thinking

Question 1

what is duncker’s definition of a problem

Answer 1

a problem arises when a living organism has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached

Question 2

what are the 3 crucial elements of a problem

Answer 2

• starting state
• a set of processes that can transform the starting state into the goal state
• goal state

Question 3

what is the behaviourist approach

Answer 3

problem solving occurs through an incremental process of trial and error

Question 4

what is the gestalt approach

Answer 4

problem solving occurs through a process of restructuring and insight

Question 5

what is thorndike’s puzzle box 1898

Answer 5

• placed a at in a puzzle box with a clasp that held the door shut
• outside the cage was a piece of fish to encourage the cat to escape
• the cats experimented with different ways to escape the puzzle box and reach the finish
• eventually they would find a lever which opened door
• thorndike recorded the time it took for the cat to solve the problem
• after the cat escaped, he put them back in the cage to see how long it took them to escape again

Question 6

what are the results of thorndike’s puzzle box experiment

Answer 6

• in successive trials, the cats learnt that pressing the lever had favourable consequences
• sped up over trials

Question 7

what can we conclude from thorndike’s puzzle box experiment

Answer 7

• progressively faster
• trial and error - incremental
• proposed law and effect - any behaviour followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated and any behaviour followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped

Question 8

what did gestalt draw a distinction between

Answer 8

• reproductive thinking and productive thinking

Question 9

what is reproductive thinking

Answer 9

involves a re-use of previous experience

Question 10

what is productive thinking

Answer 10

involves a novel restructuring of the problem

Question 11

what did kohler find - saltan’s insight

Answer 11

• gave chimps problems to solve
• chimp in cage and bananas outside of cage
• if given 2 sticks that were too short to reach bananas on their own he would give up
• after time he made a longer sticks by using the sticks together to reach bananas
• restructured problem

Question 12

how can we conclude kohler’s findings

Answer 12

• insight rather than trial or error
• chimps were cared for rather than thorndikes cats
• birch - apes raised in captivity didn’t show the same level of insight

Question 13

what are wallas four stages of creative thinking

Answer 13

• preparation
• incubation
• illumination
• verification

Question 14

what is preparation

Answer 14

a problem is formulated and initial attempts are made to solve the problem

Question 15

what is incubation

Answer 15

the problem is set aside and no conscious work is done on it

Question 16

what is illumination

Answer 16

a sudden inspiration provides a new insight into the way in which the problem might be solved

Question 17

what is verification

Answer 17

conscious work on the problem develops and tests the inspiration to provide a full solution to the problem

Question 18

what did Helmholtz say about incubation followed by illumination

Answer 18

happy ideas come unexpectedly, without effort like an inspiration

Question 19

what did Hadamard say about incubation followed by illumination

Answer 19

unconscious activity often plays a decisive part in discovery, that periods of ineffective effort are often followed, after intervals of rest or distraction by moments of sudden illumination

Question 20

what did silveira 1971 find

Answer 20

• the cheap necklace problem
• control group worked on problem for half an hour - 55% people solved the problem
• experimental group - work for half an hour and then interrupted with 30 min break before carrying on - 64% solved problem
• other experimental group - worked for half an hour and then had 4 hour break - 85% solved problem
• incubation does help

Question 21

what did murray and denny 1969 do

Answer 21

• pps were divided into high and low ability groups on the basis of their performance on a use of objects test of creativity
• given 20 mins to solve a complex practical problem
• incubation group had 5 min break
• control group had no break
• found for high ability pps the break acted as a distraction so were faster with no break
• for low ability pps they were aided by the break and required a period of incubation
• shows individual differences in whether incubation period is effective

Question 22

what are barriers to successful problem solving

Answer 22

• functional fixedness
• the einstellung effect

Question 23

what is functional fixedness

Answer 23

people fixate on one property of an object and cannot think about it in a different way

