Week 11 Flashcards
This week’s 11 objectives
By the end of this week you should be able to:
discuss how decision-making paradigms relate to notions of expertise
describe different types of problems and different models of how problem-solving takes place
discuss the nature of expert skilled performance in a specific domain
explain the role of ‘chunking’, pattern abstraction templates and schemas in domain specific expertise
outline the possible role of deliberate, effortful practice play in the acquisition of competence and expertise.
1.
Discuss how decision-making paradigms relate to notions of expertise
1
What does problem solving require?
(1) there are two states of affairs;
(2) the agent is in one state and wants to be in the other state;
(3) it is not apparent to the agent how the gap between the two states is to be bridged; and (4) bridging the gap is a consciously guided multi-step process. The second topic is analogical problem solving . In our everyday lives, we constantly use past experience and knowledge to assist us in our current task. Often we detect (and make effective use of) analogies or similarities between a current problem and ones solved in the past. The third topic is expertise . Individuals possessing expertise have considerable specialist knowledge in some given area or domain.
PROBLEM SOLVING: There are three major aspects to problem solving:
- It is purposeful (i.e., goal-directed).
- It involves controlled processes and is not totally reliant on “automatic” processes.
- A problem exists when someone lacks the relevant knowledge to produce an immediate solution. Thus, a problem for most people (e.g., a mathematical calculation) may not be so for a professional mathematician.
Analogical problem solving
In our everyday lives, we constantly use past experience and knowledge to assist us in our current task. Often we detect (and make effective use of) analogies or similarities between a current problem and ones solved in the past.
Expertise
Individuals possessing expertise have considerable specialist knowledge in some given area or domain. There is much overlap between expertise and problem solving in that experts are very efficient at solving numerous problems in their area of expertise. However, there are also important differences. Knowledge is typically more important in research on expertise than research on problem solving. There is more focus on individual differences in expertise research than research on problem solving. Indeed, a central issue in expertise is to identify the main differences (e.g., in knowledge, in strategic processing) between experts and novices.
Well-defined problems
Are ones in which all aspects of the problem are clearly specified, including the initial state or situation, the range of possible moves or strategies and the goal or solution.
The goal is well specified because it is clear when it has been reached (e.g., the centre of a maze).
Chess is a well-defined (although very complex) problem – there is a standard initial state, the rules specify all legitimate rules and the goal is to achieve checkmate.
Optimal strategy for solution.
Psychologists use these.
Person with brain damage found it very hard to work out preliminary plans to impose some structure on such problems and so could not solve them
Ill-defined problems
Ill-defined problems are underspecified. Suppose you set yourself the goal of becoming happier. There are endless strategies you could adopt and it is very hard to know ahead of time which would be most effective. Since happiness varies over time and is hard to define, how are you going to decide whether you have solved the problem of becoming happier?
Knowledge-rich problems
(e.g., chess problems) can only be solved by those having much relevant specific knowledge.
Knowledge-lean
problems do not require such knowledge because most of the information needed to solve the problem is contained in the initial problem statement. Most traditional research on problem solving involved knowledge-lean problems because such problems minimise individual differences in relevant knowledge.
Monty Hall problem:
In two out of three possible car– goat arrangements, the contestant would win by switching; therefore she should switch.
Why do people perform so poorly on this problem?
1. we typically use a heuristic or rule of thumb known as the uniformity fallacy. This fallacy involves assuming all available options are equally likely whether they are or not.
- the problem places substantial demands on the central executive (an attention-like component of working memory. Participants were much less likely to solve the Monty Hall problem if they performed a demanding task involving the central executive task at the same time (8% vs. 22%.
- Most people mistakenly believe the host’s actions are random . Burns and Wieth (2004) made the causal structure of the problem clearer. There are three boxers, one of whom was so good he was certain to win any bout. You select one boxer and then the other two boxers fight each other. The winner of this bout then fights the boxer you selected initially. You win if you choose the winner of this second bout.
Uniformity fallacy
This fallacy involves assuming all available options are equally likely whether they are or not.
Early research on problem solving was dominated by the Gestaltists, German psychologists flourishing between the 1920s and 1940s.
They distinguished between reproductive and productive thinking.
Reproductive thinking
Involves the systematic reuse of previous experiences
Productive thinking
involves a novel restructuring of the problem and is more complex.
Productive thinking involves insight Gestalt.
Insight involves a sudden restructuring of a problem and is sometimes accompanied by the “ah-ha experience”.
Insight is
“any 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 nonobvious or non-dominant interpretation”
Rapid solve a problem with insight if you are given clues about what you already know.
