Final Material Flashcards
What’s one of the major barriers to problem solving?
Being unable to ignore irrelevant information
What’s problem solving?
- A cognitive process that involves recognizing there is a problem, analyzing and solving it, and then verifying the effectiveness of the solution
- A multi-step process to shift your current problem state to a goal state
What’s the goal of problem solving?
The goal is to overcome barriers and find a solution that best resolves the problem
What’s a problem?
- Occurs when there’s an obstacle between an initial state and a goal state when you don’t know the solution right away
- Problems can range from small to large (planning your future career)
- What both small and large problems have in common is the mental process directed at achieving a goal when you do not know the solution right away
What are the mental processes that go into problem solving?
- First, after recognizing there’s a problem, you need to understand it by taking into account all the relevant information (including information available in the environment (bottom-up) and information from previous knowledge and experiences (top-down))
- As you actively solve problems, you search your memory for relationships between the current problem and past ones
- Information, such as specific facts, concepts, strategies, and beliefs about a particular problem, will influence the processing
- The next step is to figure out what steps to take to actually solve the problem
- To do that, you must think about the problem and generate a few possible solutions
- Thinking requires you to take all the relevant information into account (bottom and top) and manipulate that information in order to come up with possible solutions
- Once you’ve chosen a solution, you need to take the steps to solve the problem and, finally, you reflect on the effectiveness of your decision
Why is problem solving considered a cyclical, recursive, and applicable
process?
- When something’s recursive, that means its steps are repeated as many times as necessary
- Problem solving is considered cyclical because, once you arrive at a solution, you discover a new or similar problem, and have to use information gained in the past to work on a solution for the next problem
- Problem solving is considered applicable because you apply successful cycles (solutions) to new problems
According to Pertz et al. (2003), the problem solving cycle consists of what steps?
- Recognize or identify the problem
- Define and represent the problem mentally
- Develop a solution strategy
- Organize knowledge about the problem
- Allocate mental and physical resources for solving the problem
- Monitor progress toward the goal
- Evaluate the solution for accuracy
What does every model describing the process of problem solving have in common?
An initial state and a goal state
What’s the initial state of a problem?
In problem solving, it’s the initial situation or starting point of a problem
What’s the goal state of a problem?
In problem solving, it’s the desired final state or ending situation
Describe the problem space theory model (Newell & Simon, 1972)
- It states that problem solving is a search within problem space
- Problem space includes an initial state, a goal state, and intermediate states
- You move through the problem space from state to state through actions called operators
- Overall, problem solving is a search for the appropriate steps through the problem space
What are the intermediate states of a problem?
All the possible states in between each step in moving from an initial state to a goal state
What are operators?
Actions that transform the current problem state into another problem state
How do the most effective problem solvers and experts approach problems?
- They approach them slowly and think carefully about each part of the problem before trying to solve it
- This way, they’re able to use the most effective approach possible, based on all the information available
- This turns out to be very advantageous when problem solving
What are problem-solving questions compared to?
Visual illusions
What are the 2 main types of problems?
- Well-defined problems
- Ill-defined problems
What’s a well-defined problem?
- A problem that has a specific goal state, clearly defined solutions and clearly expected solutions
- Requirements are unambiguous
- They have correct answers, and certain procedures lead us to solve them
- All information needed to solve the problem is present
- These problems have clearly defined states that make them possible to be effectively solved by humans and computers, like computing math problems or playing chess
- The initial state, the goal state, and the operators (or actions) are clearly specified
- Goal directedness -> problems with a defined goal state and set task constraints (or rules) such that there are clear steps
-Because well-defined problems have solutions that can be broken down step by step, they are easily solved by using algorithms
What are algorithms?
A step-by-step procedure that should always produce a correct solution
We can use well-defined problems and computer simulations to study what?
- How humans solve problems
- Developing instructions for computer simulations (algorithms) helps us better understand how our brains could solve similar problems
- When writing a computer simulation for this purpose, the goal is to program it to complete tasks just as humans would
- That way, we can infer the actual mechanisms used by humans
- At times, this includes making mistakes and considering irrelevant information, just like we would
- The simulation shouldn’t perform any better or worse than a human
- The challenge is to write the program to imitate the same steps, and missteps, a human would make when solving the same problem
- This gives us insight on how us humans complete the same tasks
What’s an ill-defined problem?
- A problem that doesn’t have clear goal states, solution paths, or expected solutions (ambiguous)
- Requires added information
- Computers aren’t very good at solving these (Moravec’s paradox)
- Part of the difficulty comes from the fact that these problems don’t have one correct answer -> they can have multiple solutions
- They can also be solved in many different ways, and sometimes it’s not clear that you’ve even reached the right solution
- Many real-world problems such as choosing a major in college, relationship issues, or problems where morals or values must be taken into account, are ill-defined problems
- These types of problems are situational
- In these situations, the initial state, goal state, and the operators are not as clearly specified as they are in well-defined problems
What did Anderson (1985) state about problem-solving?
“It seems that all cognitive activities are fundamentally problem solving in nature. The basic argument is that human cognition is always purposeful, directed to achieving goals and removing obstacles to those goals”
What are the 2 main theories describing how we approach problem solving?
- Behaviourist approach
- Gestalt approach
Describe the behaviourist theory of how we approach problem solving
- Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior that results from simple input-output or stimulus-response pairs
- Similar to the ideas of reinforcement and punishment, the principles of cause and effect are the backbone of their problem-solving theory
What was Edward Thorndike’s perspective on how we approach problem solving?
- Edward Thorndike was a behaviorist who theorized that problem solving was a reproductive process
- Thorndike believed that we utilize a trial-and-error model of problem solving
- As we work toward solving a problem, we gain information with each trial attempted
- That information can then be used on subsequent trials, and on subsequent problems