Cognitive Psychology: Problem Solving and Skill Acquisition

This set covers key concepts from the lecture on decision-making, cognitive problem solving, and the stages of skill acquisition, including specific psychological studies and brain regions.

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)

A brain region implicated in several mental health disorders such as OCD and depression; it plays an important role in regulating decision making.

Basal ganglia

A region that Olds and Milner (1954) found drives compulsive behavior for stimulation; it is involved in acquiring problem-solving operators and procedural knowledge.

Dopamine neurons

A system present in all mammals that shows increased activity for basic rewards such as food and sex.

Shuford (1961) experiment

A study where participants exhibited a fairly accurate ability to estimate the proportions of vertical and horizontal bars in a display.

Kahneman and Tversky (1984)

Research demonstrating that people make choices depending on how the choices are worded (framing effects).

McNeil et al. (1982)

A study finding that doctors choose treatments depending on whether results are described in terms of living or dying.

Mercier & Sperber (2011)

Suggested that humans make complicated decisions by choosing an alternative that they can justify to themselves.

Prior probability (base rate)

The probability that a hypothesis is true before considering new evidence.

Base-rate neglect

A phenomenon shown by Gluck and Bower (1988) where participants do not use base rates to diagnose diseases; this neglect decreases when using frequencies instead of probabilities.

Problem space

All possible states a problem can take along with the operators for changing one state to another.

Goal directedness

One of the three essential features of problem solving, referring to behavior aimed at a specific objective.

Subgoal decomposition

An essential feature of problem solving involving breaking a problem down into smaller, manageable parts.

Operator application

An essential feature of problem solving involving the use of actions to transform one problem state into another.

Methods of operator acquisition

The three ways to gain problem-solving tools: discovery, being told or instructed, and by example.

Left anterior prefrontal cortex

The cortical region activated when solving analogy problems.

Sultan

The ape studied by Wolfgang Köhler who solved the problem of reaching bananas by connecting two poles into one longer pole.

Hill-climbing method

A problem-solving strategy involving reducing the difference between the current state and the goal state; it is often suboptimal for creative tasks or when steps back are necessary.

Tower of Hanoi

A problem where the minimum number of moves is 7 and the greatest constraint is getting the largest disk to the goal peg.

Mutilated-checkerboard problem

A problem that is unsolvable because the two removed squares are the same color, leaving unequal numbers of black and white squares for 31 dominos.

Functional fixedness

The tendency to see objects only in terms of their usual functions, as seen in Duncker's candle problem.

Einstellung

A set effect where there is a tendency to keep using a familiar strategy even when a better or simpler one exists.

Insight problem solving

A cognitive process associated with a burst of activation in the right temporal cortex when a search for a solution is successful.

Cognitive stage

The first stage of skill acquisition where facts are rehearsed and knowledge is in declarative form.

Associative stage

The second stage of skill acquisition where declarative knowledge is converted into procedural knowledge and errors are eliminated.

Autonomous stage

The final stage of skill acquisition where performance becomes automated, rapid, and requires fewer brain resources.

Proceduralization

The process by which declarative knowledge is converted into procedural knowledge as expertise develops.

Tactical learning

Learning specific sequences of actions to solve specific problems.

Deep principles

The features experts use to classify problems, as opposed to novices who use surface features.

Deliberate practice

The process identified by Ericsson et al. (1993) as necessary to become an expert; it accounts for about $30\%$ of expertise in chess and music according to Hambrick et al. (2014).