Problem solving 1 Flashcards
What is problem solving ?
Going from a problem to goal state
3 steps of problem solving
-
Recognizing and representing problem
- Focus on relevant information -
Analyzing and solving it
- Problem solving cycle -
Assessing the solution’s effectiveness
… and store it in an appropriate form
Solving the monk problem : finding the spot along the path that the monk will occupy at the same time of day on both trips
- Difficult to solve with math
- More productive way is representing it visually
problem-solving cycle
- Series of steps we enact to reach a solution
- We can go many times through these steps
Steps of the problem solving cycle
- Defining and representing the problem
- Define strategies
- Think of the best strategy
- Implement the best strategy with a plan of action
- Evaluate if what we did was an effective strategy that lead us to the wanted solution
- If not effective, go back in steps : Recursion
Recursive characteristic of the problem solving cycle
Repeat the cycle as many times as necessary to find a solution
* Ensures resolution
Applicable and adaptable characteristic of the problem solving cycle
The output of the cycle should be a solution to a current problem and a version that can generalize to new scenarios
Generalization of solution in memory
Storing specific solutions without detail to apply to new scenarios
* Memory for solutions should include ‘essence’ and not specifics : otherwise, won’t be easy to learn from it
* Important for adaptive behaviour
Well defined problems
- Task constraints (clear steps) to reach a solution : applying existing rules, algorithms or scripts
- Defined goal state : clear what the decision path is to solve the problem
- Single, expected outcome
Ill defined problems
- How to overcome problem / the goal is ambiguous : can be unclear what goal state you want, and ways to get to the goal
- Requires added information
- Situational
-Use different processes than well defined problems : think of multiple decision paths
Ambiguous situations (ill-defined problems)
- Have few limitations (rules) for how to solve the problem
- Multiple solutions or expected outcomes
- Social or self problem solving
E.g. I need to figure out how to make new friends.
Evidence that episodic memory assists in problem solving
Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients with hippocampal damage and select episodic memory loss vs control
Task :
* Asked to describe solutions to social problems :e.g. how to have dinner party for people you don’t know
* Problem descriptions scored by the number of effective, relevant steps or non-effective, irrelevant steps
Results :
- Impairment in effective solutions for TLE patients
- Suggest episodic memory is essential for creating solutions to ill-defined problems
There is greater activity in the … cortex (region for cognitive processes and tasks that require more cognitive load ) for ill-defined anagrams
right lateral prefrontal cortex
Cognitive load
The amount of information that your working memory system can hold at one time
Why do ill-defined problems carry a high cognitive load ?
Because they reduce working memory capacity :
- Ill-defined problems do not have schematic solutions to increase working memory capacity
Moravec’s paradox
Artificial intelligence (AI) can solve well-defined problems well, but not ill-defined problems and simple skills because it works by algorithms that deal well with certainty, but not uncertainty
* “Everything that’s easy is hard, and everything that’s hard is easy”
Represents an information processing approach to study problem solving via algorithms
Well-defined problems
Problem space
Where we represent well-defined problems
3 components of a problem space
- Initial and goals states
-
Intermediate paths and operators
- Operators : transformations from initial to solution state - Task constraints
Solving the Tower of Hanoi
- Move 3 discs from peg A to C so they are in the same initial order
- Task constraints
- No disc can lie on top of a smaller one
- only one disc can be moved at a time (i.e., the top disc of a pile)
The way you solve this requires you to move back and forth : using sub goals (intermediate states)
The Tower of Hanoi problem is an example of a ______well/ill defined problem because it has _____ task constraints/no task constraints
Well-defined with task constraints
Brute force way of navigating the problem space
For well-defined problems
* Systematic algorithm that represents all the possible steps from the problem to goal state
* Guaranteed to find a solution, but inefficient
Combinatorial explosion
- computing too many alternatives
- Linked to decision fatigue
- Why it is usually best to avoid brute force
Heuristics
Strategies to select moves in a problem space to avoid combinatorial explosion and decision fatigue
