1. Joe, wearing a mask and carrying an empty sack, leaves his house. He returns an hour later with a full sack. He goes into a room and turns out the light. Joe is a kid who goes trick-or-treating for Halloween, returns, and goes to sleep.

2. A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leave the building. In the evening, he gets into the elevator, and, if there is someone else in the elevator – or if it was raining that day – he goes back to his floor directly. Otherwise, he goes to the tenth floor and walks up two flights of stairs to his apartment. The man is a dwarf. He can't reach the upper elevator buttons, but he can ask people to push them for him. He can also push them with his umbrella.

3. Thinking and Problem Solving Chapter 3

4. Units of Thought Image  Mental representation of a specific event or object  Ex: Dog Symbol  Sound or design that represents an object  Ex: Biohazard Concept  Symbol used as a label for objects of events  Ex: Animals Rule  Statement of a relationship between objects  Ex: What goes up, must come down

5. Kinds of Thinking Directed Thinking  Convergent thinking  Systematic and logical attempt  Solution of a problem  Depends on symbols, concepts, and rules  Ex: Sherlock Holmes Nondirected Thinking  Divergent thinking  Free flow of thoughts  No particular goal or plan  Full of day dreams, fantasies, and reveries  Ex: Ideas you get in the shower

6. Metacognition  Thinking about thinking  Reevaluating strategies to develop new ones  Knowing that mnemonic device work  Ex: After a test, thinking about why you got the grade that you did to make a plan for the next test

7. Problem Solving Strategies  Depends on use of specific methods for approaching problems  Breaking down complex problems  Ex: prioritizing tasks  Working backwards from a goal you have  Ex: writing a mystery novel  Examine various ways to reach a goal  Ex: Planning a trip

8. Problem Solving Sets  Useful strategies become cemented into problem-solving process  Particular strategy becomes a habit  “Set” to treat problems in a certain way Rigidity  Set involves with problem solving  Functional fixedness: inability to imagine new functions  Wrong assumptions  Less likely to occur with unusual problems

9. Creativity  Ability to use information in a way that is new, original, and meaningful  All problem solving requires creativity  Unable to explain why some people are more creative than others

10. Flexibility  Ability to overcome rigidity  Numerous tests to attempt to quantify flexibility  Inflexible, rigid thinking leads to unoriginal solutions.

11. Recombination  Elements of the problem are familiar  Solution is not  Recombination: new mental arrangement of the elements  Ex: football plays are recombinations of old moves

12. Insight  Sudden emergence of a solution by recombination  Task/problem is abandoned  Person absorbed in some other activity, answer appears out of no where