Cognitive Processes Final Exam: Chapter 12

Highly creative people seem to have an advantage in _____________—for instance, thinking of _____________ for an object.

"divergent thinking"

Highly creative people seem to have an advantage in _____________—for instance, thinking of _____________ for an object.

"divergent thinking" novel uses

Some potential "prerequisites" for exceptional creativity include (4)

-Knowledge and skill in the domain -Certain intellectual capacities and personality traits -Motivated by pleasure of the work -conducive social, cultural, and historical context

People are generally terrible at the Wason card experiment, even IBM engineers. What type of question makes it easiest to know which cards to turn over? Select one: a. Any question where you are primed to catch cheaters or people violating a social contract. b. Any question with abstract information rather than concrete scenarios. c. Any question involving protective equipment. d. Any question affected by prior belief-bias.

A

A problem-solving heuristic is Select one: a. guaranteed to find a problem solution, if one exists. b. a strategy that guides a search through the problem space. c. likely to be less effective than a strategy such as hill climbing or means-end analysis. d. needed for unfamiliar problems but not for familiar problems.

B

The tendency to be rigid in how one thinks about an object's function is called Select one: a. mental stickiness b. functional fixedness c. functional narrowness d. narrow focus

B

Problem-solving set or Einstellung (attitude)

Beliefs, habits, or strategies used to solve a problem

Subgoals

Break down the largest goal into well known chunks

Analogies are Select one: a. often misleading, since an analogy depends on a problem's surface structure. b. relatively ineffective for solving problems, unless the problem is a familiar one. c. an effective way to promote understanding and problem solving. d. relevant only for a narrow set of problems.

C

What is a good strategy when you are unable to solve a problem? Select one: a. Turn off any lights or noise and fully focus on the mental image "behind your eyelids" b. Consider the amount of time needed to mentally scan the image and zoom to reduce it c. Write down or draw the mental image to help you change your reference frame d. Turn the mental image from color to greyscale

C

Which of the following is NOT a Forer statement? Select one: a. You are considering some travel, but there are a number of issues you have to solve first. b. You have many acquaintances, but only a few close friends whom you trust with your feelings and future plans. c. Your father died when you were 9 and you have always had a good relationship with your stepfather, whose name is Benjamin. d. You have a friend who is always late to everything.

C

______________ is also important to problem solving and vice versa

Creativity

The water-jar problem, in which participants are given three jars of different sizes and need to use those jars to come up with a certain volume of water, has been used to demonstrate human suceptability to: Select one: a. functional fixedness b. incubation c. working backward d. set effects

D

Which of the following is not a question prompted by Carl Sagan's "baloney detection" kit to help differentiate science and pseudoscience? Select one: a. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim, or only looked for support of the claim? b. Have the claims been verified by another source? c. Does the claim fit with what we know about how the world works? (e.g., physics, astronomy) d. Have you personally seen evidence of the claim, such as a psychic correctly knowing things about your family?

D

If the problem space is too vast like ___________, _________ can help.

a game of chess with lots of moves heuristics

Insight Problem

a problem in which the subject is not aware of being close to a solution *aha moment

Define problem solving

a process in which one begins by deciding on a goal and seeks steps that will lead to that goal

The "ingredients" of creativity are available to ___________ if we acquire expertise in the relevant domain

all of us

Sometimes in solving a problem, we can make an ____________ with another problem we have previously solved.

analogy

Operators of problem solving

available tools or actions

Those who who were interrupted for 4 hours with the Silveira necklace did ___________ because...

better because they had fresh approaches

Set effect

bias toward the use of certain problem-solving approaches because of past experience

Comprehending the deep structure allows the expert to focus more on ____________ without getting bogged down in the _____________ Many of the details have been ____________ for the expert.

broad strategies details automized

Novices and experts think differently about ______________ tasks

complex

Pay attention to underlying ___________ rather than ____________.

concepts surface details

Those with a _________ performed better and forgot _____________.

delay misleading cues

Ill-defined problem

goal state and the available operators are not clearly specified ex: end world hunger

Well-defined problem

goal state as well as the available operators are clearly specified ex: hanoi puzzle (rings)

Non-insight problems perceived warmth increases ____________.

gradually

Problem set is like a _____________. It helps to reduce _________ but may also eliminate _____________.

heuristic options possible solutions

means-end analysis

heuristic in which the difference between the starting situation and the goal is determined and then steps are taken to reduce that difference--> Leads to subproblems, each with its own goal (ex: want a house so need to study now)

Path constraints of problem solving

limits that rule out some operations

Problem space

set of all states that can be reached in solving a problem, as one moves, by means of operators, from the initial state toward the goal state.

In many cases, participants fail to map aspects of one problem to the other and only benefit when the experimenter points out the ______________.

similarity/ analogy

Chunking

something experts do...organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Insight problems perceived warmth increases ____________.

suddenly (aha moment)

novice physics students tend to group physics problems based on ________________ physics graduate students group the problems according to __________, the physical principles.

surface structure deep structure

Functional Fixedness

tendency to be rigid in thinking about an object's function ex: 2 string problem

Initial state of problem solving

the knowledge and resources you have at the outset

Goal state of problem solving

the state you are working toward

One method for studying problem solving is to ask people to ______________ while working on a problem. The written record of this is called __________.

think aloud problem-solving protocol

What were the results of the Kane, et al. (2010) study on how a critical thinking course could change beliefs in pseudoscience and the paranormal? Select one: a. Not only did beliefs go down overall, a group that was asked to report their pre-semester beliefs thought that their initial beliefs were lower than they actually were. b. Post-semester beliefs were lower than pre-semester beliefs for the group who took critical thinking, but not for the control group. No hindsight bias was observed. c. Post-semester beliefs went down more for those who were majors in the biological or chemical sciences. d. Hindsight bias was observed more in the control group than in the group who took a critical thinking course.

A

Who is falling prey to the Availability Heuristic? Select one: a. Miriam thinks that poets tend to be women. In fact, she can think of three female poets with no effort. This makes her even more certain that poets tend to be women. b. Joanne comes back from Vegas with stories about her amazing wins. One time, she put down $5 on the roulette table and won $500! She remembers being a winner. However, her bank account tells another story. She now has $50 less than when she left for Vegas. c. Ryan's friends remember him as a non-religious teenager. Now in his late 20's, Ryan is very religious and when asked about how religious he was as a teen says "I've always been extremely religious." d. Jacob thinks he might have stomach cancer because his stomach has hurt for two days. He goes to the doctor, who says "You just have the virus that is going around."

A

hill-climbing strategy

A commonly used strategy in problem solving where whenever their efforts toward solving a problem give them a choice, they will choose the option that carries them closer to the goal.

Cummins 1992 had people learn algebra IV: Type of instruction 1. Do problems 1 by 1 2. Compare the problems to each other, describe what they have in common *What were the results?

Group 2 was more likely to solve new problems correctly later and to use analogies

Ex of creativity prerequisites

Mushroom packaging

Luchins Water Jug Task

Shows set effect cause people that saw 10 problems couldn't solve simpler ones cause they were set in complicated way and people that saw 5 more likely to solve w/ versatility

Example of mental imagery task

The mutilated checkerboard used in the problem posed by Kaplan and Simon (1990). (dominos)

In some cases, a mental image helps, but sometimes it may be limited by ___________ but changing this can __________. ex: duck/rabbit

perceptual reference frame Help

Incubation effects

phenomenon that sometimes solutions to a particular problem come easier after a period of time in which one has ignored trying to solve the problem

Mental imagery

problem solving method where you picture something

Counter-intuitive finding

reason for performing better after delay was set effect (no longer primed for bad strategies)

Putting an idea down on paper can help make a discovery that requires a change in the ________________.

reference frame