Preface

This book started off as an update to my Problem Solving book published in 2001 (Robertson, 2001). The first edition was written in 2000 about the time when much research on the topic seemed in retrospect to be petering out. At least, that is the impression one gets when looking at the reference list at the end of some overviews of the topic, such as Bassok and Novick (2012) or Pizlo (2010): “there is no indication that the volume of research on human problem solving is increasing. The number of published reports is substantially smaller than in other areas of cognition, such as perception or learning and memory” (Pizlo, 2010, p. 52). Funke (2013), however, produced a long list of articles published in 2012 on various topics in problem solving to show that the field was alive and well, although Pizlo (2013) did point out that the number was still a small proportion of publications compared to other areas of cognition. Having read that, I assumed there would perhaps not be a great deal to add to the previous edition of this book.

However, rather than a fairly minor update, it turned into a fairly major rewrite. There are several sections that have survived from the first edition, but I have added new chapters covering a broader range of material. In Chapter 1 I have put the study of problem solving into its broad and multifarious historical contexts. Thus there is an account of various, often mutually contradictory, approaches to the subject. Sometimes these can be seen as differences in the levels of explanation used. This is perhaps most obvious when we consider explanations of behaviour based on the social contexts in which behaviour takes place compared with the neuroanatomical correlates of aspects of problem solving. Behaviourists might describe the kinds of responses (effects) given certain stimuli (causes). Information processing psychologists might then look at what goes on between the stimuli and the response – an internal cause-and-effect chain rather than an external one, and so on.

The previous book had four chapters dedicated to different aspects of transfer of learning. In this edition these have been condensed into two. There is more on instructional design including some of the debates around pedagogical practice. The chapter on insight has been updated and a new chapter included covering creative problem solving. Chapters on the development of skill and expertise remain and a new chapter on the neuroscience of problem solving is included.

There are Activities to give you the opportunity to think about particular kinds of problems before looking at what psychology has to say about them. It is, after all, the role of a teaching text to teach and, in the absence of a human teacher, the text itself must do what it can to help the student learn. There are also Information Boxes which provide a more detailed look at some of the topics covered. These can be skipped without interrupting the flow of the text around them and gone back to later, or whenever you like, really.

The word “problem” can sometimes appear value laden when someone is described as seeing a problem as a challenge. A challenge, as used in this context, implies a positive way of thinking about a problem and “problem” sounds negative. However, the word as used here is value neutral. We encounter problems of all kinds all the time every day. It could be a decision about what to watch on TV or it could be the problem of what to write next. Such situations are neither positive nor negative.

Who is the book aimed at?

As with the first edition, this version is aimed mainly (but not exclusively) at undergraduate psychology students studying cognitive science, problem solving and thinking, educational psychology and the biological bases of behaviour. There is also something for students of artificial intelligence and computer modelling. Given the nature of the book and the topics it covers, there is much that would be of interest to businesses, educationalists and classroom teachers.

What’s in it?

One theme throughout the book is the question of what kinds of things make it difficult to solve problems. Another is that problem solving and thinking in general involve processing the information given – that is, we are strongly influenced by the way information is presented and by those aspects of a problem or situation that appear to be salient. Problems can be hard because of the constraints that exist in the environment or that we impose on ourselves wittingly or otherwise. They can be hard if we lack relevant knowledge of what we can do in a given situation or because the problem can have multiple possible solutions. They can be hard because of the way we mentally represent the problem in the first place. Another way of thinking about it could perhaps make it easier or produce an insight of some kind. We might realise that one of the constraints we had imposed on ourselves doesn’t really exist, and so on. Or we might realise that we have encountered that kind of problem before under a different guise.

The outcome of all this hard work and the mistakes we might make along the way is the development of skill, knowledge and eventual expertise. We might be helped to avoid mistakes and helped to represent problems more effectively if we were taught well, and this requires a good understanding of how students learn and think. I hope this book helps in the endeavour.

S. Ian Robertson

Milton Keynes

25 April 2016