Mental search processes in problem solving (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Problem Solving, 2012
The research paradigm invented by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon in the late 1950s dominated the study of problem solving for more than three decades. But in the early 1990s, problem solving ceased to drive research on complex cognition. As part of this decline, Newell and Simon's most innovative research practices-especially their method for inducing subjects' strategies from verbal protocols-were abandoned. In this essay, I summarize Newell and Simon's theoretical and methodological innovations and explain why their strategy identification method did not become a standard research tool. I argue that the method lacked a systematic way to aggregate data, and that Newell and Simon's search for general problem solving strategies failed. Paradoxically, the theoretical vision that led them to search elsewhere for general principles led researchers away from studies of complex problem solving. Newell and Simon's main enduring contribution is the theory that people solve problems via heuristic search through a problem space. This theory remains the centerpiece of our understanding of how people solve unfamiliar problems, but it is seriously incomplete. In the early 1970s, Newell and Simon suggested that the field should focus on the question where problem spaces and search strategies come from. I propose a breakdown of this overarching question into five specific research questions. Principled answers to those questions would expand the theory of heuristic search into a more complete theory of human problem solving.
Creativity in problem solving: Uncovering the origin of new ideas
Innovation and enterprise depend for their success on the development of new ideas. But from where do new ideas come? How do they arise? Finding solutions to such questions is at the heart of creativity research and the solving of novel problems. Reflection, not only in cognitive processes but also in the non-cognitive ones used in solving novel mathematics problems, is uncovering a way in which the origins of new ideas occur. A study involving protocol analysis of five expert problem solvers identifies three critical elements. These elements have been employed to construct a framework of creative problem solving which may be used to foster creativity among young people under instruction and provide a cognitive explanation of the origin of new ideas. Creativity, problem solving, cognitive, non-cognitive, reflection A Working Definition of Creativity Many definitions of creativity can be found within the research literature on creativity. However one definition finding increasing acceptance in both education and psychology is that describing creativity as the production of effective novelty (Cropley, 1999; Lubart, 2001; Mumford, 2003a). This definition implies that for something to be creative it must be both original and useful. The National Advisory Committee on Creativity, Culture and Education in England, for example, advises that creativity is "Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value" (NACCCE, 1999, p.30). In the same vein cognitive psychology, adopting a more processed orientation, defines creativity as "the sequence of thoughts and actions that leads to a novel adaptive production" (Lubart, 2001, p.295). 44 Creativity in problem solving: Uncovering the origin of new ideas One definition that makes explicit the nature of thought and action within the creative process is that by Koberg and Bagnall (1976) who describe creativity as: both the art and the science of thinking and behaving with both subjectivity and objectivity. It is a combination of feeling and knowing: of alternating back and forth between what we sense and what we already know. (Koberg and Bagnall, 1976, p.8) This definition implies that not only is cognitive activity involved in the creative act but noncognitive activity as well. According to Koberg and Bagnall (1976), the act of creation, involves oscillating between what individuals think or know (namely, cognitive activity) and what they sense or feel (i.e. non-cognitive activity). This conceptualisation is significant in light of the protocols that are described below.
Cognitive Processes in Preparation for Problem Solving
Procedia Computer Science, 2015
The aim of this study was to examine the role of a software tool in diagnosing student's thinking during problem solving in mathematics with 41 college students. Students were asked to select relevant steps, facts and strategies represented on the screen and connect them by arrows, indicating their plan of solution. Only after the diagram was completed, students were allowed to solve the problem. The findings are: (i) forward chaining is significantly more predominant, and backward chaining is significantly less frequent, compared to other possibilities or arrow entering. This result is unexpected, because classical planning methods produce backward chaining in this task. (ii) Students scoring in the middle are more likely to enter convergent pairs of arrows compared to students who scored low or high. This finding enables diagnosing student problem solving. Both findings imply constraints on selection of cognitive architectures used for modeling student problem solving.
In Proceedings of the Workshop “Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence”, editors Besold, T.; Kühnberger, K.-U.; Schorlemmer, M. and Smaill, A., Publications of the Institute of Cognitive Science, 01-2014, Osnabrück., 2014
The creative problem-solving performed by natural cognitive systems includes a wide variety of tasks of different degrees of difficulty. A classification of creative problems in two broad categories is proposed, based on problem structuredness and the cognitive processes used in regulating the problem structure-representation structure relationship in creative problem-solving. A cognitive theoretical framework is used to exemplify the difference in cognitive processes participation in these two classes of creative problem solving.
