| Problem solving is a hot topic of current psychology. People's problem solving ability is the important expression of thinking ability and covers many advanced cognitive activities and skills. The Tower of London is a classical experiment of problem solving. People of different age and different level of executive function will have different performance on the ToL task. Furthermore, the problem structure of the ToL task will also affect people's performance.In this study, problem solving ability, working memory and inhibition control ability are assessed in a sample of 129 participants, including primary school children, middle-school students, undergraduates, and middle-aged people. Problem solving ability is assessed by the ToL task of 2-5 disks with different problem structures, working memory is assessed by Corsi Block task and inhibition control ability is assessed by go/no-go task. The results are as follows:1. Participants'performances show significant age effects on the ToL problem solving task, working memory task, and inhibition control task. The working memory and inhibition abilities are both developed through primary school and have well developed since adolescence. People's problem solving ability is improving from primary school to middle age.2. Participants have showed different performance in four different problem structure ToL tasks. They have better performance in the ToL task without sub-goal than the ToL task with sub-goal, and also they do better in the ToL task of unambiguous hierarchy than ambiguous hierarchy. Generally, in the tasks which are of ambiguous hierarchy and have sub-goal, participants will make more moves to solve the problem and take more time to complete the task.3. To assess the relationships between problem solving ability and executive function, we can see that people's working memory ability can predict their performance in the ToL task, but inhibition control ability don't show significant predictation effects.
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