There has been controversy as to whether insight is a special process or whether it involves the same processes as other thinking tasks (the “business-as-usual” view).
Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987) recorded participants’ feelings of “warmth” (closeness to solution) during insight and non-insight problems. Warmth increased progressively during non-insight problems (as expected if they involve a sequence of processes). With insight problems, in contrast, the warmth ratings remained at the same low level until suddenly increasing dramatically just before the solution was reached.
Occurs unexpectedly and suddenly.
Differences in brain activity between insight and non-insight trials
Centred in the right hemisphere. More specifically, the anterior superior temporal
Why is the right hemisphere more associated with insight than the left hemisphere?
Integration of weakly active and distant associations occurs mostly in the right hemisphere. Such processing activities are very relevant for producing insight. In contrast, strong activation of closely connected associations occurs mostly in the left hemisphere.
Note the neuroscience evidence discussed here is correlational and so does not show that any given brain area is necessary for insightful problem solving.
How are hints useful?
They increase the number of solutions produced on insight problems. However, what is surprising is that even subtle hints are useful.
Hints can be effective without conscious awareness of their task relevance.
Incubation
A stage of problem solving in which the problem is put to one side for some time; it is claimed to facilitate problem solving.
The subconscious mind continues to work towards a solution during incubation and so incubation facilitates problem solution.
A meta analysis on incubation found:
- Incubation effects (generally fairly small) were reported in 73% of the studies.
Incubation effects were stronger with creative problems having multiple solutions than linguistic and verbal problems having a single solution.
Incubation often widens the search for knowledge, which may be more useful with multiple-solution problems.
The effects were larger when there was a fairly long preparation time prior to incubation. This may have occurred because an impasse or block in thinking is more likely to develop when preparation time is long.
Why is incubation beneficial?
Control information relating to the strategies tried by the problem solver is forgotten during incubation. This forgetting makes it easier for problem solvers to adopt a new approach after the incubation period.
Forgetting misleading information is important.
Participants solved insight problems in the presence or absence of misleading clues. One group worked continuously while the other group had a two-minute incubation period. There was a beneficial effect of incubation only when the break allowed misleading information to be forgotten.
Representational change theory
We often encounter a block or impasse when solving a problem because we have represented it wrongly.
According to his representational change theory, we typically need to change the problem representation for insight to occur. This can happen in three ways:
1 Constraint relaxation : inhibitions on what is regarded as permissible are removed.
2. Re-encoding : some aspect of the problem representation is reinterpreted.
3. Elaboration : new problem information is added to the representation.
What is new about this theory is the assumption that a search process may be necessary even after an impasse has been overcome by insight.
Solution hints are most useful when individuals have just reached a block or impasse. At that point, they have formed a problem representation (which is not the case earlier). However, they have not become excessively fixated on it (as happens after reaching an impasse). As predicted, hints before or after an impasse improved performance less than those given at the point of impasse.
Limitations:
1. we often cannot predict when (or why) a problem’s
representation will change.
2 . De-emphasised important individual differences in problem-solving skills (e.g., working memory capacity).
- the theory mistakenly implies that constraint relaxation is typically sufficient to solve insight problems. However, we have seen that this is not the case with respect to the nine-dot problem.
Flow chart of insight problem solving.
Initially, a problem representation is established using prior knowledge and perceptual processes. The problem representation is searched by heuristics (rules of thumb). If this proves unsuccessful, an impasse is encountered. This leads to a change in the problem representation and this new representation is also searched by heuristics. This process is continued until a solution is found or the problem is abandoned.
Functional fixedness - Past experience:
Gestaltists
Functional fixedness occurs when we mistakenly assume that any given object has only a limited number of uses.
Past experience generally increases our ability to solve problems.
Gestaltists argued that this is not always the case.
Indeed, numerous failures on insight problems occur because we are misled by our past experience.
Negative effects of past experience are shown clearly in the phenomenon of functional fixedness.
How can we overcome the negative effects of functional fixedness?
Two steps were involved:
- Notice an infrequently noticed or new feature.
- Form a solution based on that obscure feature.
How can we overcome the negative effects of functional fixedness?
In almost every case, two steps were involved: TACKS 1. Notice an infrequently noticed or new feature.
2.Form a solution based on that obscure feature.
Mental set
The tendency to use a familiar problem-solving strategy that has proved successful in the past even when it is not appropriate.
Mental set involves continuing to use a previously successful problem-solving strategy even when it is inappropriate or sub-optimal.
Mental set is often useful in spite of its drawbacks – it allows successive problems of the same type to be solved rapidly and with few processing demands.