Memory Inhibition as a Critical Factor Preventing Creative Problem Solving
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 2016
The hypothesis that reduced accessibility to relevant information can negatively affect problem solving in a remote associate test (RAT) was tested by using, immediately before the RAT, a retrieval practice procedure to hinder access to target solutions. The results of 2 experiments clearly showed that, relative to baseline, target words that had been competitors during selective retrieval were much less likely to be provided as solutions in the RAT, demonstrating that performance in the problem-solving task was strongly influenced by the predetermined accessibility status of the solutions in memory. Importantly, this was so even when participants were unaware of the relationship between the memory and the problem-solving procedures in the experiments. This finding is consistent with an inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting effects and, more generally, constitutes support for the idea that the activation status of mental representations originating in a given task (e.g....
Cognitive Model of Problem Solving
2012
Objective: In this study, problem solving regarded within cognitive psychological literature and the relationship of cognitive stages of problem solving with various cognitive processes is studied in a theoretical frame. In the study the pattern of problem solving with reasoning, attention, working memory, planning, making strategy and relation pattern is tried to be explained with a model. Method: The study is composed of two stages. In the first stage, RSPM: Raven Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) was applied to the subjects. In this first stage subjects are expected to write down the mental stage they perform while solving the test substances in the RSPM test. In the second stage 6 neuropsychological tests were applied on the subjects who are university students. Findings: Findings of the study were analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Discussion and Conclusion: Two dimensional models were tried to be formed in order to explain the relation pattern of neuropsy...
2016
There are three methods for deriving a solution for a problem with which a person is facing, which are 1) retrieval of an existing solution from his/her own memory or from available external resources including human resources, digital resources, 2) clarifying the constraints to meet and discovering a solution that should satisfy them by exploring the problem space, or 3) deriving a solution by applying inference rules successively until the goal state is achieved. This paper describes the distinctive cognitive processes that respective methods should follow when deriving a solution. On the assumption that the ultimately needed problem solving skill would be the one which makes a person solve any problem by himself or herself without reliance on any external resources other than himself/herself, this paper discusses the implications of the respective methods of problem solving to acquiring the required problem solving skill. 概要:直面している課題に対する解決策は質的に異なる3つの方法で得ようとすることができる。1) 既に存在している解決策...
The Role of Knowledge in Creative Thinking
Creativity Research Journal, 2024
In this invited paper, I briefly review my past, current, and future lines of research. The associative theory of creativity argues that higher creative individuals have a richer semantic memory structure that facilitates broader associative search processes, that leads to the combination of remote concepts into novel and appropriate ideas. Based on this theory, in my research I investigate the role of knowledge-or semantic memory-in high-level cognition, focusing on creativity, associative thinking, and memory search, in typical and clinical populations. To do so, I apply computational tools from network science, natural language processing, and machine learning, coupled with empirical cognitive and neural research. Such computational tools are enabling the representation and operationalization of the structure of semantic memory and the processes that operate over it. This is critical as it allows us to start quantifying issues that for a very long time were studied very subjectively in creativity research-remoteness of ideas, associative thinking, flexible/ richer semantic memory structure, etc. Such work is offering unique, quantitative, ways to directly study classic theories of creativity, propelling forward our understanding of its complexity.
The different role of cognitive inhibition in early versus late creative problem finding
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
Previous research has suggested that ideas generated late in the creative process might require more executive control than those generated earlier. This in turn leads to the prediction that cognitive inhibition might play one role early in the process but a different role late in the process. The present investigation tested this prediction using a test of creative problem finding. Low cognitive inhibition was expected to facilitate an associative mode of processing, whereas high cognitive inhibition was expected to enable a deliberate, systematic mode of processing. An experiment involving 70 undergraduate students indicated that individuals' cognitive inhibition was correlated with fluency and flexibility, but not originality, on the problem-finding tasks. An interaction indicated that low cognitive inhibition enhanced originality initially, but later in the process, high cognitive inhibition was beneficial. Limitations of this investigation and future directions are explored.