PJ

Problem Solving and Expertise Notes

Problem Solving and Expertise

Introduction

  • Problem solving involves cognitive processing to achieve a goal when there's no obvious solution.
  • Transfer refers to how past learning impacts current tasks.
  • Expertise involves efficient problem-solving in a specialized area, differing from general problem-solving with its focus on knowledge and individual differences.
  • All involve generating options and applying knowledge, but have evolved into separate research areas.

Problem Solving

  • Problem solving is purposeful, controlled, and requires knowledge.
  • Well-defined problems have clear initial states, moves, and goals, whereas ill-defined problems are underspecified.
  • Psychologists focus on well-defined problems due to their optimal strategies and known answers.
  • Knowledge-rich problems require specific knowledge, unlike knowledge-lean problems.
  • Monty Hall Problem: Illustrates problem-solving fallibility due to heuristics, limited processing, and misrepresentation of causal structures.

Gestalt Approach

  • Gestaltists emphasize productive thinking (novel restructuring) over reproductive thinking (re-use of past experiences).
  • Insight involves sudden problem restructuring with an "ah-ha" experience.
  • Insight may be a slower learning process rather than a sudden flash. Facilitation through cues can aid problem-solving.
  • Insight existence is supported by introspective, behavioral, and neuroimaging evidence.
  • Brain Activity in Insight:
    • Right hemisphere's anterior superior temporal gyrus is activated.
    • High-frequency brain activity occurs one-third of a second before insightful solutions.
    • The anterior cingulate cortex is activated during cognitive conflict.
  • Functional Fixedness: Past experience can hinder problem-solving by limiting the perceived uses of objects.
  • Einstellung (Mental Set): Tendency to use well-practiced strategies even when suboptimal.

Representational Change Theory

  • Impasse broken by changing problem representation through elaboration, constraint relaxation, or re-encoding.
  • Constraint relaxation is key to insight, as shown by the mutilated draughtboard problem.
  • VI = VII + I becomes VII = VI + I
  • IV = III − I becomes IV − III = I
  • Constraint reduction is vital in solving insight problems.

Incubation

  • Problems are solved more easily by ignoring them for some time.
  • Subconscious mind continues to work toward solution.
  • Effective with creative problems having multiple solutions.
  • Forgetting misleading information aids in adopting new approaches.

General Problem Solver

  • Computer simulations of human problem solving.
  • Relies on serial processing, limited short-term memory, and long-term memory retrieval.
  • Problem Space: Initial state, goal state, mental operators, and intermediate states.
  • Reliance on heuristics (rules of thumb) instead of algorithms (complex methods).
  • Means-ends analysis: Reducing difference between current and goal states.
  • Hill climbing: Changing problem state closer to goal.
  • Progress monitoring leads to changing strategies if progress is slow.

Problem Solving: Brain Systems

  • Frontal cortex (especially dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) heavily involved.
  • Prefrontal damage impairs planning and making difficult moves.
  • Right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex linked to Tower of London/Hanoi problems, left to water-jar problems.
  • Response inhibition is important for successful performance on such tasks.

Adaptive Control of Thought – Rational (ACT-R)

  • Aims to provide a theoretical framework for understanding information processing and performance.
  • Cognitive system comprised of seven modules, including retrieval, imaginal, goal, and procedural modules.
  • Each module has a buffer containing limited information.

Transfer of Training and Analogical Reasoning

  • Positive Transfer: Past experience aids current problem-solving.
  • Negative Transfer: Past experience hinders current problem-solving.
  • Far Transfer: Benefits in dissimilar contexts.
  • Near Transfer: Benefits in similar contexts.
  • Transfer influenced by task similarity, context similarity, and time interval.
  • Increased by metacognitive skills, such as orienting and self-judging.

Analogical Problem Solving

  • Using similarities between current and past problems.
  • Types of similarity: superficial, structural, and procedural.
  • Success depends on noticing and using similarities.
  • Superficial Similarity: Solution-irrelevant details common to problems
  • Structural Similarity: Causal relations among main components are shared
  • Procedural Similarity: Procedures for turning solution principle into concrete operations are common.

Expertise

  • Expertise involves highly skilled performance in a domain through knowledge and skills acquired over years.
  • Medical expertise, such as accurate diagnoses, depends on experience, contrasting explicit vs. implicit reasoning.

Chess Expertise

  • Requires extensive practice (ten-year rule).
  • Chess masters have detailed knowledge of chess positions in long-term memory.
  • Knowledge organization into chunks.

Template Theory

  • Addresses weaknesses in chunking theory.
  • Common chunks develop into templates, abstract schematic structures with variable slots.
  • Larger and fewer templates, superior template-based knowledge.

Medical Expertise

  • Medical reasoning of experts differs considerably from that of novices.
  • Explicit Reasoning: Slow, deliberate, conscious.
  • Implicit Reasoning: Fast, automatic, unconscious.
  • Can often use stored exemplars.

Deliberate Practice

  • Key to developing a wide range of expertise.
  • Task difficulty appropriately, informative feedback, repetition, error correction.
  • Long-term working memory: storing relevant information in long-term memory and accessing it through retrieval cues in working memory.
  • Deliberate practice is not only necessary but will also lead to greater expertise.