psychology of planning and insight Flashcards
(22 cards)
what constitutes planning?
- conscious cognitive processes
- hardest problems are those requiring a move that takes you (temporarily) further away from the goal state.
define planning.
- deciding on the order and intensity of decomposition of problem, and determining consequences of alternative plans.
- involves search through the problem space
- search guided by heuristics
- planning is constrained
- planning is mediated by external environments
list the problem components of planning.
- initial state
- goal state
- operators
- constraints
problem decomposition is complex and multi-faceted and involves…
sub-goal specification - reduce goal down until and operator can be composed.
list the decomposition orders.
- breadth first - minimal commitment
- depth first - lower cognitive load
- opportunistic - current state
mental representation of the problem includes…
state space, task env, information-processing system.
describe the state space.
- all possible paths between initial and goal states
- the larger it is, the harder a problem will be to solve
describe the task env.
- the way a problem is presented to the solver
e. g. format, thematic content, conditions
describe the information-processing system.
- working memory
- constraint on planning steps.
state ways of searching for heuristics.
means-end analysis.
operator selection - select operator that maximises reduction of distance between initial and goal states.
what happens when we don’t plan?
- act first, think later…
effects of maximisation, minimisation and lookahead on inferential planning in problem-solving.
what was the two common outcomes of the nine ball problem?
what was the solution?
- 4 vs 4 - 42%
- 4 vs 5 - 37%
- solution = three by three
define insight.
a change in conceptual understanding that allows a solution to a problem to be discovered and repeated in the future.
state phenomenas of the 9 dot problem.
- simple to state, hard to solve
- fixation
- impasse
- ‘aha’
- incubation
describe the importance of insight.
- practice
- theory - consciousness, determinism, modularity
state theories of insight.
- representational change theory
- criterion of satisfactory progress
- multiple factor theory
how can you test the effect of knowledge.
solving equations only moving one stick to make the sum work (matchstick algebra).
how can you test knowledge and strategy together.
- eight coin problem
- transform an initial array so each coin touches three others, moving two coins only.
when testing knowledge and strategy using the eight coin tests, which hints were most beneficial?
verbal hints and where there was no moves ( search strategy).
how is insight enhanced through analogy?
- transferred from example to new problem (training phase to transfer phase in nine ball task)
what constitutes incubation?
- divergent thinking
- linguistic insight
- visual insight
give evidence that sleep affects verbal problems.
more difficult verbal task ‘broad, mail, magic = black’ = most correct responses in sleep, whereas easy task = most correct responses in incubation.
