The journal of problem solving最新文献

{"title":"When Do Words Promote Analogical Transfer?","authors":"Ji Yeon Son, L. Doumas, Robert L. Goldstone","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1079","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this paper is to explore how and when verbal labels facilitate relational reasoning and transfer. We review the research and theory behind two ways words might direct attention to relational information: (1) words generically invite people to compare and thus highlight relations (the Generic Tokens [GT] hypothesis), and/or (2) words carry semantic cues to common structure (the Cues to Specific Meaning [CSM] hypothesis). Four experiments examined whether learning Signal Detection Theory (SDT) with relational words fostered better transfer than learning without relational words in easily alignable and less alignable situations (testing the GT hypothesis) as well as when the relational words matched and mismatched the semantics of the learning situation (testing the CSM hypothesis). The results of the experiments found support for the GT hypothesis because the presence of relational labels produced better transfer when two situations were alignable. Although the CSM hypothesis does not explain how words facilitate transfer, we found that mismatches between words and their labeled referents can produce a situation where words hinder relational learning.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83466815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Heuristics in Problem Solving: The Role of Direction in Controlling Search Space","authors":"Yun Chu, Zheng Li, Yong Su, Z. Pizlo","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1078","url":null,"abstract":"Isomorphs of a puzzle called m+m resulted in faster solution times and an easily reproduced solution path in a labeled version of the problem compared to a more difficult binary version. We conjecture that performance is related to a type of heuristic called direction that not only constrains search space in the labeled version, but also facilitates solution by presenting an “easy to keep in mind” destination as the goal state that does not tax working memory. Using direction makes it possible to solve a problem by building a path toward the solution rather than eliminating unpromising paths. The latter always involves search, which slows down the solution process and requires storing a large number of intermediate states in memory. Direction allows for smaller search. We speculate that discovering direction in a given search space enables operation selection and guidance in the solution path.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78890708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Causality in Solving Economic Problems","authors":"A. E. Robinson, S. Sloman, York Hagmayer, C. Hertzog","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1081","url":null,"abstract":"The role of causal beliefs in people’s decisions when faced with economic problems was investigated. Two experiments are reported that vary the causal structure in prisoner’s dilemma-like economic situations. We measured willingness to cooperate or defect and collected justifications and think-aloud protocols to examine the strategies that people used to perform the tasks. We found: (i) Individuals who assumed a direct causal influ ence of their own action upon their competitor’s action tended to be more cooperative in competitive situations. (ii) A variety of different strategies was used to perform these tasks. (iii) Strategies indicative of a direct causal influence led to more cooperation. (iv) Temporal cues were not enough for participants to infer a particular causal relation. It is concluded that people are sensitive to causal structure in these situations, a result consistent with a causal model theory of choice (Sloman & Hagmayer, 2006).","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"181 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85061301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Minimal Paths in the City Block: Human Performance on Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Traveling Salesperson Problems","authors":"Amy L. Walwyn, D. Navarro","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1080","url":null,"abstract":"An experiment is reported comparing human performance on two kinds of visually presented traveling salesperson problems (TSPs), those reliant on Euclidean geometry and those reliant on city block geometry. Across multiple array sizes, human performance was near-optimal in both geometries, but was slightly better in the Euclidean format. Even so, human solutions varied systematically across geometries, with the differences reflecting sensible adaptations to the different distance structures that these geometries imply. These results suggest that human near-optimality for visually presented TSPs may apply to a more general class of problems than the standard Euclidean case.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89528530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New Perspectives on Human Problem Solving","authors":"Robert L. Goldstone, Z. Pizlo","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1055","url":null,"abstract":"In November 2008 at Purdue University, the 2 Workshop on Human Problem Solving was held. This workshop, which was a natural continuation of the first workshop devoted almost exclusively to optimization problems, addressed a wider range of topics that reflect the scope of the Journal of Problem Solving. The workshop was attended by 35 researchers from around the world. The program of the workshop is available at: http:// spiderman.psych.purdue.edu/problem_solving/workshop08/. There were two full days of talks and posters, covering insight, education, decision making and causality, combinatorial optimization and applications. The level of excitement was high, and the lively and informative discussions confirmed that, despite the fragmentation of the field, there is something special and unique about problem solving that is likely to help define the field, almost exactly 100 years after the Gestalt Psychologists established it for the first time. Defining the field is obviously important, but doing solid research and disseminating the results is absolutely critical. This special issue provides a nice sample of the current work on human problem solving illustrating a variety of experimental tools and conceptual frameworks. Why has problem solving remained one of the most important topics in human cognition? Problem solving is the activity in which people show their uniquely human gift for flexible cognition and adaptation. We are not always shackled victims of habit. We can think flexibly about situations that we have never come across before, and arrive at apt and fresh responses to them. We can change how we represent problems. We can come up with novel strategies for solving problems. In other words, we can program ourselves to solve problems. These capabilities still distinguish human problem solving from machine intelligence efforts. Long after humans have been replaced by machines in tasks where automatic algorithms can be deployed to effectively accommodate known situations, genuine problem solving requiring the creation of thinking tools, representations, strategies, and meta-cognitive awareness will still be a privileged domain of humans. Over time, we are getting a better understanding of what tasks require truly flexible problem solving","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87019211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modeling Human Performance in Restless Bandits with Particle