thinking Flashcards
what is duncker’s definition of a problem
a problem arises when a living organism has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached
what are the 3 crucial elements of a problem
- starting state
- a set of processes that can transform the starting state into the goal state
- goal state
what is the behaviourist approach
problem solving occurs through an incremental process of trial and error
what is the gestalt approach
problem solving occurs through a process of restructuring and insight
what is thorndike’s puzzle box 1898
- placed a at in a puzzle box with a clasp that held the door shut
- outside the cage was a piece of fish to encourage the cat to escape
- the cats experimented with different ways to escape the puzzle box and reach the finish
- eventually they would find a lever which opened door
- thorndike recorded the time it took for the cat to solve the problem
- after the cat escaped, he put them back in the cage to see how long it took them to escape again
what are the results of thorndike’s puzzle box experiment
- in successive trials, the cats learnt that pressing the lever had favourable consequences
- sped up over trials
what can we conclude from thorndike’s puzzle box experiment
- progressively faster
- trial and error - incremental
- proposed law and effect - any behaviour followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated and any behaviour followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped
what did gestalt draw a distinction between
- reproductive thinking and productive thinking
what is reproductive thinking
involves a re-use of previous experience
what is productive thinking
involves a novel restructuring of the problem
what did kohler find - saltan’s insight
- gave chimps problems to solve
- chimp in cage and bananas outside of cage
- if given 2 sticks that were too short to reach bananas on their own he would give up
- after time he made a longer sticks by using the sticks together to reach bananas
- restructured problem
how can we conclude kohler’s findings
- insight rather than trial or error
- chimps were cared for rather than thorndikes cats
- birch - apes raised in captivity didn’t show the same level of insight
what are wallas four stages of creative thinking
- preparation
- incubation
- illumination
- verification
what is preparation
a problem is formulated and initial attempts are made to solve the problem
what is incubation
the problem is set aside and no conscious work is done on it
what is illumination
a sudden inspiration provides a new insight into the way in which the problem might be solved
what is verification
conscious work on the problem develops and tests the inspiration to provide a full solution to the problem
what did Helmholtz say about incubation followed by illumination
happy ideas come unexpectedly, without effort like an inspiration
what did Hadamard say about incubation followed by illumination
unconscious activity often plays a decisive part in discovery, that periods of ineffective effort are often followed, after intervals of rest or distraction by moments of sudden illumination
what did silveira 1971 find
- the cheap necklace problem
- control group worked on problem for half an hour - 55% people solved the problem
- experimental group - work for half an hour and then interrupted with 30 min break before carrying on - 64% solved problem
- other experimental group - worked for half an hour and then had 4 hour break - 85% solved problem
- incubation does help
what did murray and denny 1969 do
- pps were divided into high and low ability groups on the basis of their performance on a use of objects test of creativity
- given 20 mins to solve a complex practical problem
- incubation group had 5 min break
- control group had no break
- found for high ability pps the break acted as a distraction so were faster with no break
- for low ability pps they were aided by the break and required a period of incubation
- shows individual differences in whether incubation period is effective
what are barriers to successful problem solving
- functional fixedness
- the einstellung effect
what is functional fixedness
people fixate on one property of an object and cannot think about it in a different way
what is the einstellung effect
people learn a particular strategy for solving a problem which has produced success in the past and continue to use it even when it’s inappropriate
what did duncker find about functional fixedness
- support candle on the wall so it doesn’t drip onto the table below
- found pps tried to nail candle to the wall or glue to the wall with wax
- he then altered material by taking nails out of the box - pps no longer fixated on the box’s function of holding nails
instead they can use it as a candle holder
what is the nine dot problem
- overcoming fixedness
- connect all dots without lifting pen from paper
- most people assume they must stay within the square but you must draw outside the square
what is the water jug problem
- the luchins 1942
- the task is to work out how to use the jugs to measure the final quantity
- the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems - biased by previous experience to use all jugs
what did brown and mcneill find and research
- feeling-of-knowing
- we sometimes feel closer to the solution even if we can’t solve it
- 57% people can name the first letter of the word even if they can’t name it
what did metcalfe find
- feeling-of-warmth
- sometimes predict how close to a solution you are
- compared feelings of warmth for incremental and insight based problems
- feelings of warmth predicted performance on incremental problems but not insight problems
what is normative reasoning
- using mathematics
- real decision making scenarios often include probable information
- probability theories can therefore be used to define the best possible decision in these scenarios
- an example is bayes’ theorem
what is bayes’ theorem
mathematical rule for inverting conditional probabilities allowing us to find the probability of a cause given it’s effect
what is human reasoning
- much psychological research has looked at situations where human reasoning is not normative
- kahneman and tversky systematically investigated some situations where human reasoning is biased
- they proposed that these biases occur because people use heuristics to answer complex probabilistic questions
what is the representative heuristic
kahneman and tversky
- the assumption that representative or typical members of a category are encountered more frequently
what research did kahneman and tversky 1973 do
- pps asked to judge professions from brief character descriptions
- box contained 100 brief descriptions of people - 30 were of engineers and 70 were of lawyers
- had to draw description out box and say whether they were a lawyer or engineer
- pps ignore the base rate probabilities and instead base their judgment on whether the description sounds like an engineer
what is the linda problem
- tversky and kahnemen
- describes a person and asked pps to make judgments
- the conjunction fallacy - a reasoning error that people think chances of 2 things happening together is greater than the chance of just one thing happening alone
what is the gambler’s fallacy
- the mistaken belief that future tosses of a coin are influenced by past events
- head and tails are equally likely, it doesn’t matter what came before as the coin has no memory
what is the availability heuristic
- decision makers asses the frequency of a class or the probability of an event by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind
what did tversky and kahneman 1974 do to reserach the availability heuristic
- asked pps what was more frequent - word which has k as first letter of 3rd letter
- 69% say k as the first letter which is incorrect
- easier to access words that start with the letter k
what did lichtenstein et al 1978 find about availability heuristic
- investigated the judged frequency of lethal events
- pps overestimate low frequency events
- pps underestimate high frequency events
what is base rate neglect
- people ignore the general prevalence of an event happening
- they favour the info that relates to a specific case they are presented with
- the base rate is required to make correct probability judgments
what is the taxi cab study
- tversky and kahneman
- people tend to think the taxi was more likely to be blue than green
- pps focus on the witness’ accuracy and neglect the base rate of taxi cabs driving in the city
what did casscells et al 1978 find
- medical diagnosis study
- 45% of pps responded by ignoring the base rate
what did cosmides and tooby 1996 find about base rate neglect
- present the medical problem with probability and frequency formats
- probability format - high number make errors
- frequency format - high number of people choose correct answer
