P&C 4.1 - Problem Solving And Reasoning

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28 Terms

1
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What are the two states in problem solving?

Current position and goal
The routes between the two are not clear and takes multiple steps

2
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What are the main features of problem solving?

  • purposeful and goal directed
  • controlled processes that are not fully automatic
  • lack appropriate knowledge to generate immediate solution
3
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How are the frontal lobes involved?

  • architect with a frontal lesion asked to design a lab space
  • struggled to progress from problem structuring to problem solving
  • poor final design
  • lesions lead to problem solving difficulties
4
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What is well-defined v ill-defined problems?

  • well defined have a current position, possible moves and a well specified goal eg chess
  • ill defined have a current position, possible moves but the goal is not well specific eg life problems
5
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What is knowledge rich v knowledge lean in problems?

  • rich is solvable via relevant knowledge eg chess
  • lean can be solved without needing prior knowledge and all the information contained in the presentation of the problem eg lab experiments
6
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What is the Monty hall problem?

  • presented with 3 doors

  • one has a car, the other two have goats

  • pick a door (eg 1) and one of the other two are opened showing a goat
    -Inital chance of picking the car: 1/3
    -Revealing a goat does not change those initial odds
    -Switching gives you 2/3 chance of getting the car

  • Switching ALWAYS give you a better chance at winning

  • Knowing how to calculate probabilities helps with decisions

7
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What is insight?

  • a sudden realization of a problem's solution
8
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What is the two string problem?

A task used in problem-solving research in which the subject is asked to tie together two strings that are hanging from hooks in the ceiling

9
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How did metcalfe and wiebe measure insight?

  • ppts rated warmth during task which is proximity to goal
  • problems with insight had a sudden increase in warmth showed by rapid/sudden progress
  • without insight led to a gradual increase in warmth which is more of a slow accumulation to goal
10
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How did jung-beeman study insight?

  • remote associates test
  • insight is indicated for certain trials
  • increased activity in superior temporal gyrus
11
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How is the reality of insight researched?

  • anagram task used where eye movements are recorded
  • ppts report a sudden solution
  • however gradual decreases in fixations on non-relavant letters and gradual accumulation of knowledge despite insight
  • raises questions about whether this is unconscious and subjective
12
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Is insight real?

  • real in the sense that people experience it
  • may not be a separate cognitive process but higher order processes may gradually arrive at the solution but we only become aware when threshold is reached
13
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How can insight be facilitated by incubation?

  • incubation leads to stop thinking about the problem
  • most experience the feeling of solving a problem
  • meta analysis found incubation led to small but consistent improvements especially for creative ones
14
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How is sleep used to facilitate insight?

  • sleep increased insight
  • number strings where a hidden rule is present
15
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What three factors facilitate insight?

  • hints
  • incubation
  • sleep
16
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How did Newell and Simon look at problem solving from an information processing perspective?

  • limited short term memory capacity
  • complex information processing serial
  • cant hold all steps in mind at once
17
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What are strategies?

  • trade off of accuracy v computational complexity v time
  • heavy reliance on heuristics
18
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What is a means-end analysis of heuristics?

  • form sub goal to minimise distance between current location and goal
  • however this requires info about the location of the final goal and what if better strategy to move away from the final goal
19
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What is hill climbing in heurstics?

  • change present state to one closer to the end goal

  • simpler than means-end as there is not an explicit sub goal

  • like hill cling as we are always moving to the next highest point

  • However can get caught in local maxima which is thinking we’re at the highest point when we are not bc it’s better than the rest so dont search for highest

20
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When is planning as a strategy useful?

  • useful when reaching goal involves a sequence of behaviour eg making a cup of tea

  • Tower of London task where those who spent longer planning moves had fewer errors

21
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How is progress monitoring used as a strategy?

  • track progress towards a goal and switch strategy if progress is slow
  • research shows performance is worse when ppts think they're making progress and they're likely to switch when they realised
  • however progress and fastness is subjective
22
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What are the different strategies?

  • heuristics (means-end analysis and hill climbing)
  • planning
  • progress monitoring
23
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What is expertise?

  • lab tasks are often knowledge-lean as we only need the study information rather than real life info eg tower of london
  • expertise is needed for solving real-world problems as they're usually knowledge-rich
  • expertise is a high level of knowledge and performance in a given domain acquired through a long period of systematic study/practise
24
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How is expertise seen in chess?

Research found experts dedicate 1000s of hours to practice

  • can remember positions on chess board even though general memory isnt better
  • eye movements are faster
  • slower processes as time to make moves decreases the skill differences are less predictive of outcome
  • longer time to make moves leads to better performance
25
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How is expertise seen in medicine?

Serious problems such false negatives in over 30% of diagnoses of disease via x ray

  • breast biopsies by trainers had a reduction of fixation/image especially on non-diagnostic regions
  • mammograms of possible cancer had a mean search time of 27s but time to fixate on cancer is 1.13 seconds with below 1 second for experts
  • correlation between speed of fixation on cancer and overall detection performance
26
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How can experience go bad in terms of functional fixedness?

  • inflexible focus on the usual function of an object
  • can't see novel use of object to solve problem
27
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How can experience go bad in terms of mental set?

  • familiar strategy that was previously successful is used even when it's not appropriate
  • expert chess players dont always find quickest route to victory but longer solution based on familiar strategy
28
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What are the two factors in experience gone bad?

  • functional fixedness
  • mental set