Chapter Thirteen has three objectives:
Name and describe THREE problem solving methods with a clear real-life example for each.
Describe in detail how experts are different from novices at solving problems? Give at least two differences with real-life examples.
Name and describe in detail the FOUR stages of Creative Thought. Give a real-life example for each stage.
Chapter Fourteen has one objective:
Name and describe in detail THREE types of intelligences/talents not assessed in conventional intelligence testing.
Chapter Fifteen has four objectives:
Describe at least TWO major milestones in the historical psychological study of consciousness
Describe the Cognitive Unconscious. Describe how it influences and guides our perception, memory and decision making. Give real-life examples.
Name and describe in detail TWO examples of a Disruption of Consciousness.Give a real-life example for each.
Describe in detail what the Mind Body Problem is, include TWO real-life examples. Solve the Mind Body Problem. (just kidding!)
CHAPTER 13
Mental Set: Problem Solving Strategies
Three Problem Solving Strategies:
1. Trial and Error
• Random guessing
2. Algorithms
• Methodical & guarantees a solution,
albeit perhaps slow
3. Heuristics
• Simple mental short cuts, albeit
error prone
2
General Problem-Solving Methods
Problem Solving: How to reach a goal.
• What are the necessary steps?
1. Search Algorithm
2. Problem Solving Heuristics
• Hill-Climbing Strategy
• Means-End Analysis
3. Pictures and Diagrams
4. Problem Solving via Analogy
3
Problem Solving via Search Algorithm
Problem Solving as a Search Algorithm, as if you were navigating a maze.
4
Problem Solving via Search Algorithm
Problem Space: the set of all states that
can be reached in solving the problem.
Systematically search the entire Problem
Space.
Employ a Search Tree with nodes and
branches
The Problem Space for most real-life
problems is too vast and extensive.
For instance, the problem space in a
game of chess has approximately 700
million paths within just a few turns.
Problem-solving heuristics can help to
narrow the search.
Problem-Solving via Heuristics
Hill-Climbing Strategy: At each step in solving a problem, choose
the option that moves you in the direction of your goal.
Limited Use: many problems require briefly moving away from the
goal
• “Move backward in order to go forward.” (Hobbits and Orcs)
• People tend to abandon their strategies.
• “This must be the wrong strategy; I’m going the wrong way.”
Means-End Analysis: Break down problem into subgroups and
compare your current state to the goal state.
• “What means do I have to make my current state more like
my goal state?”
• Helps you to break a problem into small sub problems
Working Backwards: Start at goal state and work backwards via
Means-End Analysis
6
Means-End Analysis Heuristic
Problem Solving via Pictures and Diagrams
Pictures and Diagram: Often helpful to draw a picture or diagram (or mental
visualization). Translating a problem into concrete terms, replying on a
picture or mental image to build problem solving steps
Problem Solving via Analogy
Analogy: Problem solving by recognition of similarities (analogy) to problems solved
in the past
• Relying on past experience to solve current challenge
• Powerful Help in Problem Solving
• Excellent way to convey new information
• Under used strategy
Imagine you are trying to explain some points about astronomy. Which of the
following explanations do you think will be more effective?
Problem Solving via Analogy
10
Problem Solving via Analogy
11
Experts Problem Solve via Analogy
Not the whole story! What about Experience and Prior Knowledge?
Experts (expertise) have a lot of Experience and Prior Knowledge!
Most people can, and do, use strategies like hill climbing and means-end
analysis.
Broader differences do arise, though, in problem-solving skills.
• Novices tend to think about problems in terms of their
superficial structures.
• Experts think about problems in terms of their Deep
Structure.
• Experts are more likely than novices to use analogies and
Mapping.
In one study novice physics students tend to group physics problems
based on surface structure. However, physics graduate students group
the problems according to deep structure, which involves the physical
principles using analogies every five minutes.
12
Defining the Problem
What does it mean to “define” a problem?
