Author’s Aims and Objectives
- Aims: In this lecture I will introduce a selection of key historical experiments on problem solving.
- Objectives: After this lecture you should be able to:
- Distinguish between Gestalt and Behaviourist approaches to problem solving, providing examples.
- Describe Wallas’s stage theory of problem solving.
- Preparation, Incubation, Illumination & Verification
- Define and describe evidence for the existence of incubation and functional fixedness in problem solving.
- Contrast situations where feelings-of-knowing or feelings-of-warmth are accurate with those where they are not.
Notes
- See Link (Defunct) – a PowerPoint presentation of an undergraduate lecture in Cognitive Psychology from Nottingham university.
- Silveira’s (1971) Cheap Necklace problem: is introduced with the intention of showing the benefit of the incubation stage. The problem is very simple and took me under a minute1, so it’s surprising that anyone needed an incubation stage.
- Mentions the Einstellung effect.
- The amusing final slide, showing a chimpanzee outwitting its experimenter by escaping through the air-conditioning duct is somewhat spoilt by the fact that chimpanzees do not have tails, unlike our hero.
- Discovered while researching "Sheridan (Heather) & Reingold (Eyal M.) - The Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions of the Einstellung Effect in Chess: Evidence from Eye Movements".
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1: 3+2 = 5, and 3x5 = 15 is a dead giveaway that the solution is to “dissolve” one of the 4 initial chainlets.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)