DANCEST 805 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Spreading Activation, Metacognition, Adaptive Control
Document Summary
Well-defined problems all aspects of the problem are clearly specified (= initial state, goal, methods available) (e. g. maze or chess: used in research as there"s an optimal strategy and errors/deficiencies can easily be identified. Ill-defined problems definition of problem is underspecified, initial state, goal state & methods unclear (e. g. keys locked in car: most everyday problems. Knowledge-rich problems can only be solved with considerable amounts of prior knowledge. Knowledge-lean problems can be solved without prior knowledge as necessary info is provided by problem statement. Involves controlled rather than automatic processes: a problem only exists if someone lacks the relevant knowledge to produce an immediate solution. Past experience generally increases our ability to solve problems. But functional fixedness fail to solve a problem because we assume from past experience that any given object. Past experience has a limited number of uses (e. g. candle + box of nails) Support: younger children (= less experience) outperformed older children.
