week 10: problem solving

Question 1

what is patient PF

Answer 1

his right anterior prefrontal cortex was damaged from a stroke. He seemed fine afterwards however he couldn’t go back to work he didn’t know how to do his work (architecture) because he lost his ability to do complex organisational thinking

Question 2

what is problem space

Answer 2

consists of various states of the problem

Question 3

what is problem state

Answer 3

a representation of the problem in some degree of solution

Question 4

what is problem solving

Answer 4

searching a sequence of states in a problem space that goes from the start state to the goal state

Question 5

3 ways to acquire new operators

Answer 5

discovery
direct instruction
analogy/imitation

Question 6

the criteria for selecting operators

Answer 6

1. backup avoidance
2. difference reduction
3. means-ends analysis

Question 7

what is operators

Answer 7

the cognitive procedures comprised in understanding the impact of varied modifications of quantity

Question 8

what is backup avoidance

Answer 8

the tendency in problem solving to avoid operators that take one back to a state already visited

Question 9

is backup avoidance usually the first choice for operators

Answer 9

no

Question 10

what is difference reduction operator

Answer 10

the tendency in problem solving to select operators that eliminate a difference between the current state and the goal state

Question 11

is difference reduction a useful method

Answer 11

yes but its not always optimal

Question 12

why is difference reduction not always optimal

Answer 12

it only considers whether the next step is an improvement and not whether the larger plan will work

Question 13

what is means-ends analysis

Answer 13

creates a new subgoal to enable an operator to apply

Question 14

what happens to operators in means-end analysis

Answer 14

an operator is not abandoned even if it cannot be applied immediately

Question 15

what does means-end analysis identify

Answer 15

the biggest difference between the current state and the goal state and try to eliminate it first

Question 16

what operator selection doesnt allow you to solve the tower of hanoi problem

Answer 16

difference reduction

Question 17

how do people solve the Hanoi problem

Answer 17

people tend to adopt the difference reduction strategy first and then start using means-ends analysis

Question 18

who has difficulty making backwards moves in the tower of hanoi problem

Answer 18

patients with prefrontal damage

Question 19

why do patients with prefrontal damage have difficulty making backwards moves in the tower of hanoi problem

Answer 19

they cannot maintain the goal in working memory very well

Question 20

what is problem representation

Answer 20

how states of a problem are represented has significant effects

Question 21

what does successful problem solving depend on

Answer 21

depends on representing problems in such a way that appropriate operators can apply

Question 22

what happens when people are faced with logical problems

Answer 22

people often come to conclusions that are judged as incorrect from the perspective of formal logic and math

Question 23

what happens to computer systems

Answer 23

they are based on formal logic make so many make silly mistakes that humans never make

Question 24

4 areas where human irrationality is often found

Answer 24

reasoning about conditionals
reasoning about quantifiers
reasoning about probabilities
decision making

Question 25

what is a conditional statemtn

Answer 25

An assertion that if an antecedent (A) is true, then a consequent (B) must be true

Question 26

how can performance on the selection task be enhanced

Answer 26

when the material has meaningful content

Question 27

why do we perform so poorly on the Wason selection task

Answer 27

people tend to select cards that will be informative under a probabilistic model, not a strict logical model
eg. if a, then b (b will probably occur when a occurs)

Question 28

if the sentiment “if a car has a broken headlight it will have a broken taillight” what would be the logical choices to check

Answer 28

cars with broken headlights
cars without broken taillights

Question 29

how do we tend to interpret conditional statements

Answer 29

on the basis of a probabilistic model, not a strict logical model

Question 30

why do we interpret conditional statements in a probabilistic model

Answer 30

because doing so actually makes sense in many situations in real life

Question 31

what is the reasoning about probabilities

Answer 31

judgements or probability/frequency

Question 32

what is meant by judgements of probability/frequency

Answer 32

we can be biased in our estimates of probabilities when we must rely on factors such as memory and similarity judgements

Question 33

what happens to the subjective value when making decisions

Answer 33

tends to decrease more steeply in negative direction