week 10: problem solving Flashcards
what is patient PF
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
what is problem space
consists of various states of the problem
what is problem state
a representation of the problem in some degree of solution
what is problem solving
searching a sequence of states in a problem space that goes from the start state to the goal state
3 ways to acquire new operators
discovery
direct instruction
analogy/imitation
the criteria for selecting operators
- backup avoidance
- difference reduction
- means-ends analysis
what is operators
the cognitive procedures comprised in understanding the impact of varied modifications of quantity
what is backup avoidance
the tendency in problem solving to avoid operators that take one back to a state already visited
is backup avoidance usually the first choice for operators
no
what is difference reduction operator
the tendency in problem solving to select operators that eliminate a difference between the current state and the goal state
is difference reduction a useful method
yes but its not always optimal
why is difference reduction not always optimal
it only considers whether the next step is an improvement and not whether the larger plan will work
what is means-ends analysis
creates a new subgoal to enable an operator to apply
what happens to operators in means-end analysis
an operator is not abandoned even if it cannot be applied immediately
what does means-end analysis identify
the biggest difference between the current state and the goal state and try to eliminate it first
what operator selection doesnt allow you to solve the tower of hanoi problem
difference reduction
how do people solve the Hanoi problem
people tend to adopt the difference reduction strategy first and then start using means-ends analysis
who has difficulty making backwards moves in the tower of hanoi problem
patients with prefrontal damage
why do patients with prefrontal damage have difficulty making backwards moves in the tower of hanoi problem
they cannot maintain the goal in working memory very well
what is problem representation
how states of a problem are represented has significant effects
what does successful problem solving depend on
depends on representing problems in such a way that appropriate operators can apply
what happens when people are faced with logical problems
people often come to conclusions that are judged as incorrect from the perspective of formal logic and math
what happens to computer systems
they are based on formal logic make so many make silly mistakes that humans never make
4 areas where human irrationality is often found
reasoning about conditionals
reasoning about quantifiers
reasoning about probabilities
decision making
what is a conditional statemtn
An assertion that if an antecedent (A) is true, then a consequent (B) must be true
how can performance on the selection task be enhanced
when the material has meaningful content
why do we perform so poorly on the Wason selection task
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)
if the sentiment “if a car has a broken headlight it will have a broken taillight” what would be the logical choices to check
cars with broken headlights
cars without broken taillights
how do we tend to interpret conditional statements
on the basis of a probabilistic model, not a strict logical model
why do we interpret conditional statements in a probabilistic model
because doing so actually makes sense in many situations in real life
what is the reasoning about probabilities
judgements or probability/frequency
what is meant by judgements of probability/frequency
we can be biased in our estimates of probabilities when we must rely on factors such as memory and similarity judgements
what happens to the subjective value when making decisions
tends to decrease more steeply in negative direction
