Exam 11: Thinking and Problem Solving

When you walk away from a difficult problem and do something else for a while,then come back and solve the problem successfully,you have experienced the ______ effect.

Psychologists focus on well-defined problems because they ______.

You are attempting to find the home of a friend whom you have not visited in many years.When you arrive in her town,you remember to drive south on Main Street and turn left on Elm.Once on Elm,however,you become less certain.Driving farther,you reach the intersection of Elm and Sycamore.You remember this intersection,but you cannot remember whether you should turn here or go on a little farther.You temporarily assume that you should go on.However,about a block farther on,you reach a dead end.Retracing your route,you realize now that the correct option would have been to turn on Sycamore.You have used the technique of ______.

If you are using means-end analysis to try to solve a problem,you would be most likely to ______.

Give an example from your own life of a well-defined problem and an ill-defined problem.

______ thinking begins with a clear starting point and has a specific goal.

Means-ends analysis can guarantee a solution to any problem.

The General Problem Solver is a computer program that solves problems in crypt arithmetic and logic using ______.

Inference rules normally take the form of ______.

In research on mental search of a "problem space," a "path" is ______.

A(n)______ problem has a clear goal,a small set of starting information,and rules about how to attain the goal.

Contrary recognition is a form of ______ thinking.

Study of chess masters indicate that masters ______.

The string problem often generates ______ when participants do not think to use the screwdriver as a pendulum.

______ is a very important technique for solving the Towers of Hanoi problem.

In working a logic problem,you often need to make certain provisional assumptions,but sometimes they turn out to be wrong and need to be "unmade." The process of keeping track of assumptions so that you can back up to point of choice is called ______.

Mental set can cause people to make unwarranted assumptions about the "rules" for solving a particular problem.

When you adopt a certain framework or strategy for solving a series of problems such as the water jar problems,you may fail to see other,more efficient ways of solving some of the problems.This is referred to as ______.

Mental set ______.

The popular number game Sudoku involves using given information to make guesses about where certain numbers should fall within a large grid.As you begin to fill in numbers,you become more certain of which numbers can go in other cells.This demonstrates which problem-solving strategy?