Despite what is known about predictors of suicide risk and consequences of insomnia, research has yet to delineate mechanisms that may explain the known relationship between insomnia symptoms and suicide risk. There is some disagreement in the literature regarding whether this relationship could be primarily explained by recent depressive symptoms, or whether there may be other explanatory factors related to sleep deficits. The present study addressed this contention in the literature by examining 1) whether socio-cognitive variables (e.g. fatigue, appraised social problem-solving ability, and hopelessness) explained this insomnia-ideation relationship, and 2) whether these variables contributed some explanatory variance in suicide ideation above and beyond that explained by depressive symptoms. Approximately 483 female participants completed an online study survey. Cross-sectional path analyses were conducted in order to examine the initial hypothesized path, as well as whether the path persisted when depression was integrated in the model. Results suggest that the hypothesized socio-cognitive factors related to sleep deficits partially mediate the established insomnia-suicide ideation relationship. And, further, that the socio-cognitive pathway from sleep loss to suicide ideation persists even when accounting for recent depressive symptoms, such that both pathways separately explain some degree of this relationship. These findings have meaningful implications for understanding mechanisms by which insomnia symptoms may confer heightened risk for considering suicide.

Understanding how humans cope with complexity is perhaps one of the most important targets of scientific research. Humans not only excel at solving complex tasks in their day to day life but also take on objectively difficult problems recreationally. Research, which has focused to date on the famous hard optimization problem the Euclidean Traveling Salesperson problem (E-TSP), has indicated that humans are able to find near optimal solutions in linear time to hard optimization problems despite the objective difficulty of the task. The research presented in this work contributes to this research by comparing human performance on the search and optimization versions of two other visually presented computationally hard problems: Vertex Cover and Independent Set. These two problems were selected in part to explore how human performance might differ on not-Euclidean problems. Performance on the optimization version of the problems used in this study is in keeping the previously reported results; however, performance on the search version is even better suggesting that previous problem solving research might have underestimated the power of the human problem solving system. A key result of this work is that differences in performance between the optimization and search versions of these hard problems can be attributed to differences in how problem solvers encode the goal of the task. Consequentially, subjects in these conditions tasked with identical instances of two very nearly identical versions of a problem are in fact solving very different problems. This work presents a framework to improve how human performance results on hard optimization problems are interpreted. It also demonstrates how the search version of hard computational problems can be used to investigate how people cope with complexity free of the confounding aspect of an ill-defined goal. / Graduate

M.A. (Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The aim of this study is to identify a teaching strategy which can enable Further Education and Training learners to enquire creative problem solving skills. A programme was formulated to this effect. Four sessions were conducted to the subject of study using facilitation as teaching method. Facilitation engages learners actively in learning activities when compared to traditional and old teaching methods. Participants were engaged in different activities which enable the participants to use creative problem solving skills. At the beginning of the programme, the participants were not as active as towards the end. Based on the creativity that the participants displayed towards the end of the programme, the researcher concludes that the participants were able to acquire creative problem solving skills. / Dissertation (MEd (Guidance and Counselling))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

Molecular biologists use algorithms that compare and otherwise analyze sequences that represent genetic and protein molecules. Most of these algorithms, however, operate on the basic sequence and do not incorporate the additional information that is often known about the molecule and its pieces. This research describes schemes to combinatorially annotate this information onto sequences so that it can be analyzed in tandem with the sequence; the overall result would thus reflect both types of information about the sequence. These annotation schemes include adding colours and arcs to the sequence. Colouring a sequence would produce a same-length sequence of colours or other symbols that highlight or label parts of the sequence. Arcs can be used to link sequence symbols (or coloured substrings) to indicate molecular bonds or other relationships. Adding these annotations to sequence analysis problems such as sequence alignment or finding the longest common subsequence can make the problem more complex, often depending on the complexity of the annotation scheme. This research examines the different annotation schemes and the corresponding problems of verifying annotations, creating annotations, and finding the longest common subsequence of pairs of sequences with annotations. This work involves both the conventional complexity framework and parameterized complexity, and includes algorithms and hardness results for both frameworks. Automata and transducers are created for some annotation verification and creation problems. Different restrictions on layered substring and arc annotation are considered to determine what properties an annotation scheme must have to make its incorporation feasible. Extensions to the algorithms that use weighting schemes are explored. schemes are explored. / Graduate

