- school Campus Bookshelves
- menu_book Bookshelves
- perm_media Learning Objects
- login Login
- how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
- hub Instructor Commons
Margin Size
- Download Page (PDF)
- Download Full Book (PDF)
- Periodic Table
- Physics Constants
- Scientific Calculator
- Reference & Cite
- Tools expand_more
- Readability
selected template will load here
This action is not available.
2.2: Restructuring – The Gestalt Approach
- Last updated
- Save as PDF
- Page ID 91940
\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)
\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)
\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)
( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)
\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)
\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)
\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)
\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)
\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)
\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)
\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)
\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)
\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)
\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)
\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)
\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)
\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}} % arrow\)
\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}} % arrow\)
\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)
\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)
\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)
One dominant approach to Problem Solving originated from Gestalt psychologists in the 1920s. Their understanding of problem solving emphasises behaviour in situations requiring relatively novel means of attaining goals and suggests that problem solving involves a process called restructuring. Since this indicates a perceptual approach, two main questions have to be considered:
- How is a problem represented in a person's mind?
- How does solving this problem involve a reorganisation or restructuring of this representation?
This is what we are going to do in the following part of this section.
How is a problem represented in the mind?
In current research internal and external representations are distinguished: The first kind is regarded as the knowledge and structure of memory , while the latter type is defined as the knowledge and structure of the environment, such like physical objects or symbols whose information can be picked up and processed by the perceptual system autonomously. On the contrary the information in internal representations has to be retrieved by cognitive processes.
Generally speaking, problem representations are models of the situation as experienced by the agent. Representing a problem means to analyse it and split it into separate components:
- objects, predicates
- state space
- selection criteria
Therefore the efficiency of Problem Solving depends on the underlying representations in a person’s mind, which usually also involves personal aspects. Analysing the problem domain according to different dimensions, i.e., changing from one representation to another, results in arriving at a new understanding of a problem. This is basically what is described as restructuring. The following example illustrates this:
The key in this story is that the older boy restructured the problem and found out that he used an attitude towards the younger which made it difficult to keep him playing. With the new type of game the problem is solved: the older is not bored, the younger not frustrated.
Possibly, new representations can make a problem more difficult or much easier to solve. To the latter case insight – the sudden realisation of a problem’s solution – seems to be related.
There are two very different ways of approaching a goal-oriented situation . In one case an organism readily reproduces the response to the given problem from past experience. This is called reproductive thinking .
The second way requires something new and different to achieve the goal, prior learning is of little help here. Such productive thinking is (sometimes) argued to involve insight . Gestalt psychologists even state that insight problems are a separate category of problems in their own right.
Tasks that might involve insight usually have certain features – they require something new and non-obvious to be done and in most cases they are difficult enough to predict that the initial solution attempt will be unsuccessful. When you solve a problem of this kind you often have a so called "AHA-experience" – the solution pops up all of a sudden. At one time you do not have any ideas of the answer to the problem, you do not even feel to make any progress trying out different ideas, but in the next second the problem is solved.
For all those readers who would like to experience such an effect, here is an example for an Insight Problem: Knut is given four pieces of a chain; each made up of three links. The task is to link it all up to a closed loop and he has only 15 cents. To open a link costs 2, to close a link costs 3 cents. What should Knut do?
If you want to know the correct solution, click to enlarge the image.
To show that solving insight problems involves restructuring , psychologists created a number of problems that were more difficult to solve for participants provided with previous experiences, since it was harder for them to change the representation of the given situation (see Fixation ). Sometimes given hints may lead to the insight required to solve the problem. And this is also true for involuntarily given ones. For instance it might help you to solve a memory game if someone accidentally drops a card on the floor and you look at the other side. Although such help is not obviously a hint, the effect does not differ from that of intended help.
For non-insight problems the opposite is the case. Solving arithmetical problems, for instance, requires schemas , through which one can get to the solution step by step.
Sometimes, previous experience or familiarity can even make problem solving more difficult. This is the case whenever habitual directions get in the way of finding new directions – an effect called fixation .
Functional fixedness
Functional fixedness concerns the solution of object-use problems . The basic idea is that when the usual way of using an object is emphasised, it will be far more difficult for a person to use that object in a novel manner. An example for this effect is the candle problem : Imagine you are given a box of matches, some candles and tacks. On the wall of the room there is a cork-board. Your task is to fix the candle to the cork-board in such a way that no wax will drop on the floor when the candle is lit. – Got an idea?
A further example is the two-string problem : Knut is left in a room with a chair and a pair of pliers given the task to bind two strings together that are hanging from the ceiling. The problem he faces is that he can never reach both strings at a time because they are just too far away from each other. What can Knut do?
Mental fixedness
Functional fixedness as involved in the examples above illustrates a mental set – a person’s tendency to respond to a given task in a manner based on past experience. Because Knut maps an object to a particular function he has difficulties to vary the way of use (pliers as pendulum's weight).
One approach to studying fixation was to study wrong-answer verbal insight problems . It was shown that people tend to give rather an incorrect answer when failing to solve a problem than to give no answer at all.
These wrong solutions are due to an inaccurate interpretation , hence representation , of the problem. This can happen because of sloppiness (a quick shallow reading of the problem and/or weak monitoring of their efforts made to come to a solution). In this case error feedback should help people to reconsider the problem features, note the inadequacy of their first answer, and find the correct solution. If, however, people are truly fixated on their incorrect representation, being told the answer is wrong does not help. In a study made by P.I. Dallop and R.L. Dominowski in 1992 these two possibilities were contrasted. In approximately one third of the cases error feedback led to right answers, so only approximately one third of the wrong answers were due to inadequate monitoring . [1]
Another approach is the study of examples with and without a preceding analogous task. In cases such like the water-jug task analogous thinking indeed leads to a correct solution, but to take a different way might make the case much simpler:
In fact participants faced with the 100 litre task first choose a complicate way in order to solve the second one. Others on the contrary who did not know about that complex task solved the 18 litre case by just adding three litres to 15.
