Page 309 - Understanding Psychology

Thinking and Problem Solving
s Main Idea
Thinking involves changing and reor- ganizing the information stored in memory to create new or transformed information, such as creative problem- solving strategies.
s Vocabulary
• thinking
• image
• symbol
• concept
• prototype
• rule
• metacognition
• algorithm
• heuristic
• mental set
• functional fixedness
• creativity
• flexibility
• recombination
• insight
s Objectives
• Identify the units of thought and the
kinds of thinking.
• Explain strategies for and obstacles to
problem solving.
Going beyond memory, how do we think? How do we solve prob- lems? How do we create ideas? How did Copernicus come up with his idea? If storage and retrieval were the only processes we used to handle information, human beings would be little more than glorified cameras and VCRs. Yet we are capable of doing things with information that make the most complex computers seem simple by comparison. These processes—thinking and problem solving—are most impressive when they show originality or creativity.
Reader’s Guide
Exploring Psychology
A Radical Assumption
Historians often refer to “the Copernican revolution” as a milestone in the history of science. Copernicus was a careful and creative scientist who eventu- ally solved a problem that others before him had failed to solve: how to account for the movement of the planets in the heavens. . . . Copernicus finally created a theory that nicely predicted the move- ments of the planets. To do so, however, he had to make a radical assumption. Prior to Copernicus, everyone had taken it for granted that the sun and the other planets revolve around the Earth, and indeed, it looks that way to the naked eye. Copernicus argued that, if one made this assumption, it would be impossible to pre- dict with accuracy the movement of the planets. His theory began with an alternate assumption, namely, that the Earth and the other planets in our solar system revolve around the sun.
—from The Ideal Problem Solver by John D. Bransford and Barry S. Stein, 1984
Chapter 11 / Thinking and Language 295