Problem Solving

Problem-solving is a process of solving any kind of problem. This process is acted

upon in some steps. These steps start from identifying the problem and determining
the cause of the problem. After the problem and its cause are identified, the next step
is to select alternatives for the solution and implement the solutions.
All of these steps are collectively known as a problem-solving process.

1 Gestalt Theory
Gestalt psychology, school of psychology founded in the 20th century that provided
the foundation for the modern study of perception. Gestalt theory emphasizes that the
whole of anything is greater than its parts. That is, the attributes of the whole are not
deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation. The word Gestalt is used in modern
German to mean the way a thing has been “placed,” or “put together.” There is no
exact equivalent in English. “Form” and “shape” are the usual translations; in
psychology the word is often interpreted as “pattern” or “configuration.”

Gestalt theory originated in Austria and Germany as a reaction against the

associationist and structural schools’ atomistic orientation (an approach which
fragmented experience into distinct and unrelated elements). Gestalt studies made use
instead of phenomenology. This method, with a tradition going back to Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, involves nothing more than the description of direct
psychological experience, with no restrictions on what is permissible in the
description. Gestalt psychology was in part an attempt to add a humanistic dimension
to what was considered a sterile approach to the scientific study of mental life. Gestalt
psychology further sought to encompass the qualities of form, meaning, and value that
prevailing psychologists had either ignored or presumed to fall outside the boundaries
of science.

The publication of Czech-born psychologist Max Wertheimer’s “Experimentelle

Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung” (“Experimental Studies of the Perception of
Movement”) in 1912 marks the founding of the Gestalt school. In it Wertheimer
reported the result of a study on apparent movement conducted in Frankfurt am Main,
Germany, with psychologists Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. Together, these
three formed the core of the Gestalt school for the next few decades. (By the mid-
1930s all had become professors in the United States.)

The earliest Gestalt work concerned perception, with particular emphasis on visual

perceptual organization as explained by the phenomenon of illusion. In 1912
Wertheimer discovered the phi phenomenon, an optical illusion in which stationary
objects shown in rapid succession, transcending the threshold at which they can be
perceived separately, appear to move. The explanation of this phenomenon—also
known as persistence of vision and experienced when viewing motion pictures—
provided strong support for Gestalt principles.

Under the old assumption that sensations of perceptual experience stand in one-to-one
relation to physical stimuli, the effect of the phi phenomenon was apparently
inexplicable. However, Wertheimer understood that the perceived motion is an
emergent experience, not present in the stimuli in isolation but dependent upon the
relational characteristics of the stimuli. As the motion is perceived, the
observer’s nervous system and experience do not passively register the physical input
in a piecemeal way. Rather, the neural organization as well as the perceptual
experience springs immediately into existence as an entire field
with differentiated parts. In later writings this principle was stated as the law
of Prägnanz, meaning that the neural and perceptual organization of any set of stimuli
will form as good a Gestalt, or whole, as the prevailing conditions will allow.

Major elaborations of the new formulation occurred within the next decades.
Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka, and their students extended the Gestalt approach to
problems in other areas of perception, problem solving, learning, and thinking. The
Gestalt principles were later applied to motivation, social psychology,
and personality (particularly by Kurt Lewin) and to aesthetics and economic
behaviour. Wertheimer demonstrated that Gestalt concepts could also be used to shed
light on problems in ethics, political behaviour, and the nature of truth. Gestalt
psychology’s traditions continued in the perceptual investigations undertaken
by Rudolf Arnheim and Hans Wallach in the United States.

2 Problem Space Theory

In 1972, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon published the book Human Problem
Solving, in which they outlined their problem space theory of problem solving. In this
theory, people solve problems by searching in a problem space. The problem space
consists of the initial (current) state, the goal state, and all possible states in between.
The actions that people take in order to move from one state to another are known
as operators. Consider the eight puzzle. The problem space for the eight puzzle
consists of the initial arrangement of tiles, the desired arrangement of tiles (normally
1, 2, 3….8), and all the possible arrangements that can be arrived at in between.
However, problem spaces can be very large so the key issue is how people navigate
their way through the possibilities, given their limited working memory capacities. In
other words, how do they choose operators? For many problems we possess domain
knowledge that helps us decide what to do. But for novel problems Newell and Simon
proposed that operator selection is guided by cognitive short-cuts, known
as heuristics. The simplest heuristic is repeat-state avoidance or backup avoidance1,
whereby individuals prefer not to take an action that would take them back to a
previous problem state. This is unhelpful when a person has taken an inappropriate
action and actually needs to go back a step or more.

3 Analogy
Analogies are based on shared relations between base and target problem (Gentner,
1983; Clement & Gentner, 1991). By highlighting shared relational structures,
analogies connect domains and problems that may appear only marginally similar on
the surface. This process involves structural alignment as a crucial component of
analogical reasoning. While similarity centers on shared attributes, analogy concerns
the alignment of relational structures at a deeper level. According to the systematicity
principle, the structural relations are connected by one-to-one correspondences
(Gentner & Markman, 1997). As proposed by Carbonell (1986), analogical problem
solving can be performed on different levels of abstraction. Transformational analogy
is based on direct solution transfer, i.e. the solution to a previous problem is slightly
altered in a transformation process to solve the new problem. The solution transfer
process contains three basic processes. First, the initial partial matching process
determines if two problems share similar aspects based on state information and
operator sequences. Second, the sequence of actions from the retrieved solution is
transferred to the new situation in an analogical mapping process. Third, the retrieved
solution is copied and altered in a heuristically guided manner to finally satisfy the
given constraints (Carbonell, 1986). Derivational analogy follows the same processes
of analogical thinking. However, the accessed information is different, since it is
based on the preservation and reconstruction of past reasoning processes. In the initial
partial matching process, significant aspects are considered analogous if they share
the same reasoning steps, i.e. the same issues are considered and equivalent decisions
are made. Second, in transfer of earlier derivation, significant aspects of the reasoning
process are recreated. Finally, the retrieved derivation is applied to the current
situation “by ‘replaying’ the problem solving episode, checking for each step if the
derivation is still applicable in the new problem solving context” (Schmid &
Carbonell, 1999: 116). To summarize, in transformational analogy the solution is
slightly altered to fit the new problem. In derivational analogy, in contrast, previous
reasoning processes are applied and adapted to find a solution. As a result, new
solutions are likely to be different from previous ones. While Carbonell introduced
derivational analogy as an artificial intelligence model, humans have also been shown
to use this strategy (Schmid & Carbonell, 1999). Experiments showed that a high
saliency of analogous elements fosters the use of transformational analogy (Schelhorn
et al., 2007). Furthermore, participants were more successful in solving novel
problems when they studied examples by using instructions fostering derivational
analogy (Kleinbeck et al., 2001).