Knowledge restructuring refers to changes in the strategy with which people solve a given problem. Two types of knowledge restructuring are supported by existing category learning models. The first is a relearning process, which involves incremental updating of knowledge as learning progresses. The second is a recoordination process, which…

Evolutionary psychologists often propose that humans carry around "stone-age" brains, along with a toolkit of cognitive adaptations designed originally to solve hunter-gatherer problems. This perspective predicts that optimal cognitive performance might sometimes be induced by ancestrally-based problems, those present in ancestral environments,…

Uniformity, that is, equiprobability of all available options is central as a theoretical presupposition and as a computational tool in probability theory. It is justified only when applied to an appropriate sample space. In five studies, we posed diversified problems that called for "unequal" probabilities or weights to be assigned to the given…

In two experiments, we studied how people's strategy choices emerge through an initial and then a more considered evaluation of available strategies. The experiments employed a computer-based paradigm where participants solved multiplication problems using mental and calculator solutions. In addition to recording responses and solution times, we…

Explicit information-seeking actions are needed to evaluate alternative actions in problem-solving tasks. Information-seeking costs are often traded off against the utility of information. We present three experiments that show how subjects adapt to the cost and information structures of environments in a map-navigation task. We found that…

Experiments with 251 male and 280 female college students demonstrated that subjects' representations of the water levels in a tilted container could be influenced by problem presentation. Subjects who did not appear to know that water remains horizontal were attempting to solve an object-relative, rather than environment-relative, problem. (SLD)

This analysis of solutions to the Tower of Hanoi Problem underscores the importance of subject-by-subject analysis of "What is learned" in understanding human behavior in problem-solving situations, and provides a technique for describing subjects' task performance programs in detail. (Author/BJG)

The representation of analogy in memory and processes involved in the use of analogies were explored. Results indicated that solutions to a problem can be developed by using an analogous problem from a very different domain. (Author/RD)

A total of 308 undergraduates performed 2 word tasks and a gestalt closure task in a study of intuition. Subjects could respond discriminately to coherence they could not identify and were led by this perception to form a hunch or hypothesis. Clues to coherence evidently activate problem-solving networks. (SLD)

The water jug task model was extended to four variations of the Missionaries--Cannibals river-crossing problem. Different cover stories resulted in large differences in number of illegal moves, but no difference in number of legal moves to solution. The three-stage process model explains both legal and illegal moves. (Author/GDC)

An experimental context designed to directly affect discourse processing by inducing subjects to generate inferences involving text content was compared to a context in which subjects simply listened to and recalled the content of a text. Context did effect the amount of inferred and overgeneralized semantic information in subjects' text recalls.…

Two simple quantitative models were derived from a series of experiments which explored the role of information storage in working memory when performing mental arithmetic. The decay model is a tractable analysis of a complex task which assumes a decay process in working storage. Similar analyses are recommended for problem solving activities…

Two characteristics that determine problem difficulty--the nature of the move search space and its interaction with other aspects of the task--were investigated in experiments in which 26, 69, 42, and 42 community college students attempted to solve the Chinese Ring Puzzle. The origins and implications of difficulty are discussed. (SLD)

Two experiments, with 300 adult women as subjects, studied the effects of laboratory training on the use of the Conjunction Rule, a principle of probability that is often violated. Learning alternative strategies enabled trained subjects to use extensional reasoning rather than intensional heuristics. (SLD)

Four experiments are presented to support the theory that the rule system governing the law of large numbers is not tied to a content domain, and that it can be improved by formal teaching techniques. The experiments showed that statistical training enhanced everyday reasoning. Test problems and objective example problems are appended. (LMO)