Problem Solving (1) Flashcards
What is meant by General Problem Solver?
An information processing approach to solving problems - a computer programme
What is meant by Means-end Analysis?
A technique used to solve problems that considers your current state to where you want to end up at/be (the desired state)
What is meant by Well/ill-defined Problems?
Problems that have a clear end people (or less clear end-point)
What is a problem?
- A situation where your current state isn’t the same (or good enough) as your goal state
What are the types of problems?
Lab problems
Real-world problems
Well-defined problems
Ill-defined problems
What is meant by action selection and outcome evaluation?
Action selection = you don’t have to attempt a problem at all
Outcome evaluation = how do you decide if the problem is over?
What is Thorndike’s law of effect?
Thorndike (1898 - 1911):
- keep doing satisfying things, stop doing dissatisfying things
- used trial and error approach
What is imagery?
- Pinker’s ‘mentalese’ - visualise the world
- mental imagery
What is the mental rotation task?
Shepard Melzer task:
- Do the shapes match?
- imagine what the shapes look like at different angles
- (mental rotation)
- looked at eye movement and compared them to the mental rotation only task = have to solve SM with mental rotation
Explain Gestalt Pscyhology
Gestalt Psychology follows ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ - a holistic viewpoint
- Productive = come up with a new idea to solve the problem
- Reproductive = analyse the problem, apply existing knowledge to solve the problem
What is Problem Solving?
- Governed by recentering something which originates in the desire to get comprehensive insight
- brings transformation, seeing things as parts of a new, clear structure
- 2 direction are involved in problem solving: getting a whole consistent picture and seeing what the structure of the whole requires for the parts - Wertheimer, (1945)
What did Kohler do/study with Chimpanzees?
- Sultan (a chimpanzee)
- Kohler got Sultan to solve novel problems in order to get a food reward
- Sultan couldn’t reach it
- So restructured the problem by using a box to stand on
- Is this evidence for productive thinking?
What evidence is there for Gestalt Theory?
Pask et al., (1967):
- Students given cards to sort, using any method they want to
- some detailed descriptions(/descriptors) were given and others were general statements
- Answer/Findings = hierarchy thinking, like biological classification when solving problems/sorting the cards
Additional findings:
- some start with general statements and fill in the descriptors later
- others work from the detailed descriptors up to the general statements
What some the limitations to Gestalt Theory?
How is a bad structure restructured into a better one?:
- Incomplete mechanism
- “self-organising properties of the cortex”
How does this work?:
- Based on simple lab tasks
But are real-world problems that simple and easy to solve?
What is information processing?
- WWII: technological advances e.g. fight tanks, artillery, training needs code breaking all required the investigation of human cognition
- J.J. Gibson: training pilots in WWII led to his theories about direct perception and ecological visual processes
- during WWII - German U-boats communicated via radio signals using coding device called the enigma machine
- British and American mathematicians, mainly Alan Turing (1912- 1954) developed and broke then enigma code to understand it (and win the war)
