9. Expertise and Analogical Reasoning

Question 1

properties of analogies

Answer 1

positive transfer
- congruent case wherein performance is faster and more accurate
- e.g.
negative transfer
- incongruent case wherein performance is slower and less accurate
e.g. functional fixedness
far transfer
- positive transfer in dissimilar context (e.g. general skills)
near transfer
positive transfer in similar context (e.g. specific skills)

Question 2

transfer distance (Chen and Khlar, 2008): they proposed 3 dimensions that influence likelihood of knowledge transfer

Answer 2

refer to slides 6-7 of powerpoint for study
1. task similarity
- structure (relational) and content (objects and properties)
2. context similarity
- social (e.g. people are involved) and physical (e.g. location)
3. time interval
- time between previous problem and target problem

Question 3

analogical paradox

Answer 3

we frequently use and understand distant analogies in our everyday lives
1. near transfer
- in analogical reasoning tasks in the lab, we tend to use examples that have superficial similarities rather than deep, structural similarities (“local analogies”)
- REMEMBER Luchin’s experiment and the idea of mental set
2. far transfer
- “A politician is trying to convince people to vote against independence of QC. He says that voting for independence would ‘likely be leaving an ocean liner for a lifeboat, without paddles, on a stormy sea’”

Question 4

cross-cultural problem solving

Answer 4

• folktales often contain folkwisdom that can offer solutions to problems
• they might facilitate performance in an “insight” problem solving task (Chen et al., 2008) developed problems that were related or unrelated to folktales

Question 5

cross-cultural problem examples

Answer 5

1. statue problem
2. cave problem
3. weigh the elephant
4. hansel and gretel

Question 6

effects of folktale availability

Answer 6

• refer to slide 15 for study on powerpoint
• results
  1. Chinese students were more capable of solving the problem (69%) than American students (8%) - reminding students of a folktale cue improved performance
  2. American and Chinese students showed different patterns of performance depending on the compatibility of the problem with available folktales (e.g. displacement, marking a path)

Question 7

transfer stages

Answer 7

what are the cognitive processes involved in transferring our knowledge from one domain to another domain in analogical reasoning? successful transfer requires:
1. accessing
- retrieving info from LTM (e.g. elephant story)
2. mapping
- selecting goal state and solution tool (e.g. weighing an elephant with a boat
3. executing
- finding that correct strategy to solve problem (e.g. I can weigh gold in the same manner as I can weigh the elephant and decomposure measure)

Question 8

cross-cultural tradeoff (Chen et al., 2004)

Answer 8

• refer to asteroid problem on slide 17 of powerpoint
• supported transfer stages by manipulating difficulty in terms of:
  1. target analog similarity (elephants vs asteroids)
  2. solution tool (boats vs spring board)
• when the goal was sufficiently different (asteroid and spring board), participants did not do as well on the task
• different strategies (e.g. compression for boat spring) were used that appeared to correspond to cultural knowledge - (Chinese participants)

Question 9

context specificity: effect of context

Answer 9

• Spencer adn Weisberg (1986) presented participants with problems in lab/classroom
• participants were presented with different problems in the same or different context
• the same context promoted more transfer

Question 10

context specificity: effect of time interval

Answer 10

• Chen and Khlar (2008) retested participants one and two years after initial task
• transfer knnoledge was greater one year relative to two years later

Question 11

defining expertise

Answer 11

expertise has social meaning
- “who is an expert? what competencies to they have”
expertise represents consistent expertise with related examples
- acquisition of a set of domain specific patterns

Question 12

novice vs expert processing: novice-explicit reasoning

Answer 12

1. face recognition in parts
2. S2: slow, serial, deliberate, controlled
3. perception of parts
4. search to find mode
5. focal search
6. analytic reasoning
   typically require substantial amounts of info and cognitive resources

Question 13

novice vs expert processing: expert-implicit reasoning

Answer 13

1. face recognition as a whole
2. S1: fast, automatic, effortless, associative
3. recognition of patterns
4. holistic mode
5. global impression
6. non-analytic reasoning

Question 14

What should a problem solver do to understand problem solving in complex situations?

Answer 14

Examine the problem in domains in which the problem solver can utilize substantial amounts of knowledge

Question 15

Is there an agreement that novices and experts use different learning systems?

Answer 15

Yes

Question 16

chess expertise

Answer 16

• refer to pages 62-63 for more info on chess