•
Goal is stated from the start (Need to go deeper)
•
Goal is clearly characterized/defined as well as clear success criteria
Ill-Defined Problem:
•
•
•
•
Goal state and the available operators for reaching the goal are not clearly
specified.
Most problems in life (can be overwhelming)
Example: “Having a good time while on vacation”, “Saving money”, “Finding a
perfect romantic partner”, “How to run a successful business”
Such problems are best solved by creativity and well-defined sub goals
Well-Defined Problem:
All clearly specified at onset:
• Initial state or starting position
• Allowable operations
• Goal state
• A unique solution can be shown to exist
An important skill in life and business!
Functional Fixedness Hold Back Problem Solving
Functional fixedness: the tendency to be rigid in thinking about an object’s function
14
Functional Fixedness Hold Back Problem Solving
15
Creativity
Problem-Solving Set: collection of beliefs and
assumptions a person makes about a problem
• Narrows your options for approaching the
problem
• Reduces distraction from futile strategies
• Usually eases the search for a solution
• Can also blind you to important options or
solutions!
• Connect to Heuristics
Some people are remarkably flexible in approaches
to problems
Other people seem far too ready to rely on routine
so they can be more vulnerable to these ProblemSet obstacles
16
Prerequisites for Creativity
What do Highly Creative People Have In Common?
Highly creative people (e.g., Johann Sebastian
Bach, Marie Curie) have shared “prerequisites” for
creativity.
1. Great Knowledge and Skill in the Domain
2. Openness Personality Trait
• Curious, imaginative, tendency to explore take
risks
3. Motivated by the pleasure of the work, not
external rewards (Intrinsic Reward)
4. “In the right place at the right time”
The Creative Process
Graham Wallas (1926) argued that creative
thought proceeds in four stages:
1. Preparation: Information gathering
2. Incubation: Conscious break
3. Illumination: Insight emerges; “Aha!”
moment
4. Verification: Confirmation that the new
idea leads to a solution
18
The Moment of Illumination
Evidence suggests that many creative
discoveries do not include these
steps or happen in a back-and-forth
sequence.
The “Aha!” moment only signals a
new approach you haven’t yet
considered, not that the approach
will lead to the solution. (something
new to try)
Creative leaps forward may not be a
glorious leap forward but a
succession of “mini-insights” toward
a solution
19
Neural Correlates to the Aha! Moment
Creative Problem Solving
Convergent Thinking:
• Ability to spot ways in which seemingly
distinct ideas and facts are interconnected
• Focus on a single answer, recognizing the
familiar
• Linked to Knowledge
• Critical Thinking: Analysis of facts
Divergent Thinking:
• Ability to move one’s thoughts in novel,
unanticipated directions to problem solve.
• Spontaneous, free-flow of many possible
solutions.
• Seeing multiple possible answers not one
• Brainstorming; Free Writing; Playfulness
Convergent Thinking: Remote Associates Test
Divergent Thinking Tests
Measuring Intelligence
Early efforts to study intelligence
proceeded without a definition included
many subtests, vocab, perceptual
reasoning etc
Original “Intelligence Quotient” (IQ) test
was a ratio or quotient between: (x100)
• “Mental Age” (the level of
development reflected in test
performance)
• Chronological Age
Current intelligence tests like WISC and
WAIS also follow this normal
distribution (bell curve) and rely on an
average score across numerous subtests
Measuring Intelligence
Measuring Intelligence: Validity and Reliability
1. Validity: Accuracy, the measurements
accurately reflect the concept it is
intended to measure. i.e. a valid
measure, think: bulls eye.
• High GPA should be correlated
2. Reliability: Consistency; can
researchers rely on a particular score?
• Test – Retest Reliability
Examples: Reliable and Valid?
Hat Size As Good Measure for Intelligence.
A broken scale that is always off by 5lbs.
