a fairly-accurate- but-imperfect predictor first "were unable to restructure their knowledge" when shown a two-predictor structure supporting perfect performance — while participants shown the same structure from the outset adopted it. The expedient knowledge persisted even against an adaptive display (Experiment 2). Proposed mechanism: associative blocking of the alternative cues — the early strategy's success starves the better cues of learning signal.

This is the dark twin of claim-cognitive-conflict-prerequisite-for-restructuring: conflict triggers restructuring, but a good-enough strategy prevents the conflict from ever arising — accuracy is what makes expedient knowledge sticky. A follow-up in the capture (two of the three authors, 2005) refines the condition: restructuring needs both dissatisfaction with current knowledge AND an available usable alternative; neither alone suffices.

The vault-governance reading writes itself and is held to commentary:

See moc-machine-self-knowledge, question-gap-detection.