Reflective abstraction:

: A termintroduced by Piaget; reflective abstraction is any personal activity thatderives knowledge by reflecting on one’s own operations are activities, forinstance by reflecting on action-result relationships, or relationships betweenvarious actions or operations performed in a particular context.  Reflectiveabstraction may be triggered by cognitive conflict, e.g. the experience thatthe application of a particular operation leads to a correct solution in onecase and an incorrect solution in another.