26
Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence
Fluid Intelligence:
•
•
•
•
Speed of Processing (adolescence)
The ability to deal with novel problems
Peaks in early adulthood, declines across the remaining lifespan
Not fact based
Crystallized Intelligence:
•
•
•
Wisdom
Use of acquired knowledge
Increases with age and doesn’t decline
Myth of Senility; Self Reinforcing
• Stereotypes of older adults becoming senile, losing intelligence
• Stereotypes of older adults; sad and lonely
• Older adults consistently report higher subjective well being
than younger adults (Depression is much higher in young
people)
27
Intelligence beyond the IQ Test
Practical Intelligence:
Intelligence and reasoning needed in day-to-day settings
Learning by doing; learning from your experiences
“Street smarts”
Measures of Rationality:
Rationality: the capacity for critically assessing information as it is
gathered in the natural environment; Separate from intelligence
“How could someone that smart be so stupid?”
Great test scores but ignore easy facts and are overconfident in their
judgements, ignore inconsistencies in their viewpoints, etc
Emotional Intelligence:
Ability to understand one’s own emotions and those of others
Ability to control one’s emotions when appropriate
Emotional stability, patient, consistent, displays empathy
28
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Best known challenge to the standard IQ
Howard Gardner proposed eight types of multiple intelligence:
3 Basic Intelligences already assessed in standard IQ tests:
• Linguistic
• Logical-Mathematical (Numerical)
• Spatial
Included 5 other types of intelligences:
• Musical
• Bodily-Kinesthetic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalistic
Evidence for this from savant syndrome where perhaps
profoundly disabled individuals (IQ as low as 40/50) are
absolute genius and posses extreme talent in one of these 8
areas
Neurological Lesion Case Studies also gives evidence to this
theory
29
Wundt and Structuralism: What is Consciousness?
• Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)
Edward Titchener (1867–1923)
• Father of Psychology
• First Psychology lab in Leipzig,
Germany 1879
• Psychology as an Independent Study
• Wundt and Titchener believed psychology
should focus on studying conscious mental
events.
• Key Idea: Our consciousness can be
broken down into its essential elements
• Splitting of elements into the Periodic Table
1869
2
James and Functionalism: Why Are We Conscious?
• William James (1832–1920)
• Sought to understand WHY are we conscious?
• Key Idea: Our consciousness serves an adaptive (evolutionary) purpose by
helping us survive
• The Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859)
3
Enter the Cognitive Revolution
After Wundt and James the study of consciousness was largely rejected
because it was thought to be too subjective and prone to unscientific
thought experiments
• Noam Chomsky’s (b 1928) criticism of Skinner (Verbal Behavior 1957) and
rejection of behaviorist approach of treating the brain like a black box
• Ulric Neisser’s (1928 – 2012) book Cognitive Psychology (1967) had a major influence
on the cognitive revolution.
Breakthroughs in Technology (computers, AI, imaging systems fMRI and
EEGs) allow us to scientifically study the internal mental processes that
lead to observable behavior
For many years, research on consciousness was considered subjective and
unscientific.
• Recent research has made advances in understanding what
consciousness is, how it functions, and how the brain makes
consciousness possible.
Conscious Awareness
Inattentional Blindness: the failure to see a
prominent stimulus, even if one is staring right at it
• Inattentional deafness:
auditory corollary
• Inattentional numbness:
haptic corollary
Conscious Awareness
Blindsight: paradoxical phenomenon where truly
blind patients when forced to guess the color,
shape, or position of the object will be accurate
Conscious Awareness
• Inattentional Blindness:
• Looking (Visual Sensation)
is not necessarily
Seeing (Conscious Awareness)
Low Conscious Awareness
• Patients with Blindsight:
• Not looking (No Visual Sensation)
is not necessarily
Not Seeing (No Conscious Awareness)
Higher Conscious Awareness (Vague)
• Inattentional Blindness and patients with Blindsight demonstrate that visual awareness (eyes, V1) is not a
requirement for conscious (visual) awareness
• Consciousness one of the most mysterious aspects of our (daily!) lives
• Our brain has and goes into different gears that it switches into where you are not you!
