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| Encompasses the set of cognitive processes that we apply to reach a goal when we must overcome obstacles to reach that goal. |
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| Encompasses the cognitive processes we use to make inferences from knowledge and draw conclusions. |
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| A situation where there is no immediately apparent, standard, or routine way of reaching a goal. |
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| Also known as the start state; this is where you are now as you face the problem that needs to be solved. |
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| This is the state you want to be in, at the solution of the problem |
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| Problems in which the initial state and the goal state are clearly defined and the possible moves (and constraining rules) are known. |
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| Problems where it is not possible to be sure about the rules, the initial state, the operations, or even the goal of a problem. |
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A special case of an ill-defined problem; a problem to which, despite all the unknowns, the answer seems to come all of a sudden in a flash of understanding.
Many scientists and artists have reported working on a problem for months or years, making no progress; then, when they are relaxing or their attention is elsewhere, they suddenly arrive at the solution. |
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| The set of states, or possible choices, that faces the problem solver at each step in moving from an initial state to a goal state. Thus, it includes the initial state, the goal state, and all possible intermediate states. |
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| A rule of thumb that usually gives the correct answer, but not always. |
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A process of trial and error: the problem solver randomly picks a move and tests to see whether the goal state is achieved.
We frequently resort to it when everything else has been tried and failed, though it is not very efficient. |
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| Knowledge dependent heuristic in which the problem solver looks one move ahead and chooses the move that most closely resembles the goal state. |
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| A demanding and stressful strategy in which the problem is broken into subproblems. If a subproblem at the first stage of analysis is not solvable, then the problem can be further broken into other subproblems until a soluble subproblem is found. |
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| A behavioral approach which is the analysis of the thought process of the problem solver as described aloud by the solver in the course of working on the problem. |
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Experts tend to employ this type of problem solving; they search through the problem space, from the initial state to the goal.
An experted physician, for example, works from the symptoms to diagnosis. |
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| A medical student generally uses this type of problem solving; from the goal of diagnosis to the symptoms that constitute the initial state. |
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| A process of comparison, using knowledge from one relatively known domain (the source) and applying it to another domain (the target) |
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| First subprocess of analogical reasoning where one holds a target in working memory while accessing a similar, more familiar example from long-term memory |
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Second subprocess of analogical reasoning that occurs while holding both the source and the target in working memory, aligning the source and the target and mapping the features of the source onto the target.
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Third subprocess of analogical reasoning. Involves deciding whether or not the analogy formed through mapping is likely to be useful.
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| Fourth subprocess of analogical reasoning. Involves isolating the structure shared by the source and the target. |
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Fifth subprocess of analogical reasoning. Involves developing hypotheses about the behavior or characteristics of the target from what is known about the source.
(For example, predicting from the behavior of biological viruses that computer viruses can change their surface features to avoid detection) |
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Any thought process that uses knowledge of specific instances to draw further inferences (which are not necessarily correct)
Both studies of patients with various types of brain damage and neuroimaging studies of neurologically healthy participants point to the role of the frontal lobes in inductive reasoning. |
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| Either generalizing from known instances to all instances (which is a general induction), or generalizing from some members of a category known to have given property to other instances of that category (which is a specific induction) |
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| The predisposition to weigh information in ways consistent with preexisting beliefs, when they are given the arbitrary rule to discover. |
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| A tool used to study deductive reasoning. An argument that consists of two statements and a conclusion. The conclusion may be either true or false. A conclusion that follows from given premises by the laws of deductive logic is a valid conclusion, even if it turns out to be untrue (because other premises were false also) |
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| The relations between two categories of things. |
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| The occurrence of an event may be conditional on the occurrence of another |
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| Errors that result from errors in the structural form or format of the premise-conclusion relationship. |
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| Errors that result when the content of the syllogism is overly influential. |
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A common form error in categorical reasoning in which you accept a conclusion as valid if it contains the same quantifier - "some," "all," or "no" - as appears in the premises.
The use of these terms in the two premises conveys an overall mood that leads participants to accept a conclusion containing the same term. For example, it is easy to see that the conclusion "all As are Cs" necessarily follows from the two premises "all As are Bs" and "all Bs are Cs". Read 441 for more. |
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| Accepting a conclusion as valid if it contains the syntactic structure of the premises or some of the terms of the premise. |
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| The tendency to be more likely to accept a "believable" conclusion to a syllogism than an "unbelievable" one - perhaps the most prevalent content effect studied in deductive reasoning. |
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