Problem solving and Expertise

What is meant by a well-defined problem?

All aspects of the problem are clearly specified

The goal is well specified

What is meant by ill-defined problems

It is underspecified, there are several strategies to adopt and the goal may be amigious. Most everyday/human problems are ill-defined

What are knowledge rich problems?

Can be solved by those who have relevant and specific knowledge

What are knowledge-lean problems?

Do not require such knowledge as most of the information needed to solve the problem is contained in the initial problem statement. Minimise individual differences and is what most traditional research was based upon

What is reproductive thinking and what solution is it?

Involves systematic reuse of previous experiences eg memorisation with problems solved incrementally

Non-insight solution

What is productive thinking and what type of solution is it?

Involves creating new solutions and approaches by combining existing knowledge and experiences. It often leads to insightful or novel solutions to problems.

Insight solution

What is meant by an insight solution?

Involves a reorganisation of the elements of a persons mental representation of a stimulus, situation or event to yield a nonobvious interpretation when having sudden realisation of a problem

Eureka

What is gestalt psychology?

Views the mind and behaviour as made up components, does not focus on the components as the whole is different to the sum of its parts

Holistic approach

With which problems were incubation effects stronger in meta-analysis of studies?

Stronger with creative problems having multiple solutions than with linguistic and verbal problems which have a single solution

What enhances performance on difficult problems but not easy ones?

Sleep

What occurs during incubation period?

The strategies tried by the problem solver are forgotten or restructured, allowing for new connections and insights to emerge.

What is required for insight to occur according to representational change theory?

Must change the problem representation to allow for insight

What is the main 4 step cycle of representational change theory?

1. Problem representation (prior knowledge and perceptual aspects of a problem leads to the formation of a problem) 2. Repeated unsuccesful search processes 3. Impasse or block 4. A new problem representation is formed to try overcome the impasse and is followed by an additional search process