No description available.

No description available.

Object play is widely considered a primary medium through which children develop cognitive skills. In an attempt to examine the relative importance of different types of play experience and selected play components on children's subsequent approach to problem solving, 31 four-year-olds (19 boys, 12 girls) were matched on sex and PPVT-R raw score, and were then assigned to one of the three treatment groups. Seven triplets (5 male, 2 female) and five pairs (2 male, 3 female) of children were formed. Children in each group were exposed to a different type of experience relative to task-relevant materials (active play, passive observation of play, and no involvement) and subsequently given a lure-retrieval task. The solution to this task involved the joining of the two longest sticks with a block to produce a tool to retrieve a lure. Subjects were compared on their problem-solving performance as measured by solution time and specific object play components obtained in Cheyne and Rubin's (1983) study were replicated in this study. Examination of additional components in play indicated that problem solution was enhanced not only by frequent use of long double-stick construction, but also by double-stick constructions with any stick length. Problem-solving performance of the three groups of children were not significantly different. However, a Treatment x Sex interaction was noted among children in the active and passive groups; passive girls spent more time and tended to require more assistance to task solution than active girls, active boys, and passive boys. Factors which may have contributed to this finding are discussed.

This experiment was designed to compare the before and after ratings of solutions generated by individuals using two problem solving scaffolds, brainstorming and the hierarchical technique. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions which varied by type of scaffold (procedures to guide thinking), type of tool used to assist solution generation (random word list or thesaurus), and type of technology utilized (computer versus paper and pencil). Using a personal problem, participants generated solutions on paper until they could no longer add to their list. Then participants were taught to use a scaffold, either brainstorming or the hierarchical technique , and allowed to continue generating solutions either on paper or on a computer with one of two tools to stimulate ideas, a random word list or a thesaurus.Results indicated that participants trained on brainstorming generated solutions that were more original than participants trained on the hierarchical technique. The mean number of solutions generated was highest when participants used the computer recording tool paired with a thesaurus. Finally, participants rated solutions higher on practicality when they used a random word list instead of a thesaurus. / Department of Psychological Science

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The purpose of this experiment was to explore the relationship between the "Big Five" personality dimensions, training and problem-solving effectiveness. The second purpose of this study was to explore the effects of training upon the quantity and self-reported quality of solutions generated to ill-structured problems. Subjects generated solutions to a problem and then were trained in either brainstorming or the hierarchical method. Then they were asked to generate additional solutions and rate their solutions. Subjects returned after a month and completed the NEO-FFI and then generated solutions to a different problem. Subjects in the hierarchical condition produced more solutions than those using brainstorming. Subjects in the hierarchical condition also rated their solutions higher on a subjective quality measure. Unexpectedly, the extroversion /introversion personality dimension was not related to overall quantity or quality. There were several personality-training interactions on the quantity and quality measures. / Department of Psychological Science

The present research focused on the transfer of information from a learning situation to a problem solving task. In particular, the effect of relational processing upon the transfer of information to the solution of insight problems was considered.The design of the study was a five by two factorial design. Within this design the independent variables were five levels of relational processing, ranging from full relational processing (essay) to individual item processing (deleted letter list) and two levels of instruction, informed and uninformed. The dependent measure was the number of insight problems correctly solved. The problems consisted of ten statements which did not make sense unless one part of the sentence was modified. The subject's task was to supply the necessary information needed to make sense of the sentence.The results showed no effect for type of instruction and there was no interaction between the type of instruction and level of relational processing. There was a significant effect due to level of relational processing. More specifically, the essay condition lead to the greatest amount and individually processed items lead to the lowest amount of information transfer. Further, it was suggested that the relationship between relational processing and the transfer of information was linear. These findings were interpreted as indicating that relational processing was a significant factor in explaining the transfer of information. / Department of Educational Psychology

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.