Chess players: Their eye movements revealed they were still looking at features of the chessboard position related to the familiar solution. Thus, their direction of attention remained partly under the control of processes producing the initial familiar solution.
How can we minimise the effects of the mental set?
Human Problem Solving . Their central insight was that the strategies we use when tackling complex problems take account of our limited ability to process and store information.
Limited short term capacity - complex information processing is one step at a time.
problem space for each problem. .
A problem space
Consists of the initial state of the problem, the goal state, all possible mental operators (e.g., moves) that can be applied to any state to change it into a different state, and all the intermediate problem states.
How do we solve well-defined problems with our limited processing capacity?
Newell and Simon (1972), we rely heavily on heuristics . Heuristics are rules of thumb that are easy to use and often produce reasonably accurate answers. Heuristics can be contrasted with algorithms , which are generally complex methods or procedures guaranteed to lead to problem solution.
Algorithm
A computational procedure providing a specified set of steps to problem solution.
- Can be contrasted with heuristics.
Means– ends analysis
A heuristic method for solving problems based on creating a sub-goal to reduce the difference between the current state and the goal state.
According to Newell and Simon, the most important heuristic method is means– ends analysis.
Useful and helps with problem solving.
Means-ends analysis, the problem solver begins by envisioning the end, or ultimate goal, and then determines the best strategy for attaining the goal in his current situation. If, for example, one wished to drive from New York to Boston in the minimum time possible,
Use of means– ends analysis requires knowledge of goal location, and so only the goal-information group could use that heuristic. However, the problem was designed so means– ends analysis would not be useful – every correct move involved turning away from the goal.
Hill climbing heuristic
Involves changing the present state within the problem into one closer to the goal. It is simpler than means– ends analysis and is mostly used when the problem solver has no clear understanding of the problem structure. The hill-climbing heuristic involves a focus on short-term goals , and so often does not lead to problem solution.
A simple heuristic used by problem solvers in which they focus on making moves that will apparently put them closer to the goal.
The hill-climbing heuristic involves a focus on short-term goals , and so often does not lead to problem solution. Someone using this heuristic is like a climber who tries to reach the highest mountain peak in the area by using the strategy of always moving upwards. This may work, but it is likely that the climber will find himself/herself trapped on a hill separated by several valleys from the highest peak.
It is simpler than means– ends analysis and is mostly used when the problem solver has no clear understanding of the problem structure.
Progress monitoring
MacGregor et al.- individuals engaged in problem solving use a heuristic known as progress monitoring . - involves assessing their rate of progress towards the goal.
If progress is too slow to solve the problem within the maximum number of moves allowed, people adopt a different strategy.
- A heuristic or rule of thumb in which slow progress towards problem solution triggers a change of strategy.
Problem may be abandoned.
Planning
People with damage to the prefrontal cortex find it harder to plan ahead.
It is generally assumed most people presented with complex problems will engage in some preliminary planning.
Left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in initial planning.
Patients with right prefrontal damage had impaired planning in part because they made premature commitments to various decisions.
Functional fixedness
Is failing to solve problems, because one assumes from past experience that a given object has only a limited number of uses.
How much Explicit Planning do most people use on complex problems?
Most problem solvers engage in only a modest amount of planning because of limited short-term memory capacity.
Problem-solving processes
Occur below the level of conscious awareness
Most problem solvers engage in
Little planning.
The evidence suggests problem solvers engage in deliberate preplanning some of the time. However, some problem-solving processes occur below the level of conscious awareness and many people often make little use of preplanning.
Cognitive miser
Someone who is economical with their time and effort when performing a thinking task.
Cognitive miserliness
Many theorists have proposed dual-process theories to account for the strategies used by individuals performing cognitive tasks such as judgement and reasoning.
Most dual-process theorists argue that many people are cognitive misers .
A cognitive miser is someone who is typically economical with his/her time and effort on tasks requiring thinking.
Low scorers on the Cognitive Reflection Test perform relatively poorly on a wide range of judgement and reasoning tasks
Low score are cognitive misers.
Cognitive Reflection Test correlates positively with intelligence.
There is overlap between the notion of cognitive miser and Newell and Simon’s (1972) focus on problem solvers’ use of heuristics or rules of thumb.
In both cases, individuals resort to simple (and sometimes inaccurate) strategies. However, there is a difference. Newell and Simon assumed we use heuristics because we are forced to by our limited processing capacity. In contrast, cognitive misers use heuristics because they are reluctant to engage in effortful processing rather than because they cannot.
