L11 - Problem Solving

Question 1

What is a problem? How does a problem arise

Answer 1

A problem arises when there is an obstacle between a present state and a goal state and it is not obvious how to get around the obstacle.

Question 2

What are the four different types of problems?

Answer 2

1. Well-defined problems (have a correct answer available)
2. Ill-defined problems (no single correct answer)
3. Knowledge-lean problems (no specialized knowledge required)
4. Knowledge-rich problems (specialized knowledge required)

Question 3

The Gestalt researchers were some of the earliest researchers of problem-solving.

What did they believe solving a problem depended on?

Answer 3

How a problem was constructed mentally

and

How the problem could be re-structured to reach a solution

Question 4

What did Gestalt psychologists mean by fixation (or functional fixedness)?

Answer 4

This is when the problem solver focuses on an aspect of the problem that prevents them from finding the solution.

Question 5

What is the candle problem (Dunker, 1945) (where the participants have to figure out how to nail a candle to a wall without it dripping wax) an example of?

Answer 5

Functional Fixedness

Question 6

What did the Gestalt Psychologists believe people needed to do to solve the candle problem?

Answer 6

They needed to restructure the problem space.

Question 7

In Maier’s (1931) two-string problem, 60% of participants could not solve the problem until a researcher ‘accidentally’ brushed up against the string to make it swing like a pendulum. Afterwards, 23/37 solved it within 60 seconds.

What is this an example of according to Gestalt psychologists?

Answer 7

Rapid Restructure (Rapidly Restructuring)

When they were stuck they were functionally fixed, however seeing the string swing allowed them to change their fixed beliefs

Question 8

Gestalt psychologists believed in ‘insight’. What did the results of Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987) show when they tried to test this using ‘insight problems’ and ‘systematic problems’?

Answer 8

That participants seemed to experience a ‘a-ha’ moment (insight).

Question 9

In Newell and Simon’s (1972) General Problem Solver research, what did they describe as the computational approach?

Answer 9

That humans seem to problem solve the same way computers do, systematically one step at a time.

Question 10

In the Computational Approach, what is the Problem Space?

Answer 10

The problem space contains all of the potential problem states or legitimate steps that can be taken in order to move from the initial state to the goal state.

Question 11

What is the TSP (Travelling Salesperson Problem) a difficult optimization problem for computers and not for humans?

Answer 11

Humans apply heuristics to direct our search for the optimal solution.

• There is an immense number of ways to figure it out (20 factorial for a 20 point model).*
• Computers work on a ‘brute-force’ manner, where they have to try every possible approach (one’s humans wouldn’t even try).*
• Humans only attempt a small number of all possible outcomes depending on what we believe is viable.*

Question 12

What were the 5 gestalt grouping heuristics that humans use to group objects?

Answer 12

1. Symmetry
2. Similarity
3. Proximity
4. Closure
5. Smoothness

Question 13

What is the relationship between problem-solving and intelligence?

Why?

Answer 13

Significant (TSP and Raven’s (progressive matrices), r = 0.48), Both visual and non-visual optimization problems load onto general intelligence (Burns, 2006)

There are often rules that need to be learned and applied in a sequential pattern and they often involve a restructuring of the problem.