• Altered States, Sleep, Dream States (inc Lucidity), Meditation, Hypnosis, Chemical Intoxication,
Conscious Altering Drugs, Mild or Moderate Episodes of Dissociation (Basal Ganglia Takeover, Day
Dreaming),
Levels of Consciousness
Consciousness: An awareness of internal
experiences (thoughts, ideas) and externally
based sensations (from the world around us)
•
•
•
Reflect on those sensations and ideas.
Know what it “feels like” to experience them.
Report to others that one is aware of these sensations and
ideas.
Levels (or States) of Consciousness:
A continuum from highly alert and aware down
to a vegetative state
Levels of Alertness
• Higher consciousness: More Awareness
• Lower consciousness: Less Awareness
• Lowest consciousness: Unaware and Unresponsive
The Cognitive Unconscious
The Cognitive Unconscious refers to the broad set of mental
activities that you are not aware of but that make possible your
effortless ordinary interactions with the world.
As we have seen throughout the course a lot of our cognition
occurs automatically behind the scenes or “unconsciously”
Unconscious Reasoning
People reason unconsciously all the time:
• “This name seems familiar, so it must be someone famous.”
• “I’ve heard of San Diego, I’ve never heard of San Antonio so
San Diego must be larger”
• “The face seems familiar, so it must be the person who
robbed me.”
Heuristics
• Automatic, Non-Conscious Mental Short Cuts
• Simple Strategies: “Quick and Dirty”
Examples:
1. Availability Heuristic (Frequency Judgements)
2. Recognition Heuristic (Value/Importance Judgements)
3. Representativeness Heuristic (Probability Judgements)
Unconsciousness Guides Problem Solving
Problem-Solving Set: collection of beliefs and
assumptions a person makes about a problem
• Narrows your options for approaching the
problem
• Reduces distraction from futile strategies
• Usually eases the search for a solution
• Can also blind you to important options or
solutions!
• Connect to Heuristics
Functional Fixedness: the tendency to be rigid in
thinking about an object’s function
Unconscious assumptions and definitions guide your
search for a problem’s solution.
Even when we are highly aware of our own thoughts,
such as during problem solving, we are also heavily
influenced by unconscious thought.
11
Disruptions of Consciousness: Amnesia
Amnesia: Memory Without Consciousness
Brain damage also provides evidence for
unconscious processing.
•
Amnesia can impair explicit memory but
not implicit memory.
•
Indirect tests of memory indicate that
patients with amnesia are influenced by
memories of which they are unaware.
•
Trauma Experiment: Claparede
experiment with a women with
Korsakoff’s Syndrome (pin prick)
Conscious!
Unconscious!
Disruptions of Consciousness: Blind Sight
Blind sight results from damage to the occipital cortex
• Patients have no visual awareness: They insist that
they cannot see visual stimuli, and they do not react to
them.
• They can correctly “guess” the locations of objects, can
reach for them, and can generally describe them.
• Not aware of seeing but, even so, can in some ways
“see”
How is this possible?
• Islands of intact tissue within damaged tissue
• Neural Redundancy: Several neural pathways that
carry information from the eyeball to the occipital
lobe. Damage to one the primary pathways is the
reason for blindness. One of these secondary pathways
goes through the midbrain is intact
Disruptions of Consciousness: Blind Sight
Disruptions of Consciousness: Subliminal Perception
Subliminal Perception refers to cases in which that
people can perceive and be influenced by inputs that
they did not consciously perceive.
1950s market researcher
inserted the words “Eat
Popcorn” into a single frame
of a movie. Even though
viewers did not consciously
perceive the message they
were influenced and sales
went up 50%
Cognitive Psychology: Consciousness
*** MIND BODY PROBLEM ***
What is the relationship between
the Mind and the Body?
Between the mental realm (thoughts, beliefs, pains, sensations,
emotions) and the physical realm (matter, atoms, neurons).
“There’s someone in my head but it’s not me …” Pink Floyd
“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm of your
hand imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its
own place in the cosmos? … VS Ramachandran
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