An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and Disorders, 3rd Edition

Chapter 8

Summary

  • This chapter has introduced you to some of the research on problem-solving and reasoning.
  • The study of problem-solving has shown that we use a limited number of strategies and heuristics to solve a range of problems and these allow us to work within the limitations of our memory system.
  • Successful problem-solving is dependent on how the problem is represented and on prior knowledge as well as the strategies used.
  • Our existing knowledge may allow us to solve new problems through analogy; a source analogue is mapped onto the target problem.
  • Naturalistic studies have shown that people will use structurally similar source analogues, although when tested in the laboratory analogical problem-solving may not be an automatic process.
  • When assessed on tasks involving both inductive and deductive reasoning, often participants do not appear to reason according to formal logic. Instead, the use of strategies and heuristics is also evident in how we solve reasoning tasks.
  • Theories vary with some suggesting that we reason according to formal deductive criteria. Alternative explanations suggest that we use of pragmatic reasoning schemata, or construct mental models or reason using conditional probability.
  • Dual-process accounts incorporate several different types of reasoning  processes and can account for why some of our reasoning appears to be independent of logical processes and some appears to follow rule-based forms of thinking.

 

Glossary

Availability heuristic Making judgements on the basis of how available relevant examples are in our memory store.

Base rate fallacy Ignoring information about the base rate in light of other information.

Deductive reasoning task A problem that has a well-defined structure in a system of formal logic where the conclusion is certain.

Functional fixedness The inability to use an object appropriately in a given situation because of prior experience of using the object in a different way.

Heuristics Methods or strategies which often lead to problem solution but are not guaranteed to succeed.

Impasse A sort of mental ‘blank’ experienced when trying to solve a problem, which is accompanied by a subjective feeling of not knowing what to do.

Inductive reasoning task A problem that has a well-defined structure in a system of formal logic where the conclusion is highly probable but not necessarily true.

Insight The reorganising or restructuring of the elements of the problem situation in such a way as to provide a solution. Also known as productive thinking.

Means–ends analysis A general heuristic where a sub-problem is selected that will reduce the difference between the current state and the goal state.

Mental model A representation that we construct according to what is described in the premises of a reasoning problem, which will depend on how we interpret these premises.

Mental set A term to describe the rote application of one successful method to solve a problem which makes one ‘blind’ to an alternative and possibly much simpler method.

Pragmatic reasoning schemata Clusters of rules that are highly generalised and abstracted but defined with respect to different types of relationships and goals.

Problem reduction An approach to problem solving that converts the problem into a number of sub-problems, each of which can be solved separately.

Problem space A term introduced by Newell and Simon to describe the first stage in problem-solving; represented in the problem space are the initial state, the goal state, the instructions, the constraints on the problem and all relevant information retrieved from long-term memory
Representativeness heuristic Making judgements on the basis of the extent to which the salient features of an object or person are representative of the features thought to be characteristic of some category.

State–action tree A diagram showing all the possible sequences of actions and intermediate states which can be constructed if the problem is well-defined.

Adaptive control of thought (ACT)

Newell & Simon, well-defined problems

The taxi cab problem

The rational-emotional model

Conditional reasoning

Reading List

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Chase, W. G., &Simon, H. A. (1973). The mind’s eye in chess. In W. G. Chase (ed.), Visual Information Processing. New York: Academic Press.
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Manktelow, K. I., Over, D. E., & Elqayam, S. (eds.) (2011). The Science of Reason: A Festschrift in Honour of Jonathan St. B. T. Evans.Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

Oppenheimer, D. M. (2004). Spontaneous discounting of availability in frequency judgment tasks. Psychological Science, 15, 100–105.
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