Transcript Thinking and Problem Solving

Thinking and
Problem
Solving
Cognition
– the mental
activities
associated with
thinking,
knowing,
remembering,
and
communicating
Questions?
 What
are concepts?
 How do we form new concepts?
 What strategies do we use to
solve problems?
 What obstacles hinder our
problem solving?
 How do we make judgments?
What Are Concepts?
 Concepts
– mental
groupings of similar
objects, events, ideas,
or people
 IE.
We’ve grouped all of
memories and experiences of
“chairs” into one group,
 when we come across a new
object, we can easily define it
by our pre-determined
concepts and act accordingly
Forming New Concepts
 Prototypes
– a mental image or
best example of each concept we
have developed

We match new items to our mental
prototypes in order to allow or disallow
items into our concept groups
 Our concept of “dog” is defined by our
Golden Retriever. A new object we
meet has four legs, a tail, barks,
etc……compared to our mental image
of a “dog”, it must also be a “dog”
Problem Solving

The Tower of Hanoi…what’s your
strategy?
http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/
hanoi.swf
Methods of Problem Solving
 Trial
and Error – Thomas
Edison tried thousands of light
bulb filaments before
stumbling upon the one that
worked
No
organization, no preparation –
try everything and anything until
something works
Methods of Problem Solving
 Algorithm
– a methodical, stepby-step, logical rule or procedure
that guarantees solving a
particular problem
 IE.
Find another word using all the
letters in SPLOYOCHYG. Try each
letter in each position, resulting in
907,200 combinations, and then pick
out the words that make sense. Stepby-step…eventually, you’ll get it!
…it might take a while, but you’ll
eventually solve the problem…
Methods of Problem Solving

Heuristics – a simple, thinking-strategy
that often allows us to make judgments
and solve problems efficiently by adding
common sense shortcuts to step-by-step
procedures; speedier, but more errorprone than algorithms
 Find
another word using all the letters in
SPLOYOCHYG. You know that no words start
with YY, so eliminate all of those
combinations, as well as all of the YG, YH,
etc. You may miss some real words, but you
get an approximation.
Methods of Problem Solving
 Insight
– a sudden and
often novel realization of
the solution to a problem.
 You’re
stuck on a problem for
a long time, then suddenly
the pieces just fall together
and you perceive a solution –
“AHA !!”
Rebus
 …great
for Aha! Moments.
Click for a
few more!
 Sudden
Two “Na”
Fish = Tuna
Fish!
insight triggers
release of Dopamine in your
brain’s reward pathways!
Obstacles to Problem
Solving

Confirmation Bias – a tendency to
search for answers and information
that confirms one’s own
preconceptions

The defendant must be guilty because they are
of a certain race, gender, age, etc. Since all
men are _______, then he must have done
_________. You will look at all of the evidence
with this in mind, and you will conclude guilt
because it fits with what already “know”.
Obstacles to Problem
Solving
 Fixation
– the inability to see
a problem from a new
perspective
The
solutions that worked in the
past (mental set) often work on
new problems, and if they don’t,
we get frustrated and give up.
So, “think outside of the box”
(use a new approach).
Obstacles to Problem
Solving
 Functional
Fixedness – the
tendency to think of things only
in terms of their usual functions
 McGyver
didn’t have this problem!!
Click Him!
Making Decisions and
Forming Judgments
 Representative
Heuristics –
judging the likelihood of
things in terms of how well
they seem to represent, or
match, particular
prototypes
short, slim, and likes poetry
College professor or Truck Driver??
 You
have a mental prototype of
college professors and short, slim,
and intellectual.
Statistically, the
man would
probably be a
truck driver, but
the description fits
your prototype for
a professor.

Making Decisions and
Forming Judgments

Availability Heuristic – making our
judgments by estimating the likelihood of
events based on their availability in
memory
Which is more dangerous –flying in an
airplane or walking across the street?
 Odds of dying in airplane – 1 in 110,000
 Walking across the street – 1 in 625

If
you’ve been attacked recently in
a dark alley, now all dark alley’s are
dangerous…
Making Decisions and
Forming Judgments
 Overconfidence
– the tendency
to be more confident than correct
–
to
overestimate
the accuracy
of one’s
beliefs and
judgments
Making Decisions and
Forming Judgments
 Framing
– depending on the way
an issue is posed can significantly
affect our decisions and judgments
 Which
would you buy?
80% Lean!
20% Fat!
5% Failure Rate!
95% Success
Rate!
Making Decisions and
Forming Judgments
 Belief
Bias – the tendency for
one’s pre-existing beliefs to
distort logical reasoning
 Democrats
support free speech
 Dictators are not democrats
 Conclusion - Dictators do not support
free speech
 Our
beliefs sometimes cloud our
logical thinking
Belief
Perseverance
–
clinging to
one’s initial
conceptions,
even after the
bias has been
discredited
Columbus KNEW
he found a
passage to the
Indies even
though he
returned without
any spices or
gold!
…he never knew
he actually found
a new continent!