Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Solving Problems and Making Decisions283experts or others who may be more knowledgeable—or accept defeat and give up.In Tom’s case, rather than give up on a problem or seek a different approach tosolving it, Tom will persevere in his attempt to solve it. For example, faced witha difficult homework problem in an advanced mathematics class, Tom oftenstayed up until 2:00 or 3:00 A.M., struggling to solve a single problem until heliterally fell asleep at his desk.Similarly, successful problem solving sometimes involves accepting a lessthan-perfectsolution to a particular problem—knowing when a solution is“good enough” even if not perfect. But to many with Asperger’s syndrome,things are either right or wrong—there is no middle ground (Toth& King, 2008). So when Tom got a 98 rather than 100 on a difficult mathtest, he was inconsolable. When he ranked in the top five in his class, he wasupset because he wasn’t first. Tom would sometimes be unable to write an essay becausehe couldn’t think of a perfect opening sentence, or turn in an incomplete essaybecause he couldn’t think of the perfect closing sentence.“Sometimes it’s easier if you break the workup into little chunks.”© The New Yorker Collection. Cartoonbank.com.All rights reserved.Insight and IntuitionFinally, the solution to some problems seems to arrive in a sudden realization, orflash of insight, that happens after you mull a problem over (Chronicle & others,2004; Öllinger & others, 2008). Sometimes an insight will occur when you recognizehow the problem is similar to a previously solved problem. Or an insight caninvolve the sudden realization that an object can be used in a novel way. Try yourhand at the two problems in Figure 7.3 at the bottom of the page. The solution toeach of those problems is often achieved by insight.Insights rarely occur through the conscious manipulation of concepts or information.In fact, you’re usually not aware of the thought processes that led to aninsight. Increasingly, cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are investigatingnonconscious processes, including unconscious problem solving, insight, andintuition (Hodgkinson & others, 2008). Intuition means coming to a conclusionor making a judgment without conscious awareness of the thought processesinvolved.One influential model of intuition is the two-stage model (Bowers & others,1990). In the first stage, called the guiding stage, you perceive a patternin the information you’re considering, but not consciously. The perceptionof such patterns is based on your expertise in a given area and your memoriesof related information.In the second stage, the integrative stage, a representation of the pattern becomesconscious, usually in the form of a hunch or hypothesis. At this point,conscious analytic thought processes take over. You systematically attempt to proveor disprove the hypothesis. For example, an experienced doctor might integrate bothobvious and subtle cues to recognize a pattern in a patient’s symptoms, a pattern thattakes the form of a hunch or an educated guess. Once the hunch is consciously formulated,she might order lab tests to confirm or disprove her tentative diagnosis.An intuitive hunch, then, is a new idea that integrates new information with existingknowledge stored in long-term memory. Such hunches are likely to be accurateonly in contexts in which you already have a broad base of knowledge and experience(M. Lieberman, 2000; Jones, 2003).“Actually, I got some pretty good ideaswhen I was in the box.”© The New Yorker Collection.Cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.Problem 1Problem 2Six drinking glasses are lined up in a row. The first three are full of water, the lastthree are empty. By handling and moving only one glass, change the arrangementso that no full glass is next to another full one, and no empty glass is next toanother empty one.A man who lived in a small town married 20 different women in that same town.All of them are still living, and he never divorced any of them. Yet he broke nolaws. How could he do this?Figure 7.3 A Demonstration of InsightfulSolutions The solutions to these problemsare often characterized by suddenflashes of insight. See if you have the“That’s it!” experience in solving theseproblems without looking at the solutionson page 285.Source: Adapted from Ashcraft (1994); problem 2adapted from Sternberg (1986).