Intuitive and analytical processes in insight problem solving: a psycho-rhetorical approach to the study of reasoning

Macchi, Laura; Bagassi, Maria

doi:10.1007/s11299-012-0103-3

Cited by 30 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…When insight problems are used in research, it could be said that the researcher sets a trap, more or less intentionally, inducing an interpretation that appears to be pertinent to the data and to the text; this interpretation is adopted more or less automatically because it has been validated by use but the default interpretation does not support understanding, and misunderstanding is inevitable; as a result, sooner or later we come up against an impasse. The theory of misunderstanding is supported by experimental evidence obtained by Mosconi in his research on insight problem solving (Mosconi, 1990), and by Bagassi and Macchi on problem solving, decision making and probabilistic reasoning Macchi, 2006, 2016;Macchi and Bagassi, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2020Macchi, 1995Macchi, , 2000Mosconi and Macchi, 2001;Politzer and Macchi, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Creative Problem Solving as Overcoming a Misunderstanding

Bagassi

Macchi

2020

Front. Educ.

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Solving or attempting to solve problems is the typical and, hence, general function of thought. A theory of problem solving must first explain how the problem is constituted, and then how the solution happens, but also how it happens that it is not solved; it must explain the correct answer and with the same means the failure. The identification of the way in which the problem is formatted should help to understand how the solution of the problems happens, but even before that, the source of the difficulty. Sometimes the difficulty lies in the calculation, the number of operations to be performed, and the quantity of data to be processed and remembered. There are, however, other problems – the insight problems – in which the difficulty does not lie so much in the complexity of the calculations, but in one or more critical points that are susceptible to misinterpretation, incompatible with the solution. In our view, the way of thinking involved in insight problem solving is very close to the process involved in the understanding of an utterance, when a misunderstanding occurs. In this case, a more appropriate meaning has to be selected to resolve the misunderstanding (the “impasse”), the default interpretation (the “fixation”) has to be dropped in order to “restructure.” to grasp another meaning which appears more relevant to the context and the speaker’s intention (the “aim of the task”). In this article we support our view with experimental evidence, focusing on how a misunderstanding is formed. We have studied a paradigmatic insight problem, an apparent trivial arithmetical task, the Ties problem. We also reviewed other classical insight problems, reconsidering in particular one of the most intriguing one, which at first sight appears impossible to solve, the Study Window problem. By identifying the problem knots that alter the aim of the task, the reformulation technique has made it possible to eliminate misunderstanding, without changing the mathematical nature of the problem. With the experimental versions of the problems exposed we have obtained a significant increase in correct answers. Studying how an insight problem is formed, and not just how it is solved, may well become an important topic in education. We focus on undergraduate students’ strategies and their errors while solving problems, and the specific cognitive processes involved in misunderstanding, which are crucial to better exploit what could be beneficial to reach the solution and to teach how to improve the ability to solve problems.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Creative Problem Solving as Overcoming a Misunderstanding

Bagassi

Macchi

2020

Front. Educ.

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“…We have explored the effect of such re-formulation in the Study Window problem and in two other classical insight problems: The Square and the Parallelogram and the Pigs in a Pen (Macchi & Bagassi, 2012). According to our hypothesis, the difficulty of these problems is never objective, computational, but subjective, interpretative.…”

Section: Insight and Interpretative Heuristic 159mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, on the one hand the solution process cannot be attributed exclusively to reflective, conscious thinking, since it results mainly from a covert and unconscious mind-wandering process (Baird et al, 2012;Macchi & Bagassi, 2012;Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). It implies an almost unaware restructuring process, preceded by a period of incubation which may vary in length, depending on the degree of gravity of the state of impasse 2 (Gilhooly, Georgiou, & Devery, 2013;Segal, 2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

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When analytic thought is challenged by amisunderstanding

Macchi

Bagassi

2014

Thinking & Reasoning

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“…There are many examples in the psychological literature that answers given, considered to be incorrect by the experimenter, by adult participants are actually the result of the participants' misunderstanding of the intentions of the experimenter. The utterances used and the context of the experimental task trigger implicatures in the participants that can induce answers that are different from those expected by the experimenter (see Dulany and Hilton, 1991;Sperber et al, 1995;Baratgin and Noveck, 2000;Macchi, 2000;Politzer and Macchi, 2000;Baratgin, 2002Baratgin, , 2009Bagassi and Macchi, 2006;Baratgin and Politzer, 2006, 2007, 2010Macchi and Bagassi, 2012;Macchi et al, 2019Macchi et al, , 2020. Many developmental studies also give pieces of evidence for the ability of children, given their age, to recognize the intentions of the communicator (see Braine and Shanks, 1965a,b;McGarrigle and Donaldson, 1974;Rose and Blank, 1974;Markman and Wachtel, 1988;Politzer, 1993Politzer, , 2004Politzer, , 2016Gelman and Bloom, 2000;Diesendruck and Markson, 2001;Bagassi et al, 2020, for examples).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!

et al. 2020

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The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter.

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Intuitive and analytical processes in insight problem solving: a psycho-rhetorical approach to the study of reasoning

Cited by 30 publications

References 22 publications

Creative Problem Solving as Overcoming a Misunderstanding

Creative Problem Solving as Overcoming a Misunderstanding

When analytic thought is challenged by amisunderstanding

Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!

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