Psy 416: Reasoning and Problem Solving

1.  Gestalt psychology defines itself to be in almost every way opposite to associationist psychology, the dominant scientific approach of the time.

1. Gestalt's primary areas of study are perception and thinking rather than memory and learning.
2. Gestalt's analyses start with whole situations rather than with the elements. Gestalt psychologists argue that one interprets the elements in terms of the situation within which they are found.
3. For Gestalt Psychology the locus of elements within a structure is of paramount importance.
4. Form, wholes and structure are terms that underlie the basic concepts of Gestalt Psychology. These are words that have been used to try to define Gestalt.

2.  Gestalt Psychologists:

emphasized demonstrations and creative solutions to problems, rather than performance improvement

looked for new relations among parts, or between parts and wholes, not input/output connections

claimed that transfer is based on identifying similar structures, not identical connections.

had a primary goal of understanding. There is a search for meaningful (simple, straight-forward) structural fits of the components to one another and the whole.

were critical of blind habitual responses (rote learning), or "stupid" application of rules (should understand why they work)

thought a problem solver needs to "see" the problem as a whole

believed insight and restructuring important to real problem solving

felt the role of past experience is problematic

3.  Some problems Gestalt Psychologists have discussed:

1. The nine dots problem: Connect nine dots arranged in a 3 X 3 square with four straight lines without lifting your pencil or retracing your step.
2. The mutilated checkerboard problem: How many dominoes (rectangles that can cover exactly two adjacent squares of a checkerboard are needed to cover all of the remaining squares of a checkerboard that has two diagonal squares removed?
3. Add a sequence of numbers, e.g.,  1+2+3+4+…+99+100.
4. Finding the area of a parallelogram and similar figures.
5. The radiation problem
6. Functional fixity problems
7. Water jug problems

4.  Although Gestalt Psychology is often identified as being an informal theory, that does not mean that the Gestaltists did not think clearly. Wertheimer, the founder of Gestalt Psychology stated in his book, Productive Thinking, "However one may view classical logic, it had and has great merits:

• in the decisiveness of its will to truth;
• in the concentration on the basic difference between a mere assertion, a belief, and an exact judgment;
• in its emphasis on the difference between hazy concepts, hazy generalizations, and exact formulations;
• in the development of a host of formal criteria which are suited for testing for, and discovering mistakes, haziness in thinking, such as unjustified generalization, jumping at conclusions;
• in its emphasis on proof;
• in the seriousness of the rules of discussion;
• in the insistence on stringency and rigor in each individual step in thinking."

5.   The crucial issue in each of these problems, from the Gestalt perspective, is understanding the relations between the components of the problems, and between the components and the whole. Often, this understanding requires seeing a problem in a new light. This generally requires reorganization. When such a reorganization occurs relatively suddenly, the process is called insight.
6.   Gestalt psychologists try to find meaningful, insightful, and coherent comprehension of problems, rather than blind,  "stupid," rigid, application of memorized procedures in order to solve problems.
7.   They looked for structural relations in both how components relate to one another and how components relate to the whole.
8.   They tended to study "insight" problems in thinking, and figure-ground reversals, and other holistic, meaningful perceptions.
9.  Problems usually require a "reorganization" to solve, or seeing the structural relations in something.

Two (more or less) Gestalt views of Stages in Problem solving