Problem Solving

Well defined: usually have a correct answer, and there are certain procedures that, when applied correctly, will lead to a solution. Ill-defined problems: do not necessarily have one "correct" answer, and the path to their solution is unclear.

The Gestalt approach to problem solving involves a process called restructuring. Problem solving was about 1. how people represent a problem in their mind, and 2. how solving a problem involves a reorganization or restructuring of this representation. Restructuring is the process of changing the problem's representation.

Insight is the sudden realization of a problems solution. They predicted that participants working on an insight problem, in which the answer appears suddenly, should not be very good at predicting how near they are to a solution, but that participant working on a non insight problem would have some knowledge they are getting closer to the solution. Insight: triangle and chains. Non insight: math equations

This is restricting the use of an object to its familiar functions is called functional fixedness. The candle problem and two string problem illustrates this.

When a person encounters a situation that influences his or her approach to a problem, this is called situationally produced mental set. Ex: Water jug problem.

The initial state, goal state, and all the possible intermediate states for a particular problem is called the problem space.

The primary goal of means-end analysis is to reduce the difference between the initial and goal states. This is achieved by creating subgoals-goals that create intermediate states that are closer to the goal.

They are to determine what information the person is attending to while solving a problem. Participants tell experimenter what they are thinking as they try and solve a problem.

1.) Noticing that there is an analogous relationship between the source story and the target problem. 2.) Mapping the correspondence between the source story and the target problem. and 3.) Applying the mapping to generate a parallel solution to the target problem.

A training procedure that has participants compare two cases that illustrate a principle-when learners compare cases, they become more likely to see the underlying structure.

This is where participants in psychological experiments tend to focus on surface features in analogy problems, whereas people in the real world frequently use deeper, more structural features.

This is a method in which people are observed to determine how they solve problems in real world situations.