Cognitive Psychology Exam 2 Study Guide Chapters 7 11 and 12 Chapter 11 Problem Solving Components of problem solving problem obstacles Understanding the problem Used when you want to reach a certain goal but the solution is not immediately obvious Missing information and or obstacles block the path Initial state situation at beginning of problem goal state reached when you solve the o Construct a well organized mental representation of the problem o Based on the info provided in the problem and previous experience o Identify and attend to the most relevant information o Effective problem solvers read the description of a problem very carefully paying particular attention to inconsistencies Situated cognition We often use helpful information in our immediate environment to create spatial representations importance of external situation context Boys selling candy in Brazil calculating ratio comparisons to make money selling candy bars o Our ability to solve a problem is tied into the specific physical and social context in which we learned to solve that problem o An abstract intelligence test often fails to reveal how competent a person would be in solving problems in real life settings Embodied cognition We often use our own body and our own motor actions in order to express our abstract thoughts and knowledge importance of own body as context People solve certain kinds of problems more quickly or more accurately if allowed to move parts of their bodies o Mental rotation tasks o Swinging rope problem o Movement of gears problem Algorithm always produces a solution sometimes inefficient Exhaustive search try all possible answers Heuristic general rule strategy in which you ignore some alternatives and explore only those alternatives that seem especially likely to produce a solution Anagram example simultaneously Weight the costs and benefits of using heuristics Means ends analysis Divide the problem into sub problems Try to reduce the difference between the initial state and the goal state for each of the sub problems Identify the ends you want and then figure out the means to reach them One of the most effective and flexible problem solving strategies Research on the means end heuristic o Demonstration 11 5 Elves and Goblins Greeno 1974 People pause at points in the problem when they begin to tackle a sub problem and need to organize a sequence of moves Working memory is active during planning Sometimes the correct solution requires moving backward temporarily increasing the distance to the goal People are reluctant to move away from goal state even if the correct solution requires you to make this temporary detour Hill climbing heuristic if you are using this method and you reach a choice point you consistently choose the alternative that seems to lead most directly toward your goal Useful if you do not have enough information about alternatives because you can see only the immediate next step Encourages short term goals rather than long term solutions Biggest drawback is that problem solvers must consistently choose the alternative that appears to lead most directly toward the goal in doing so may fail to choose an indirect alternative which may have greater long term benefits o Sometimes the best solution to a problem requires us to move temporarily backward away from the goal Insight problem seems impossible until sudden solution appears light bulb aha Begin with inappropriate assumptions that need to be discarded Nature of Insight o People who are working on an insight problem usually hold some incorrect assumptions when they begin to solve the problem top down processing inappropriately dominated your thinking and you were considering the wrong set of alternatives o Inappropriate use of top down processing Metacognition during problem solving o Janete Metcalfe 1986 People s confidence builds gradually for noninsight problems but shows a sudden leap in solving insight problems o Problem solvers typically report a dramatic increase in their confidence when they believe they have located the correct solution to an insight problem Advice about Problem Solving o Think about previous experience with similar problems o Consider whether the problem might require insight o If a problem seems to be insight problem try to represent the problem in a different way think about a different meaning for an ambiguous word draw sketches work with physical objects use gestures be willing to think outside the box Remote association tests creativity test used to determine a human s creative potential Questions consist of three common stimulus words that appear to be unrelated The person must think of a fourth word that is somehow related to all three words Ex Cottage swiss cake Advantages of Expertise on problem solving Consistent exceptional skill and performance on representative tasks for a particular area Not necessarily related to years of experience Experts have developed top down processes that allow them to perform well on many different components of problem solving in their particular area Expertise in one area does not necessarily transfer to other areas Experts and novices differ substantially in their knowledge base and schemas experts may solve problems especially well if they have had training in a variety of relevant settings and if the training includes immediate detailed feedback Expertise Memory o Memory skills of experts tend to be very specific o Chess experts memory is better only if the information fits a particular schema o Experts are only slightly better than novices at remembering random arrangements of chess pieces Expertise Problem Solving Strategies o Experts are more likely to use the means end heuristic effectively on a novel problem o Experts approach problems systematically and are more likely to emphasize structural features when using the analogy approach Expertise Speed and Accuracy o Problem solving operations become more automatic o On some tasks experts may solve problems faster because they use parallel processing rather than serial processing Parallel processing handles two or more items at same time Serial processing handles only one item at a time Expertise Metacognitive Skills o Experts are better than novices at monitoring their own problem solving o Better at judging the difficulty of the problem allocating time monitoring the usefulness of ideas recovering from errors o Perform poorly on one task Experts underestimate amount of time novices will
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