TB9 - Reasoning and Decision Making Flashcards
What evidence did Goel and Grafman (2000) provide for planning in the frontal lobes?
When asking an architect to design a space he struggled and showed a poor final design.
What is well-defined vs ill-defined?
Well-defined refers to a current position and a goal specified, like a game of chess.
Ill-defined refers to when we have a current position but an unspecified goal, which is more applicable to life.
What did Metcalfe & Weibe (1987) find with regards to insight?
Participants rated their warmth throughout a problem solving task, and rated a sudden increase in warmth after a moment of insight. Problems without a moment of insight rated gradual increase in warmth as they got closer to the goal.
Which part of the brain is linked with insight?
The STG
What did Ellis (2011) find with regards to eye tracking and insight?
Participants fixation decreased on non-relevant stimuli in a task, so there was a gradual unconscious accumulation of knowledge, not just an insight moment.
What did Sio and Ormerod (2009) find with regards to incubation and insight?
Incubation led to small but consistent improvements when solving a problem.
What did Wagner (2004) find with regards to insight?
Facilitated by sleep
What could be the cause of insight from incubation?
Incubation leads to moving on from an old strategy allowing room for a new one.
What are three ways the representation of an old problem can change?
Constraint relaxation - Removal of inhibitions on what is permissible
Re-encoding - Aspects of the problem are reinterpreted
Elaboration - New info is added
What did Reverberi (2005) find with regards to problem solving?
Those with lateral PFC damage were better at solving harder matchstick problems, suggesting an area of our brain is meant to constrain solution space and inhibit unlikely solutions.
What do Newell and Simon (1972) argue with regards to problem solving?
That we problem solve by processing information.
What are heuristics?
This is a means-end analysis - we form sub-goals to reach our end goal sooner.
For this to work we need a clear idea of the final goal.
What did Koppenol-Gonzalez (2010) find with regards to planning?
Participants who spent longer planning moves in a problem before acting then performed better and made fewer errors.
What is expertise?
A high level of knowledge and performance in a given domain.
What did Kundell (2007) find with regards to radiologists?
When searching breast mammograms radiologists take an average of 27 seconds to look at the scans but fixate on cancer within 1.13 seconds.
