There are different types of cognitive content. Table 1 contains a list of commonly used categories of cognitive content. Unfortunately, there is no standardized, generally accepted system of categories for cognitive content. Most, like those found in Table 1, are redundant, incomplete, and lack validity. Nonetheless, the categories can be useful. The cognitive content of the baseball players described previously might be categorized as locus of control (“I’ll have to get lucky here), emotional stability (increased anxiety and tightening up), sport knowledge (pattern of pitches thrown in the game) and problem solving (estimate of types of pitches).


Table 1 - Example of categories of cognitive content

Knowledge
  Computer science
  Philosophy and religion
  Social sciences
  Languages
  Science and mathematics
  Technology and applied science
  Arts and recreation
  Literature
  History and geography

Leadership and management skills
  Strategic thinking
  Innovation
  Business acumen
  Negotiating
  Problem solving
  Decision making
  Time management
  Oral and written communication

Social-cognitive personal attributes
  Self-efficacy
  Locus of control
  Goal orientation
  Goal setting
  Self-monitoring

Trait-based personal attributes
  Honesty
  Emotional stability
  Conscientiousness
  Agreeableness
  Self-confidence

Intellectual skills
  Reading comprehension
  Verbal ability
  Spatial reasoning
  Inductive and deductive reasoning

In summary, peak performers are good at defining the drivers or causes of success. That is, they understand and identify two things, (1) the tasks and sub-tasks that must be performed expertly to achieve peak performance and (2) the cognitive content required to perform the tasks and sub-tasks successfully. While their understanding may be imperfect they achieve a sufficiently comprehensive and accurate understanding of task and cognitive analysis to enable them to proceed successfully to the next step in achieving peak performance.

For most peak performers, the drivers of success that guide their actions is tacit knowledge, that is, it is difficult or impossible to share. However, thanks to the efforts of psychologists in the past fifteen years, progress has been made in understanding and identifying the causes of success and the process to discover it – task and cognitive analysis. It is now possible to make explicit and to measure and teach what has in the past been largely implicit, unmeasured-able, and unteachable.