Hot answers tagged problem-solving
61
It sounds like you're talking about a classic example of Incubation.
Incubation is defined as a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time.
Here's a great article by John F. Kihlstrom: Intuition, Incubation, and Insight: ...
14
Sounds like a form of Synesthesia, in particular it sounds like Number Form Synesthesia mixed with Grapheme-color Synesthesia:
A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in "The ...
13
Check out the book The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg. Originally published in 1971 it was recently produced in a Silver Anniversary version. I own an original copy and read it again about every five years. Weinberg and Glenford Myers both wrote amazing texts which will be useful forever.
In Weinberg, the situation you are ...
13
A large part is cultural, because, until recently, the people with the best education and most of the money have been men.
Sexism kept women out of schools for a long time. It also kept pushing women into what were perceived to be more appropriate studies (nothing technical) when they were allowed into schools.
Have a look at the sexism page at Wikipedia.
...
10
This is a big topic, which I don't feel I can do justice to, but here are a few thoughts nonetheless. It's also important to see how resort to biological arguments could help to perpetuate such gender differences.
Brain is not behaviour
Brain differences are irrelevant if they do not manifest in behaviour. Thus, to show that size of structure of the brain ...
7
I recently read a paper, which showed a mathematical model for performance scaling of research groups in different scientific branches. I'm aware you were originally asking for smaller "cognitive tasks" and project-like group-processes in the comments, but output and quality of publications/patents is probably anyway a better and more objective measure on a ...
7
It's a big topic. The relationship between group size and performance on a cognitive task is going to vary by several factors.
Here are a few thoughts:
The form of interdependence adopted by the group on the task will matter. When everyone can just work independently (e.g., taking calls in a call centre), then it makes sense that output would increase ...
5
What you are describing is a mental bottleneck (or that is the term coined by David Rock Anyway - I actually wrote about it (in the context of Dual N Back training in this blog post - to quote myself
A bottleneck happens when you can't solve a problem because you can't
remove a bad thought from your brain. A bad thought is something you
know ...
5
There is an unclear relationship between classical conceptions of a unitary view of mental workload to the modern constructs of cognitive psychology and neuroscience that are relevant to your question. This is partly because mental workload is tough to define, and also because it is far too coarse a construct given the extremely large variety of dynamic ...
5
There are two theoretical constructions that may be of use to you:
Scaffolding
"...what the child is able to do in collaboration today he will be able to do independently tomorrow" -Vygotsky
You are right to graduate the level of difficulty of problems the students encounter. Intuitively, a student has before her a level of task which, although ...
4
How one performs quick mental calculations through tricks and shortcuts can easily be looked up on the internet. How some Savant's do it cannot because we don't know. There is some argument that some do those same tricks but others seem not to do so.
Consider that a substantial amount of computational power goes into immediately recognizing that your ...
4
I have number Synesthesia, actually, and numbers do indeed appear as a specific pattern inside my head -- I have never not seen numbers this way, and have even drawn my number map for my own edification and to show people what I'm talking about when I try and explain my synaesthesia to them.
Numbers are not individual digits to me; they are one huge ...
4
This study found that REM sleep "enhances the integration of unassociated information for creative problem solving", and to an extent that surpasses the benefits of "quiet rest and non-REM sleep". try a google scholar search for 'psychology sleep incubation '.
Interestingly, the experiment that yielded the first discovery of a neurotransmitter was ...
4
One answer is through turning off these messages or "tasks" via mindful awareness and focused attention on another task requiring much less cognitive load - like breathing.
Look up Dr. Jeffery Schwartz's book "You Are Not Your Brain" for scientific data on this.
Basically, latest scientific research shows that we can use our mind to stop the brain (or ...
4
The phenomenon's called the incubation effect. Wikipedia operationally defines the incubation effect as any benefit of a break during problem solving. In Wallas’ (1926) four-stage model of innovative problem solving or creativity, the incubation stage is the stage in which one takes some time away from the problem (the stages are: preparation, incubation, ...
3
I believe that this excellent answer can shed some light on why you might be unable to figure out the problem. The answerer described it as mental exhaustion, mental fatigue or mental stress. This, though does not explain why you will suddenly see the solution, but I would guess that the tired part of the brain will continue working on the problem in some ...
2
I think "teaching of high-level strategies will allow students to use learned strategies across different domains" is the very rationale of mathematics. Math gives very good examples of both abstract strategies for solving problems across different domains and also specific, explicit strategies. You don't seem to want the abstract strategies, but if you ...
2
This is not intended an answer. I have a couple observations and I want actual formatting.
You say:
So, I've broken down larger problems into smaller problems. I've arranged these problems in the increasing level of difficulty. For the patterns to be remembered properly, I've increased no. of simple problems.
and then:
I'm ensuring that students ...
1
Found what I consider to be the best reference here
Hirsch, E. S. (1996). The block book (Third ed.). Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
It's certainly going in the thesis after glancing through it. Thought posting it here might helps others too.
1
This is all a fairly abstract discussion when it's independent of a particular task.
Insights are by definition those discoveries that you couldn't immediately make. Thus, they are often on the horizon of your understanding. So if you knew more to begin with, the solution may have been obvious. And ultimately solving the problem is typically the goal ...
1
First of all, I agree that socialization and culture are most certainly the main reasons why today most famous inventors are male.
If you are looking for sex differences that may explain further variance, studies have found that the variance in IQ (g) among males is greater than among females:
Some studies have identified the degree of IQ variance as a ...
1
The complexity of the environment certainly is an issue. According to AI - A modern approach, the environment may be
observable / partly observable
deterministic / stochastic / strategic
episodic / sequential
static / dynamic
discrete / continuous
single agent / multiple agent
See also WikiDoc for a short overview.
In my oppinion, these criteria apply ...
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