Problem solving Flashcards
What is the simple aim of problem solving?
-there is an initial state and a goal state in a problem
*Our task is to find a path that will take us from one state to the other
*Solving a problem is influenced by how we understand the
problem (at least understanding what the goal state is)
Define ill-defined problems
-Underspecified (at the start we usually don’t know the goal state)
-Endless strategies you could adopt, how do we know which one would be most effective?
*Most everyday problems are ill-defined,psychologists focus on well-defined problems (Goel, 2010)
Define well-defined problems
All aspects of the problem are clearly specified + a well-specified goal e.g., chess (although very complex) problem
When does a problem exist?
When someone lacks the relevant
knowledge to produce an immediate solution (what constitutes a problem is thus relative to the person)
Define knowledge-rich problems
Can only be solved by those having much relevant specific knowledge (e.g., chess problems)
Define knowledge-lean problems
Don’t require such knowledge as most of the information needed to solve the problem is contained in
the initial problem statement e.g. Math problems
*Most traditional research on problem-solving involved
knowledge-lean problems since they minimise individual
differences in relevant knowledge
What type of thinking did Gestaltists distinguish?
reproductive thinking AND productive thinking
Define reproductive thinking
involves the systematic reuse of previous experiences
Define productive thinking
involves a novel restructuring of the problem and is more complex
What is often used to solve problems requiring productive thinking?
Insight
* “Sudden comprehension, realisation, or problem solution that involves a reorganisation of the elements of a person’s mental representation of a stimulus, situation, or event to yield a non-obvious or non-dominant interpretation” (Kounios & Beeman, 2014, p. 74)
Explain the Nine-dot problem (Öllinger et al., 2014, Springer) and how that relates to insight
Involves drawing 4 straight lines that go through all 9 dots without lifting your pencil off the page
Most people initially assume that the lines must remain within the confines of the square dots
Key insight is to realise that this constraint must be relaxed (go outside the square)
The insight needed to be followed by an efficient search process for the problem to be solved
Define the representational change theory and how it links to insight Ohlsson (1992, 2011)
We often encounter a block or impasse when solving a problem because we have represented it wrongly (which is why insight is important to rearrange this representation)
E.g., the mutilated draughtboard problem (Black, 1946)
Which 3 ways can we change the problems representation for insight to occur according to the Representational Change Theory?
1.Constraint relaxation: inhibitions on what is regarded as permitted are removed
2.Re-encoding: some aspect of the problem representation is reinterpreted
3.Elaboration: new problem information is added to the representation
How did Öllinger et al. (2014) developed Ohlsson’s Representational Change Theory?
*Prior knowledge and perceptual aspects of a problem forms the problem representation followed by a search process
-Repeatedly unsuccessful search process=an impasse or block
*A new problem representation is formed to try to overcome the impasse followed by another
search process
*A search process may be necessary even after an impasse has been overcome by insight
True or false: Hints before or after an impasse improved performance less than those given at the point of impasse (Moss et al., 2011)
True
What inconsistent findings did Fedor et al. (2015) find for the Representational Change Theory?
*Less than 50% followed the predicted sequence
*Most used complex processing sequences
No more likely to report experiencing impasse during behaviourally defined impasse than at other stages of processing
What was Knoblich et al.’s (1999) experiment testing insight?
P’s were given problems requiring Roman numeral knowledge to solve (had to move a single stick to produce a true statement to replace the initial false one) with either a Type A/B problem
What’s Knoblich et al.’s (1999) Type A problem?
Only required changing 2 values in the equation
-Easy to do as our experience of arithmetic tells us that many operations change the values (numbers) in an equation (as with Type A problems)
What’s Knoblich et al.’s (1999) Type B problem?
less obvious change in the representation of the equation
-Few operations change the operators as is required in type B problems=much harder to relax the normal constraints of arithmetic (+ show insight) for Type B problems
What did Knoblich et al. (2001) find about insight in their roman numerals experiment?
-P’s initially spent much more time fixating on the values than on the operators for both types of problem (moved values sig more)
*Thus, their initial representation was based on the assumption
that values had to be changed
Define the incubation effect
A problem is put aside for some time where the subconscious mind continues to work
What 3 findings did Sio and Ormerod (2009) report in a meta-analysis on incubation effects?
1.Incubation effects were reported in 73% of the studies
2.Incubation effects were stronger with creative problems having
multiple solutions>linguistic and verbal problems having a single solution
3.Sleep enhanced performance on difficult problems but not on easy ones
*Forgetting misleading info is important (Penaloza & Calvillo, 2012)
*The strategies tried by the problem solver are forgotten during incubation (Simon, 1966)
*This forgetting makes it easier to adopt a new approach after the incubation period
Define mental set (past experience)
continuing to use a previously
successful problem-solving strategy even when it is
inappropriate or suboptimal
Why are mental sets useful despite their drawbacks?
It allows successive problems of the same type to be solved
rapidly and with fewer processing demands