This research adopts a sociocultural framework (Vygotsky, 1978) to investigate how multilingual children express their mathematical reasoning during collaborative problem solving. The topic is important because North America is becoming increasingly multicultural, and according to mathematics teachers this has complicated the challenges of teaching and learning mathematics. Many educators assume that children should be competent in the language of instruction before they engage with mathematical content (Civil, 2008; Gorgorió & Planas, 2001). A review of recent research in this area challenges the idea that multilingual students need to have mastered the official language of instruction prior to learning mathematics (Barwell, 2005; Civil, 2008; Moschkovich, 2007). These researchers demonstrate that the knowledge of the language of instruction is only one aspect of becoming competent in mathematics. My research was designed to build on the findings of the current research on multilingual children’s reasoning in order to more fully understand how multilingual children express their mathematical understanding and reasoning. For this study, two multilingual families, each with 3 children between the ages of 8 and 12, participated in a mathematical problem-solving activity. Findings show the children’s mathematical reasoning was evidence-based drawing on mathematical knowledge and world knowledge.

M.Comm. / The objectives of the study are: To define "creativity", to understand how people think when they solve problems, and to identify the major barriers to creative problem solving and opportunity finding and to investigate whether these barriers can be overcome. To investigate the essence of TRIZ, its history of development, how it works, its nderlying inventive principles, its psychology and whether it is an effective problem solving technique in the sense that it is a cure for barriers to creative thinking. To investigate whether TRIZ can be applied in a non-technical context as a creative problem solving technique, whether it can be applied in conjunction with other creative problem solving techniques and whether it is effective in relation to other creative problem solving techniques.

This study extended existing research on structured problem solving into disadvantaged South African classrooms. Sixteen disadvantaged urban South African high schools participated in a quasi-experimental study to investigate the effect of a structured problem solving strategy in physics on performance and conceptual understanding. The schools were disadvantaged with regard to standards set by the apartheid education system as well as by instruction in English, the second language of the students and most of the teachers. The problem solving strategy incorporated the use of different representations, group work, verbal arguments, written explanations, planning and interpretation of solutions. The strategy was implemented by a cascading model, where the researcher interacted with the teachers, while the teachers interacted with students. The treatment was non-disruptive of the normal school routine. The problem solving strategy was applied throughout the year while learning new content; there were no extra classes or additional work for learners. Normal classroom tests and examinations were utilized as sources of quantitative data. The treatment group outperformed the control group by 8 % in the midyear examination; this increased average score was statistically significant at the .001 level, indicating enhanced problem solving skills. Evidence of enhanced conceptual understanding was found by analyzing solutions presented in the midyear examination, videotaped problem solving and responses to questionnaires. Two new techniques were developed to assess conceptual understanding. Firstly, “solutions maps” were constructed for specific examination problems. These maps were visual representations of concepts, formulae, assumptions, substitutions and numerical answers presented by students. The popularity of various routes on the maps was compared for the two groups as a measure of differences in conceptual understanding. Secondly, a “conceptual index” was defined to quantify the extent to which a group of students used a conceptual approach in their solutions, as opposed to an algebraic approach. Learners and teachers regarded the structured problem solving strategy as a viable practice, they believed the students’ problem-solving skills were improved and they commented on the value of the strategy as a facilitator of understanding the language and concepts of physics. Teachers also believed that their own problem solving skills improved. Greeno’s model for scientific problem solving and reasoning was incorporated to explain the effect of structured problem solving on performance and conceptual understanding. Two complementary theories were offered to explain the results of the study. It was proposed that implementing the strategy fostered (1) the co-development of conceptual understanding and problem solving skills, and (2) the development of a conceptual approach to problem solving. Implementation of structured problem solving is a small intervention aimed at developing new habits of problem solving. In the South African context, it can make a significant contribution towards the enhancement of learning and teaching physics in disadvantaged schools. / Thesis (PhD (Science Education))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Physics / unrestricted

The data for this study was collected by the use of the Manifest Needs Questionnaire, Jackson's Personality Research Form, and the Thomas-Kilmann MODE Instrument to assess dominance at the individual and group levels.

Fun problem solving! Participants will leave with ideas to help students become engaged in the art of solving problems using 3-act tasks and open middle.