Question 24

what is the einstellung effect

Answer 24

people learn a particular strategy for solving a problem which has produced success in the past and continue to use it even when it’s inappropriate

Question 25

what did duncker find about functional fixedness

Answer 25

- support candle on the wall so it doesn't drip onto the table below - found pps tried to nail candle to the wall or glue to the wall with wax - he then altered material by taking nails out of the box - pps no longer fixated on the box's function of holding nails instead they can use it as a candle holder

Question 26

what is the nine dot problem

Answer 26

- overcoming fixedness - connect all dots without lifting pen from paper - most people assume they must stay within the square but you must draw outside the square

Question 27

what is the water jug problem

Answer 27

- the luchins 1942 - the task is to work out how to use the jugs to measure the final quantity - the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems - biased by previous experience to use all jugs

Question 27

what did brown and mcneill find and research

Answer 27

- feeling-of-knowing - we sometimes feel closer to the solution even if we can't solve it - 57% people can name the first letter of the word even if they can't name it

Question 28

what did metcalfe find

Answer 28

- feeling-of-warmth - sometimes predict how close to a solution you are - compared feelings of warmth for incremental and insight based problems - feelings of warmth predicted performance on incremental problems but not insight problems

Question 29

what is normative reasoning

Answer 29

- using mathematics - real decision making scenarios often include probable information - probability theories can therefore be used to define the best possible decision in these scenarios - an example is bayes' theorem

Question 30

what is bayes' theorem

Answer 30

mathematical rule for inverting conditional probabilities allowing us to find the probability of a cause given it's effect

Question 31

what is human reasoning

Answer 31

- much psychological research has looked at situations where human reasoning is not normative - kahneman and tversky systematically investigated some situations where human reasoning is biased - they proposed that these biases occur because people use heuristics to answer complex probabilistic questions

Question 32

what is the representative heuristic

Answer 32

kahneman and tversky - the assumption that representative or typical members of a category are encountered more frequently

Question 33

what research did kahneman and tversky 1973 do

Answer 33

- pps asked to judge professions from brief character descriptions - box contained 100 brief descriptions of people - 30 were of engineers and 70 were of lawyers - had to draw description out box and say whether they were a lawyer or engineer - pps ignore the base rate probabilities and instead base their judgment on whether the description sounds like an engineer

Question 34

what is the linda problem

Answer 34

- tversky and kahnemen - describes a person and asked pps to make judgments - the conjunction fallacy - a reasoning error that people think chances of 2 things happening together is greater than the chance of just one thing happening alone

Question 35

what is the gambler's fallacy

Answer 35

- the mistaken belief that future tosses of a coin are influenced by past events - head and tails are equally likely, it doesn't matter what came before as the coin has no memory

Question 36

what is the availability heuristic

Answer 36

- decision makers asses the frequency of a class or the probability of an event by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind

Question 37

what did tversky and kahneman 1974 do to reserach the availability heuristic

Answer 37

- asked pps what was more frequent - word which has k as first letter of 3rd letter - 69% say k as the first letter which is incorrect - easier to access words that start with the letter k

Question 38

what did lichtenstein et al 1978 find about availability heuristic

Answer 38

- investigated the judged frequency of lethal events - pps overestimate low frequency events - pps underestimate high frequency events

Question 39

what is base rate neglect

Answer 39

- people ignore the general prevalence of an event happening - they favour the info that relates to a specific case they are presented with - the base rate is required to make correct probability judgments

Question 40

what is the taxi cab study

Answer 40

- tversky and kahneman - people tend to think the taxi was more likely to be blue than green - pps focus on the witness' accuracy and neglect the base rate of taxi cabs driving in the city

Question 41

what did casscells et al 1978 find

Answer 41

- medical diagnosis study - 45% of pps responded by ignoring the base rate

Question 42

what did cosmides and tooby 1996 find about base rate neglect

Answer 42

- present the medical problem with probability and frequency formats - probability format - high number make errors - frequency format - high number of people choose correct answer