Filters","authors":"S. Yi, M. Steyvers, M. Lee","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1060","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract : Bandit problems provide an interesting and widely-used setting for the study of sequential decision-making. In their most basic form, bandit problems require people to choose repeatedly between a small number of alternatives, each of which has an unknown rate of providing reward. We investigate restless bandit problems, where the distributions of reward rates for the alternatives change over time. This dynamic environment encourages the decision-maker to cycle between states of exploration and exploitation. In one environment we consider the changes occur at discrete, but hidden, time points. In a second environment, changes occur gradually across time. Decision data were collected from people in each environment. Individuals varied substantially in overall performance and the degree to which they switched between alternatives. We modeled human performance in the restless bandit tasks with two particle filter models, one that can approximate the optimal solution to a discrete restless bandit problem, and another simpler particle filter that is more psychologically plausible. It was found that the simple particle filter was able to account for most of the individual differences.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79590411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Causal Induction from Continuous Event Streams: Evidence for Delay-Induced Attribution Shifts","authors":"M. Buehner, J. May","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1057","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary theories of Human Causal Induction assume that causal knowledge is inferred from observable contingencies. While this assumption is well supported by empirical results, it fails to consider an important problem-solving aspect of causal induction in real time: In the absence of well structured learning trials, it is not clear whether the effect of interest occurred because of the cause under investigation, or on its own accord. Attributing the effect to either the cause of interest or alternative background causes is an important precursor to induction. We present a new paradigm based on the presentation of continuous event streams, and use it to test the Attribution-Shift Hypothesis (Shanks & Dickinson, 1987), according to which temporal delays sever the attributional link between cause and effect. Delays generally impaired attribution to the candidate, and increased attribution to the constant background of alternative causes. In line with earlier research (Buehner & May, 2002, 2003, 2004) prior knowledge and experience mediated this effect. Pre-exposure to a causally ineffective background context was found to facilitate the discovery of delayed causal relationships by reducing the tendency for attributional shifts to occur. However, longer exposure to a delayed causal relationship did not improve discovery. This complex pattern of results is problematic for associative learning theories, but supports the Attribution-Shift Hypothesis.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87471715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Obstacles in Investigating the Role of Restructuring in Insightful Problem Solving","authors":"Ivan K. Ash, Patrick J. Cushen, J. Wiley","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1056","url":null,"abstract":"In the present article, we articulate three assumptions underlying theories proposing that restructuring processes play a key role in insightful problem solving: representational difficulty, representational change, and discontinuity in solution processes. We argue that these assumptions need empirical validation to justify the proposition of restructuring mechanisms that are unique from those involved in classic information-processing theories of problem solving. To this end, we review some theoretical and methodological obstacles that are inherent in the investigation of the existence and nature of restructuring processes. We then offer some recommendations on how to overcome or avoid these obstacles in future studies. Finally, we discuss some questions to help motivate new research.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88454235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Paradigm Recursion: Is It More Accessible When Introduced in Middle School?","authors":"Katherine Gunion, Todd M. Milford, U. Stege","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1063","url":null,"abstract":"Recursion is a programming paradigm as well as a problem solving strategy thought to be very challenging to grasp for university students. This article outlines a pilot study, which expands the age range of students exposed to the concept of recursion in computer science through instruction in a series of interesting and engaging activities. In this study, a small number of students (n = 9) aged 11 to 13 years, were presented with a new and unique recursion curriculum involving hands-on experiences over a seven-week period at the University of Victoria, Canada. The curriculum was comprised of a series of progressively challenging recursion activities—roughly based upon the ideas of ‘Computer Science Unplugged’ (Bell, Witten, & Fellows, 2009)—and included programming applications with MicroWorlds EX, a programming language based on LOGO. Through this engagement, an increased number of students recognized and understood the concepts covered. We hypothesize that through experiences for youth with activities such as those outlined here, the number of students who understand fundamental computer science applications and who might potentially pursue computer science in post-secondary education will increase. We hypothesis further that through an earlier encounter of “challenging” concepts the learning and understanding of those will become easier at the university level. In this paper, the curriculum, classroom experiences, preliminary, largely descriptive and qualitative results and next steps in the research are discussed.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"292 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83159262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Examining the Role of Manipulatives and Metacognition on Engagement, Learning, and Transfer","authors":"Daniel M. Belenky, Timothy J. Nokes-Malach","doi":"10.7771/1932-6246.1061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7771/1932-6246.1061","url":null,"abstract":"How does the type of learning material impact what is learned? The current research in- vestigates the nature of students' learning of math concepts when using manipulatives (Uttal, Scudder, & DeLoache, 1997). We examined how the type of manipulative (concrete, abstract, none) and problem-solving prompt (metacognitive or problem-focused) affect student learning, engagement, and knowledge transfer. Students who were given concrete manipulatives with metacognitive prompts showed better transfer of a procedural skill than students given abstract manipulatives or those given concrete manipulatives with problem-focused prompts. Overall, students who reported low levels of engagement showed better learning and transfer when getting metacognitive prompts, whereas students who reported high levels of engagement showed better learning and transfer when getting the problem-focused prompts. The results are discussed in regards to their implications for education and instruction.","PeriodicalId":90070,"journal":{"name":"The journal of problem solving","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81936282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}