Study On The Mechanism Of Insight Problem Resolving

Different psychologists had different opinions about the cognitive mechanism of insight problem resolving so that these ideas are divisive and tanglesome, such as the representational change theory (Simon&Kaplan,1990) and the progress monitoring theory (Ormerod&Chronicle,1999)that were used to explain insight in problem solving were opposite. On the basis of past studies and views, we thought that there were three cognitive phase in the process of resolving insight problem and put forward a hypothesis about activation of prototype and quality of heuristic information. We selected the nine-dot problem as the materials in order to test our opinions and reveal the essence of insight.This research consisted of two experiments. Experiment 1 studied the cognitive process of solving the nine-dot problem by providing different cues so as to investigate the cognitive mechanism of insight. Experiment 2 firstly let subjects learn to several line-dot problem include three base-problem and two disturbed problem, then required them to resolve the nine-dot problem in order to test whether subjects activated the cognitive schemas or prototype and different heuristic information had different effects on resolving the problem. The two studies employed tongue report way in the end. The results were as follows:1. The representational change theory can explain the cognitive mechanism of the nine-dot problem better than the progress monitoring theory. Subjects can find the correct method to solve the problem very soon once they can enter from the wrong problem spaceto meta-level problem space and form right representation of the problem. Although subjects used progress monitoring strategy in the process of resolving it, they can't resolve it if they can't change the representation of the problem. These indicated that there were three cognitive phase in the process of resolving insight problem, inclduding wrong space, meta-level space and right space.2. The learning phase facilitated subjects to resolve the nine-dot problem and increase the ratio of people that resolved it correctly. In addition we found that subjects can activate correlative base-problem and acquire important heuristic information were the main reasons of these effects.3. There were distinct difference between the ability of activation of base-problem and acquisition of key heuristic information. As to the nine-dot problem, subjuects must realize they should extend lines beyond dots past experience with dot problems unhelpful.