Problem Solving

Problem solving forms part of thinking. It occurs if an organism or an artificial intelligence system does not know how to proceed from a given state to a desired goal state. It is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping.

Overview

The nature of human problem solving has been studied by psychologists over the past hundred years. Beginning with the early experimental work of the Gestaltists in Germany (e.g. Duncker, 1935), and continuing through the 1960s and early 1970s, research on problem solving typically conducted relatively simple, laboratory tasks (e.g. Duncker's "X-ray" problem; Ewert & Lambert's 1932 "disk" problem, later known as Tower of Hanoi) that appeared novel to participants (e.g. Mayer, 1992). Various reasons account for the choice of simple novel tasks: they had clearly defined optimal solutions, they were solvable within a relatively short time frame, researchers could trace participants' problem-solving steps, and so on. The researchers made the underlying assumption, of course, that simple tasks such as the Tower of Hanoi captured the main properties of "real world" problems, and that the cognitive processes underlying participants' attempts to solve simple problems were representative of the processes engaged in when solving "real world" problems. Thus researchers used simple problems for reasons of convenience, and thought generalizations to more complex problems would become possible. Perhaps the best-known and most impressive example of this line of research remains the work by Newell and Simon (1972).

History

However, beginning in the 1970s, researchers became increasingly convinced that empirical findings and theoretical concepts derived from simple laboratory tasks did not necessarily generalize to more complex, real-life problems. Even worse, it appeared that the processes underlying creative problem solving in different domains differed from each other (Sternberg, 1995). These realizations have led to rather different responses in North America and in Europe.

USA

In North America, initiated by the work of Herbert Simon on learning by doing in semantically rich domains (e.g. Anzai & Simon, 1979; Bhaskar & Simon, 1977), researchers began to investigate problem solving separately in different natural knowledge domains - such as physics, writing, or chess playing - thus relinquishing their attempts to extract a global theory of problem solving (e.g. Sternberg & Frensch, 1991). Instead, these researchers have frequently focused on the development of problem solving within a certain domain, that is on the development of expertise (e.g. Anderson, Boyle & Reiser, 1985; Chase & Simon, 1973; Chi, Feltovich & Glaser, 1981).

Areas that have attracted rather intensive attention in North America include such diverse fields as:

1. Reading (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1991)
2. Writing (Bryson, Bereiter, Scardamalia & Joram, 1991)
3. Calculation (Sokol & McCloskey, 1991)
4. Political decision making (Voss, Wolfe, Lawrence & Engle, 1991)
5. Managerial problem solving (Wagner, 1991)
6. Lawyers' reasoning (Amsel, Langer & Loutzenhiser, 1991)
7. Mechanical problem solving (Hegarty, 1991)
8. Problem solving in electronics (Lesgold & Lajoie, 1991)
9. Computer skills (Kay, 1991)
10. Game playing (Frensch & Sternberg, 1991)
11. Personal problem solving (Heppner & Krauskopf, 1987)

Europe

In Europe, two main approaches have surfaced, one initiated by Donald Broadbent (1977; see Berry & Broadbent, 1995) in the United Kingdom and the other one by Dietrich Dörner (1975, 1985; see Dörner & Wearing, 1995) in Germany. The two approaches have in common an emphasis on relatively complex, semantically rich, computerized laboratory tasks, constructed to resemble real-life problems. The approaches differ somewhat in their theoretical goals and methodology, however. The tradition initiated by Broadbent emphasizes the distinction between cognitive problem-solving processes that operate under awareness versus outside of awareness, and typically employs mathematically well-defined computerized systems. The tradition initiated by Dörner, on the other hand, has an interest in the interplay of the cognitive, motivational, and social components of problem solving, and utilizes very complex computerized scenarios that contain up to 2,000 highly interconnected variables (e.g., Dörner, Kreuzig, Reither & Stäudel's 1983 LOHHAUSEN project; Ringelband, Misiak & Kluwe, 1990). Buchner (1995) describes the two traditions in detail.

To sum up, researchers' realization that problem-solving processes differ across knowledge domains and across levels of expertise (e.g. Sternberg, 1995) and that, consequently, findings obtained in the laboratory cannot necessarily generalize to problem-solving situations outside the laboratory, has during the past two decades led to an emphasis on real-world problem solving. This emphasis has been expressed quite differently in North America and Europe, however. Whereas North American research has typically concentrated on studying problem solving in separate, natural knowledge domains, much of the European research has focused on novel, complex problems, and has been performed with computerized scenarios (see Funke, 1991, for an overview).