Cognitive Psychology: Functional fixedness and problem solving

Functional Fixedness article:
How may human created things be represented differently in mind and brain than are other things?

the design of something (links to the purpose or function).
Human created things we know what they are designed for. But we may not have that same type of info about natural things vs. a human artifact.
based on the mechanical properties of the object.

6 years of age
What do we mean by functional fixedness? We think of an object as having a particular function with exclusion to others. See it more in older children than younger. Younger children are less susceptible to fall into this rut.
Why might we think that functional fixedness might be less in cultures with fewer complex technological devices?

Fewer artifacts are used for more tasks, they are more accustomed to seeing a particular tool in many ways, such as a machete
“Bricolage”: someone who works with their hands and uses devious means compared to those of the craftsman. Finding some sort of improvised solution when something breaks. Like a jack of all trades.

When you don’t have a vast array of options, you may be more improvatory and have a greater ability to put tools to different uses… so maybe here there would be less evidence of functional fixedness.
So, how did they test the hypothesis that there would be less functional fixedness in a technologically sparse area?

Studying hunter-horiculturalists of the Amazon region. Did an experiment comparing a function-demonstrated condition vs. a baseline condition.
They would try and induce functional fixedness by having items IN a box or next to the box (so it is a container, not a building block). The spoon is in the cup as a scoop, or out of the cup. Sort of like the candle and matchbox condition.

Results: box condition: slower to select the box, but about equal time of solving the solution.
In spoon condition, the function demonstration condition was slower both in selection and in total solving time.
So it seems that these people are also prone to functional fixedness… but is it as great as it is in our own culture? We don’t know yet.

It seems that even these cultures are prone to seeing the objects as what they are used for, just like we are. So maybe seeing these attributes for humans is relatively universal, and not just a peculiarity in a certain culture.

Wikibook: Problem solving

Herbert simon characterized problem solving as a searching process. In what way is problem solving searching? What are you searching for/ among?

You have to examine the various possible (mental) states, and then be able to find a path through intermediate states from the current state to the goal state. This is how it is searching… searching for a suitable path to the solution.

Allen Newell and Herbert Simon – computer science ideas in cognitive psychology. This is the heart of their early contributions.
What is the nature of this search?

May be trial and error, or an organized search. What is the principle whereby you can proceed toward a solution in a systematic way?

Means Ends Analysis: finding a way to analyze what means will lead to certain ends (the goal state).

Try to reduce the difference between initial state and goal state by creating sub-goals until a sub-goal can be reached directly. (Sub-goal is not the goal, but on the way to the goal… or a state on the way to the goal state).
These are domain general problem solving strategies…. Not specific to any domain, can be used when you have no idea or no advantages, just general problem solving strategies. Ex. Towers of Hanoi : moving disks from 1 peg to the other.
You can program a computer with an algorithm that will get you to your strategy no matter what for the towers of hanoi. – Herbert simon showed this.
Once you become an expert on a certain problem (domain specific), then you may solve problems in a very different way. ex. chess
Applications of analogies may be hard and people may disagree on them.

In order to apply an anology, you have to notice similarities and apply point by point to make it work, and this is not easy kind of reasoning for people, so using analogies are not a fool-proof approach.
Schemata: have a mental frame-work and you try and conceptualized based on those for some ideas… but also not fool-proof

Experts vs. novice: Experts know more about their field, their knowledge is organized differently, and they spend more time analyzing the problem. They think about the problem in a different way.

Compared chess novices vs. experts, and Chess experts just rememeber a whole lot of Chess position. They have a huge repertoire of images of a chess board in their minds, and they can act one those.
Based on productions: if … then ….
This way, they can plug in chunks for knowledge, and can remember exactly what to do based on that image or knowledge of the situation. It becomes almost automatic after a while.

Herbert Simon article in moodle
Physics problems: comparing how physics professors solve them against students. It seems that profs organize and classify the problems based on what basic principle the problem represents, and then can solve the problem much more easily. Novices rely on more superficial characteristics.
To what extent are there general problem-solving strategies?? Hard to say. Maybe problem solving is actually quite domain specific. May not be a general characteristic… Problem solving.
The expert examples may reflect domain specificity.

Cognitive Psychology