Problem solving occurs when an organism has a goal but the path to achieving it is not immediately obvious. It encompasses a vast range of cognitive activities, from solving a jigsaw puzzle to diagnosing a disease to resolving a diplomatic crisis. Research has identified both general strategies that apply across domains and domain-specific knowledge structures that enable expert problem solving.
Key Structures
- Prefrontal cortex (dorsolateral) — The anterior portion of the frontal lobe, critical for executive functions including planning, decision-making, working memory, and cognitive control.
- Anterior cingulate cortex — A medial frontal region involved in conflict monitoring, error detection, and the allocation of cognitive control.
- Parietal cortex — The cortical region between frontal and occipital lobes, integrating sensory information for spatial representation and attention.
- Basal ganglia — A group of subcortical nuclei involved in action selection, procedural learning, habit formation, and reward-based decision making.
- Mental Set — The tendency to persist with a previously successful problem-solving strategy even when a simpler or more effective approach is available.
- Expertise — The superior performance exhibited by individuals with extensive experience in a domain, characterized by rich knowledge structures, automatized skills, and qualitatively different problem representat.
- Functional Fixedness — A cognitive bias that limits a person to seeing an object only in terms of its traditional use, preventing creative problem solving.
- Heuristics — Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that simplify complex judgments and decisions, enabling fast and often adequate solutions at the cost of systematic errors and biases.
Key Functions
Identify, analyze, and overcome obstacles to achieve goals using strategies such as algorithms, heuristics, analogy, means-end analysis, and insight.
Problem Space Theory
Newell and Simon's (1972) problem space theory, the foundational framework for problem-solving research, proposes that problem solving involves searching through a problem space — the set of all possible states from the initial state to the goal state. Operators are actions that transform one state into another. The solver navigates the problem space using strategies (heuristics) that reduce the search, since exhaustive search is impractical for all but the simplest problems.
Barriers to Problem Solving
Several cognitive barriers impede problem solving. Mental set — the tendency to apply familiar strategies even when they are suboptimal — was demonstrated by Luchins' water jug experiments. Functional fixedness — the inability to see objects as serving functions other than their typical use — was demonstrated by Duncker's candle problem. Both reflect the costs of well-learned knowledge: expertise can paradoxically create inflexibility when novel approaches are required.
Chi et al. (1981) showed that physics experts and novices categorize problems differently. Novices sort by surface features (inclined plane problems, pulley problems), while experts sort by deep structural features (conservation of energy problems, Newton's second law problems). This deep structural representation allows experts to rapidly identify the appropriate solution schema, bypassing the laborious search through problem space that novices must perform.
Disorders
- Executive dysfunction (frontal damage) — Impairment in the higher-order cognitive processes that control and regulate other cognitive abilities and behavior, particularly in relation to frontal damage.
- Impaired in schizophrenia
- Reduced problem-solving in depression