ajatusketjun

Ajatusketju, literally “chain of thought,” is a mental sequence of connected ideas that people use to reason, plan and solve problems. It describes the internal flow from initial observation to a conclusion, and it is often made visible when someone explains their reasoning or writes out steps for a task.

In psychology, ajatusketju is studied as part of cognition and metacognition. Think-aloud protocols capture it by asking a person to verbalize steps while solving tasks, revealing how the chain develops. Working memory, attention and executive function influence how coherent and lengthy the ajatusketju can be. In education, making the chain explicit helps students justify answers, monitor their reasoning, and transfer problem-solving skills to new situations.

In artificial intelligence, chain-of-thought prompting refers to eliciting intermediate reasoning steps to improve performance on complex tasks. Finnish discussions frequently translate this as ajatusketju. While revealing steps can illuminate problem-solving strategies, the steps themselves may be erroneous or biased, so the final answer must be evaluated critically.

Limitations include cognitive load, potential derailment, and the difficulty of verifying private internal steps. Some reasoning is non-linear or tacit, and emphasizing explicit steps can, in some cases, hinder creativity. Nevertheless, describing an ajatusketju can aid understanding, debugging, and instruction, and it remains a common concept across psychology, education and AI research.

See also: chain of thought, metacognition, think-aloud protocol, reasoning, problem solving.