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
One dominant approach to Problem Solving originated from Gestalt psychologists in the 1920s. Their understanding of problem solving emphasises behaviour in situations requiring relatively novel means of attaining goals and suggests that problem solving involves a process called restructuring. Since this indicates a perceptual approach, two main ...
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving Adaptive Learning and the Human Condition Jeffrey C. Levy 2021-09-30 Adaptive Learning and the Human Condition provides a coherent and comprehensive introduction to the basic principles of classical (Pavlovian) and instrumental (Skinnerian) conditioning. When combined with
Problem solving is the process that an organism implements in order to try to get from the current state to the desired state. ... The Gestalt psychologists described several aspects of thought that acted as barriers to successful problem solving. ... Consider the eight puzzle. The problem space for the eight puzzle consists of the initial ...
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning Keith J. Holyoak 2013-05-23 The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning brings together the contributions of many of the leading researchers in thinking and
The Gestalt psychologists' theory of insight problem-solving was based on a direct parallelism between perceptual experience and higher-order forms of cognition (e.g., problem-solving). Similarly, albeit not exclusively, to the sudden recognition of bistable figures, these psychologists contended that problem-solving involves a restructuring of one's initial representation of the problem ...
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning Norbert M. Seel 2011-10-05 Over the past century, educational psychologists and researchers have posited many theories to explain how individuals learn, i.e. how they acquire, organize and deploy knowledge and skills. The 20th century ...
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving Rethinking Creativity Robert W. Weisberg 2020-09-10 Discover how creativity depends on inside-the-box thinking-that's right, not outside the box-and a new perspective on creative thinking. Handbook of the History of Social Psychology Arie W. Kruglanski 2012-10-12 For the ...
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving Creative Cognition Ronald A. Finke 1996-01-05 Creative Cognition combines original experiments with existing work in cognitive psychology to provide the first explicit account of the cognitive processes and structures that contribute to creative thinking and discovery.
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving, Which of the following provides the best example of functional fixedness?, The water-jug problem demonstrates that one consequence of having a procedure that does provide a solution to a problem is that, if well-learned, it may prevent us from and more.
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving a. sensory operators. b. multiple goal states. c. reorganization or restructuring. d. continuity and form., Gentner and Goldinmeadow (2003) illustrated that analogical encoding causes problem solvers to pay attention to _____ features that _____ their ability ...
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving Analogical Problem Solving Mark T. Keane 1988 Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology Ronald T. Kellogg 2015-01-07 With its reader-friendly style, this concise text offers a solid introduction to the fundamental concepts of cognitive psychology.
c. the initial state is not clearly defined. d. the goal state is not clearly defined., Ill-defined problems are so named because it is difficult to specify _____ for the problems. a. analogies b. initial states c. a single correct answer d. schemas, Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving a. restructuring. b.
Ill-defined problems are so named because it is difficult to specify _____ for the problems. a. initial states b. a single correct answer c. analogies d. schemas, 3. Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving a. sensory operators b. multiple goal states c. restructuring d. continuity and form and more.
Gestalt Psychologists Consider Problem Solving As A Process Involving A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology Willis D. Ellis 1938 Series of abstracts or summaries of thirty-four articles and one book published in Germany between 1915 and 1929. Documents of Gestalt Psychology Mary Henle 2011-05-01 The Adult Learner Malcolm S. Knowles 2020-12-21 How ...
Psychology. Originally published in 1932, this study looks at the problem of configuration and the Gestalt Theory, its empirical foundation and dynamics. Perceptual Organization Michael Kubovy 2017-03-31 Originally published in 1981, perceptual organization had been synonymous with Gestalt psychology, and Gestalt psychology had fallen into ...
Solving As A Process Involving Gestalt Psychology Wolfgang Köhler 1970 "The general reader, if he looks to psychology for something more than entertainment or practical advice, will discover in this book a storehouse of searching criticism and brilliant suggestions from the pen of a rare thinker, and one who occupies a leading position in ...
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving A) reorganization or restructuring. B) multiple goal states. C) sensory operators. D) continuity and form, The analogical paradox refers to problem-solving differences between A) experts and novices. B) laboratory and real-world settings. C) experimental groups ...
RoseDavidson. Gestalt psychologists consider problem-solving as a process involving perception, insight, and restructuring of the problem. They believe that the mind actively organizes and structures information into meaningful wholes, or Gestalts, which can either facilitate or impede problem-solving. Perception plays a crucial role in problem ...
Terms in this set (14) Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving. reorganization or restructuring. The circle problem, in which the task is to determine the length of a line inside a circle, was proposed to illustrate. representation and restructuring. Insight refers to. the sudden realization of a problem's solution.
On Problem-solving Karl Duncker 1972 A scholarly study of the elements which make up the process of problem solving. A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology Willis D. Ellis 1938 Series of abstracts or summaries of thirty-four articles and one book published in Germany between 1915 and 1929.
psychology of thinking, reasoning and problem-solving have been accorded due promi-nence. A detailed discussion on exceptional children and learning disabled children together with the educational measures for overcoming such disabilities is also included. The text concludes with an important aspect of human behaviour, namely, adjustment.
Gestalt psychologists consider problem solving as a process involving... Reorganization or restructuring The circle problem, in which the task is to determine the length of a line inside a circle, was proposed to illustrate...