Ch.12 HW Questions

What hint did Maier (1931) give to participants working on the two-string problem when he was interested in studying insight?

He ran into one of the ropes, causing it to swing back and forth.

_____ problems do not always have correct answers.

Ill-defined

Problem solving is the process of ______.

achieving a goal when you do not know the solution right away

Which of the following is supposed to help experts conserve processing power but in certain cases creates a barrier to problem solving?

automatic responses

Behaviorist Edward Thorndike used a _____ to study problem solving.

cat

The final step in problem solving is ______.

choosing a solution and taking steps toward solving the problem

In order to solve the two-string problem, people have to think of the hammer as something other than a tool used to pound nails into the wall and engage in _____ thinking.

creative

People who have extensive knowledge and are therefore able to notice features and patterns that others may not are called ______.

experts

Chase and Simon (1973a, 1974b) showed that expert chess players are far superior to novices in their memory for chess arrangements. They found that experts were able to remember more pieces in actual game arrangements. However, when the arrangement was a random placement of pieces, ______.

experts did no better than novices

Unlike heuristics, in theory, algorithms ______ the correct solution.

guarantee

Shortcuts that usually get you to your goal based on simple properties of problems are called ______.

heuristics

When creating a _____, people will keep trying the same solution to a problem that has worked in the past.

mental set

Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987) gave participants insight and non-insight problems. Participants reported every 15 seconds how close they felt they were to a solution by indicating their feeling of warmth. It was found that when solving a non-insight problem, participants ______.

predicted with some accuracy how close they were to solving the problem

The solution to Dunker's candle problem is to ______.

remove the matches from their box and tack the matchbox to the wall

Gestalt psychologists think of problem solving as a process that involves ______.

restructuring

Which of these is not part of Sternberg's triarchic theory of human intelligence?

social intelligence

Ideational fluency is ______.

the number of ideas a person can generate about a particular topic or item

A productive process involves ______.

the restructuring of information

Taking relevant information into account and manipulating that information to come up with possible solutions to a problem is called ______.

thinking

Which is the best example of functional fixedness?

using a hanger to hang your clothes in your closet

These types of problems have correct answers and certain procedures lead us to them.

well-defined

Jessica always leaves a 20% tip when she pays her restaurant bills. She is trying to figure out how much money she needs to pay if her bill is $12. Jessica is working on a(n) ______.

well-defined problem

Luchins's water jug problem (1942) is considered a(n) ______.

well-defined problem

Computing math problems and playing games such as chess are considered what types of problems?

well-defined problems