Chapter 12 - Problem Solving & Creativity Flashcards
Problem
- A situation in which you need to accomplish a goal and the solution is not immediately obvious
What was problem-solving about for Gestalt psychologists?
- How people represent a problem in their mind
- How solving a problem involves a reorganization or restructuring of this representation.
Restructuring
- Often the outcome of insight
- Changing the problem’s representation
Insight
- Any sudden comprehension, realization, or problem solution that involves a reorganization of a person’s mental representation of a stimulus, situation, or event to yield an interpretation that was not initially obvious.
What did Metcalfe and Wiebe discover?
- Solutions for problems that have been called insight problems (not algebra problems), occur suddenly.
Fixation
- People’s tendency to focus on a specific characteristic of the problem that keeps them from arriving at a solution.
Functional Fixedness
- When you are fixated on one solution.
What are some types of functional fixedness problems?
- The candle problem
- The two-string problem
When do Gestalt psychologists consider the solution to the problem has occurred?
- Once the participants restructured their representation of how to achieve the solution.
Mental Set
- A preconceived notion about how to approach a problem, which is determined by a person’s experience of what has worked in the past.
Luchins Water Jug Problem
- Participants were told that their task was to figure out on paper how to obtain a required volume of water, given three empty jars for measures.
- Demonstrates that mental set can influence problem-solving both because of preconceptions about the functions of an object and about the way to solve a problem.
Initial state and an example from the tower of hanoi
- Conditions at the beginning of a problem.
- All three discs are on the left peg.
Goal state and an example from the tower of hanoi
- Solution to the problem.
- All three discs are on the right peg.
Intermediate state and an example from the tower of hanoi
- Conditions after each step is made toward solving a problem.
- After the smallest disc is moved to the right peg, the lower larger discs are on the left peg and the smallest one is on the right.
Operators and an example from the tower of hanoi
- Actions that take the problem from one state to another. Usually governed by rules.
- Rule: A larger disc can’t be placed on a smaller one.
Problem Space
- All possible states that could occur when solving a problem.
Means-end analysis and an example from the tower of hanoi
- A way of solving a problem in which the goal is to reduce the difference between the initial and goal states.
- Establish subgoals, each of which moves the solution closer to the goal state.
Subgoals and an example from the tower of hanoi
- Small goals to help reach the bigger goal.
- To free up the medium-sized disc.
What can the way a problem is stated influence? What is an example of this?
- It can affect its difficulty.
- The mutilated checkerboard problem where people are asked if we eliminate two corners of a checkerboard, can we cover the remaining squares with 31 dominos?
What is the think-aloud protocol procedure? Why did Kaplan and Simon use this technique?
- Participants are asked to say out loud what they are thinking while solving a problem.
- They started using this technique to get a better understanding of a person’s thought process as they were solving problems.