ECON 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Major Sundarrajan, Grigory Kotovsky, Taylor & Francis
Problem 3 Complex cognition 14/09/2020
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Aha
Learning goals
1. How does problems solving happens?
2. What are the different type of strategies of problem solving?
3. What is the neurological aspect of problem solving
4. What affects problem solving?
Literature that I read
• Butler, A. G., & Roberto, M. A. (2018). When Cognition Interferes with Innovation: Overcoming
Cognitive Obstacles to Design Thinking. Research-Technology Management, 61(4), 45-51.
• Eysenck, M. W., & Keane, M. T. (2013). Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook. 7th Edition.
London: Taylor & Francis. Chapter 12, pp.503-527.
• Cheng, C. Y., & Leung, A. K. Y. (2012). Revisiting the Multicultural Experience–Creativity Link. The
Effects of Perceived Cultural Distance and Comparison Mind-Set. Social Psychological and Personality
Science, 1948550612462413.
• Leung, A. K. Y., Maddux, W. W., Galinsky, A. D., & Chiu, C. Y. (2008). Multicultural experience enhances
creativity: the when and how. American Psychologist, 63(3), 169.
• Sio, U. N., & Ormerod, T. C. (2009). Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review.
Psychological bulletin, 135(1), 94.
• Sio, U. N., Kotovsky, K., & Cagan, J. (2015). Fixation or inspiration? A meta-analytic review of the role of
examples on design processes. Design Studies, 39, 70-99.
• Sundararajan, L., & Raina, M. K. (2015). Revolutionary creativity, East and West: A critique from
indigenous psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 35(1), 3.
• Wong, R., & Niu, W. (2013). Cultural difference in stereotype perceptions and performances in
nonverbal deductive reasoning and creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 47(1), 41-59.
Problem 3 Complex cognition 14/09/2020
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Chapter 12 Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook. 7th Edition
→ PROBLEM SOLVING requirement
1. Two states of affairs
2. The agent of one states and wants to be in the other states
3. It is not apparent to the agent how the gap between the two states is to be bridged
4. Bridging the gap is a consciously guided multi step process
→ Well defined problems; problem in which the initiate state, the goal and the methods available for
solving items are clearly laid out
1. It is purposeful
2. It is involving processes and is not totally reliant on “automatic” processes
3. A problem exists when someone lacks the relevant knowledge to produce immediate solution.
→ Ill-defined problems: problems that are imprecisely specified; the initiate stage, goal state and the
methods available for solving the problem may be unclear
o Most everyday life problem are that type.
→ Knowledge rich problem; problems that can only be solved by those having considerable relevant
background knowledge
→ Knowledge lean problems; problems than can be solved by individuals in the absence of specific
relevant prior knowledge.
Monty hall problem
→ People perform poorly on it because the adopt too
complex strategies
→ Typically used a heuristic or rule of thumb known as
uniformity fallacy
o This fallacy involves assuming all available
options are equally likely whether they are not
→ Problem places substantial demands on the central
executive
→ Most people mistakenly believe the host’s actions are
random
→ Shows our fallibility as problem solving
o Produce wrong answers because we use
heuristics or rules of Thumb because our
processing capacity is limited
Gestalt approach
Reproductive thinking
Systematic reuse of previous experience
Productive thinking
Novel restructuring of the problem and is more complex
Insight
Experience of suddenly realizing now to solve a problem
→ “any sudden comprehension, realization or problem solution that involves a
reorganization of the element of a person’s mental realization of a stimulus,
situation or even to yield a nonobvious or nondominant interpretation”
→ Replacing one way of thinking about a problem with a new and more efficient
way → cognitive conflict
Findings
→ Feeling of warmth during insight and non-insight problems
o Insight: it stays low until it studently rises before solution
o Non-insight: it gradually increase
→ Remote associates test; can be solved in various ways, you cannot say there
are specific tasks (not) involving insign
Problem 3 Complex cognition 14/09/2020
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Brain
RIGHT HEMISPHERE
o Plays an important
o When solution word to remote
associate problem was shown to
both hemispheres separately the
right responded much faster
o Integration weakly active and
distant associations occurs
mostly
→ ANTERIOR SUPERIOR TEMPORAL GYRUS IN THE RIGHT HEMISPHERE
o Only being activated when solutions involved insight
o Brain area associated with processing distant semantic relations between
words as well as reinterpretation and semantic integration
→ ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX
o Often associated with insight
o Involved in the detection of cognitive conflict and the breaking of mindset
o Important given that insight involves replacing one way of thinking about
a problem with a new and more efficient way
→ Eye movement indicated that participants were gradually accumulating
knowledge relevant to anagram solution even though they were ignorant that
was happening
o Insight depends on processes operating below the level of conscious
awareness
Facilitating insight:
hints
→ Hint increase the number of solutions produced on insight problems
→ Surprising but true: even subtle hint are useful
→ Research with strings that had to be brought together, however, they were
too far away to reach them at the same time
o The most insightful (but rare solution) was to tie the pliers to one string
and swing it like a pendulum, that able the participant to hold one and
catch the other one
o Unaware of the relationship between their arm movements during the
break and the task
o Hints can be effective without conscious awareness of their task
relevance
Facilitating insight:
incubation and sleep
→ INCUBATION: a stage of problem solving in which the problem is put to one side
for some time
→ Subconscious mind continues to work towards a solution during incubation →
incubations facilitate it
→ Finding in a metanalysis:
o Incubation effect were reported in 73% of the studies
o Incubation effect were stronger with creative problems having multiple
solutions than linguistic and verbal problem having a single solution
o Incubation often widens the search for knowledge which may be more
useful with multiple-solution problems
o The effects were larger when there was a fairly long preparation time
prior to incubations. (impasse in thinking is more likely to develop when
preparation is long)
→ “sleeping on problem”: effective form of incubation
→ Control information relating to the strategies tried by problem solver is
forgotten during incubations. It makes it easier for problem solvers to adopt a
new approach after the incubation period
Representational change theory (Ohlsson)
→ We often encounter book or impasse when solving a problem because we have represented it wrongly
→ We need to change the problem representation for insight to occur:
