Ch. 12 Practice Quiz

Amber lives in a housing development between two parallel streets that both connect to a freeway. She usually takes the street to the south when heading southbound on the freeway to work, but that street is closed for repairs for three months. Amber takes the street to the north during that time. After the street to the south is re-opened, she continues to take the street to the north, even though it is a slightly longer route. Continuing to take the street to the north represents

A mental set

In Kaplan and Simon's experiment, the presented different versions of the mutilated checkerboard problem. Participants in the _______ group had the fastest response time.

Bread and butter

The typical purpose of subgoals is to

Bring the problem-solver closer and closer to the goal state

Intermediate states can be created by

Creating subgoals

Metclafe and Wiebe gave participants problems to solve and asked them to make "warmth" judgments every 15 seconds to indicate how close they felt they were to a solution. The purpose of this experiment was to

Demonstrate a difference between how people solve insight and non-insight problems

In the move Apollo 13, astronauts aboard a damaged spacecraft have to build a carbon dioxide filter or of random items that are aboard the ship with them. If they do not, they will all die rapidly of carbon dioxide poisoning. The fact that they are able to do so with the help of experts on Earth is similar to the ________ approach developed by Ronald Finke

Divergent thinking

Holly was in her mother-in-law's kitchen preparing lunch for the family. When she was ready to dish up the soup, she searched all the cupboards and drawers for a ladle but couldn't find one. She decided to wait until her mother-in-law returned to ask her where the ladle was, leaving the soup in the stove pot. Her mother-in-law later explained that the ladle had been broken, so she told Holly to use a coffee mug to "spoon" the soup into bowls. Holly's ability to solve the "dish up the soup" problem was hindered by which of the following obstacles?

Functional fixedness

_________ identified people's tendency to focus on a specific characteristic of a problem that keeps them from arriving at a solution as a major obstacle to successful problem solving

Gestalt psychologists

Phoenix Decorating Company is responsible for designing and building many of the floral floats seen in the Tournament of Roses Parade every New Year's Day. Phoenix's designers start preparing the floats for the next year's parade soon after the first of the year. For each corporate sponsor, Phoenix gets their best advertising team members, and they sit in a room for several hours throwing out every idea they can come up with, no matter how good or bad it is. After a substantial list has been created, they then go through every idea and rate its merits or deficits, until they come up with the best idea to pitch to the corporate sponsor. This process demonstrates

Group brainstorming

Which of the following is not part of a complete definition of a problem?

Has one correct answer

In the Tower of Hanoi problem, the ________ state involves having three discs stacked on the left peg, with the middle and right pegs empty

Initial

Newell and Simon called the conditions at the beginning of the problem the

Initial state

In the two-string problem, tying the pliers to one of the strings best represents a(n) _________ state

Intermediate

Which of the following is not true about divergent thinking

It has a single correct answer

Your textbook suggest that a trait that appears to be common to both mental illness and creativity is __________

Latent inhibition

Finke's creating an object studies show that people were more likely to come up with creative uses for pre-inventive objects if they

Made the objects themselves

The solution to the candle problem involves realizing that the

Match box can be used as a shelf

Functional fixedness would be lowest for a

Novel object

Finke's "creating an object" experiment had participants create a novel object by combining parts. Once they created an object, they were given the name of an object category and instructed to interpret their creation as a practical object or device within that category. Finke used the term pre-inventive forms to describe the

Novel objects before a function was described

Actions that take the problem from one state to another are known as

Operators

The elements of the problem space include all of the following EXCEPT

Operators

Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving

Reorganization or restructuring

The circle problem, in which the task is to determine the length of a line inside a circle, was proposed to illustrate

Representation and restructuring

Warmth judgments on nearness to a solution _______ prior to the solution of an insight problem and _______ prior to the solution of a non-insight problem

Rise suddenly just; gradually rise

The analogy that makes the solution to the mutilated checkerboard problem obvious is the ________ problem

Russian marriage

Newell and Simon were early pioneers in designing computer programs that could solve problems. Their research program was based on the idea that problem solving is a process that involves

Search

The information processing approach describes problem solving as a process involving

Search

The water-jug problem demonstrates that one consequence of having a procedure that does provide a solution to a problem is that, if well-learned, it may prevent us from

Seeing more efficient solutions to the problem

A _______ string led to a restructured representation in the two-string problem

Swinging

Illustrative of functional fixedness, people are more likely to solve the candle problem if

The box is empty

Janet is alone in a room that contains a chair and a shelf with a book resting on top. She attempts to retrieve the book, but the shelf is a foot above her reach. How will Janet retrieve the book? Psychologists would NOT classify this scenario as a problem because

The solution is immediately obvious

Insight refers to

The sudden realization of a problem's solution

Kaplan and Simon's experiment presented different versions of the mutilated checkerboard problem. The main purpose of their experiment was to demonstrate that

The way the problem is represented can influence the ease of problem solving

Which problem provides an example of how functional fixedness can hinder solution of a problem?

Two-string problem

Which of the following provides the best example of functional fixedness?

Using a juice glass as a container for orange juice

The best description of the purpose of think-aloud protocols is that they are used to determine

What information a person is attending to while solving a problem