1. Chapter 6 Heuristics and Controlled Problem Solving
Chris Viola

2. Overview Motivation to control Bounded Rationality and Heuristics
(implicit level processing)
Controlled Problem Solving
(explicit level processing)

3. Motivation to Control Cost-Benefit Trade-offs Variance-Invariance
Speed vs. Accuracy
Variance-Invariance

4. Supporting Mechanisms
Motivation to
Control
Cognitive
Affective
Behavioral
Strategies to Achieve
Control
Conscious-
Psychological
Supporting Mechanisms
Physical
Modules
Biological
Social
Underlying Modular Systems

5. Implicit System Explicit System Unconscious Conscious Automatic
Controllable
Evolved early
Evolved late
Parallel Processing
Sequential Processing
Parallel processing results in high effortless processing capacity
Sequential processing is limited by attentional and working memory resources/capacities
Unrelated to general intelligence
Correlated with general intelligence

6. Fast, simple, low effort and implicit mechanisms.
Heuristics:
Fast, simple, low effort and implicit mechanisms.
Invariant Variant
Evolved Cognitive Mechanisms
Controlled Problem-Solving:
Slow, complex, effortful, and explicit/conscious mechanisms

7. Information patterns generated by faces and facial expressions
Bounded rationality
Bounded Rationality is a coupling of ecological and social information patterns that occurred regularly during the species’ evolutionary history and the complementary brain and cognitive systems that have evolved to direct the organism’s attention and processing of this information
Behavior-cognition-ecology link
Satisficing and Aspiration level
Bounded Rationality
Brain and cognitive systems that direct attention to and process facial information
Information patterns generated by faces and facial expressions
Behavior

8. Barnacle Geese

9. Heuristics
The combination of mechanisms that enable information to be identified and processed quickly to enable fast decision making. “rules of thumb”
Complex social dynamics
Reciprocal social exchanges
Evidence to support evolved mechanisms
Capuchin monkey “fair play”
College abstract reasoning task
Associated areas
Prefrontal cortex and amygdala link in cheater detection
Insula cortex vs. Anterior cingulate cortex and dorsalateral prefrontal cortex

10. Controlled Problem Solving
Knowledge lean domains
Operators-rules that define how one can switch states
Representation- Mental or physical form of the states (visual, spatial, linguistic)
Problem Space-combination of initial state, end state or goal, rules of operation, and representation
Knowledge rich domains
Crystallized general intelligence- Facts, procedures, schemata that is stored in long term memory.

11. Goal Definition
Assumptions
Constrain
Problem Space
Goal-Relevant
knowledge
Legal
Operators
Schemata
Problem
Representation
And
Transformation
Reasoning:
Analogy,
Induction, Deduction
General Problem-
Solving Strategies