--- title: R- Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving enableToc: false creation date: $=dv.current().file.ctime last modified date: $=dv.current().file.mtime author: year: reference: tags: - resource status: alias: "@knoblichConstraintRelaxationChunk1999" --- - #[[references]] - Title: Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving - Meta: - Authored by:: [[G. Knoblich]] [[S. Ohlsson]] [[H. Haider]] [[D. Rhenius]] - Year: [[1999]] - Publication: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition - URL: [Knoblich et al. (1999). Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition](undefined) - Content - Abstract - Insight problem solving is characterized by impasses, states of mind in which the thinker does not know what to do next. ==The authors hypothesized that impasses are broken by changing the problem representation, and 2 hypothetical mechanisms for representational change are described: the relaxation of constraints on the solution and the decomposition of perceptual chunks. These 2 mechanisms generate specific predictions about the relative difficulty of individual problems and about differential transfer effects.== The predictions were tested in 4 experiments using matchstick arithmetic problems. The results were consistent with the predictions. Representational change is a more powerful explanation for insight than alternative hypotheses, if the hypothesized change processes are specified in detail. Overcoming impasses in insight is a special case of the general need to override the imperatives of past experience in the face of novel conditions. - #references - Title: Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving - Meta - Tags: [[D/Solution-Diversity]] [[D/Synthesis Infrastructure]] [[D/Computational Analogy]] - Authored by:: [[Gunther Knoblich]] , [[Stellan Ohlsson]] , H. Haider , D. Rhenius - Year: [[1999]] - Publication: [[Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition]] - #lit-context - [[Stellan Ohlsson]] is prominent authority on [[Insight problem solving]] - Design: have people do two blocks: in second block people got a lot btter, so probably best to consider block 1 to really feel out the ffects of problem types - Vary problem difficulty by varying constraint hardness and chunk tightness, both together and independently - #[[📝 lit-notes]] - Two key mechanisms proposed for overcoming [[Impasses]] (aka [[fixation]], which is diagnosed as a suboptimal [[problem formulation]]): 1) [[constraint relaxation]], and [[chunk decomposition]] - If constraints are not considered explicitly, possible to over/under-constrain problem representation (through implicit reminding) (p. 1535) - Citations here... - ![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fmegacoglab%2Fe7MM5TgRHu.png?alt=media&token=b6422974-6fd1-4cae-b8b8-bbc0a44477fa) - Therefore, if problem solver is able to relax unnecessary constraints, they can find a problem representation that admits solution, and overcome the impasse - Argument for [[chunk decomposition]] as a mechanism of breaking [[fixation]] and [[Impasses]] - People create chunks to organize experience. - Encountering a novel problem activates some chunks from past experiences. Not all of them will be helpful; and some will be actively unhelpful. And some will need to be decomposed ([[compression]] reversed??) - Decomposing is harder for "tighter" chunks: where the components are not (obviously) meaningful units on their own - Thus, problems with tight chunks are harder to solve. - Evidence for this: when they made it harder to decompose chunks (even with identical constraint types), people were about half as likely to solve the problem (p. 1540). - ![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fmegacoglab%2F8ke9W0__RI.png?alt=media&token=1501eaf9-e2e8-4f49-9d81-b10fa9f8b411) - ![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fmegacoglab%2FFaRMIEcsQM.png?alt=media&token=2a393561-d69d-43ad-a28c-a6d40367b557) - Said another way - Impeding [[chunk decomposition]] makes it harder to overcome [[Impasses]] during [[Insight problem solving]] - Possible context - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923006002292 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hbm.21501https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811915002128 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899309016850 - https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article-abstract/26/7/2991/1745029 - https://idp.springer.com/authorize/casa?redirect_uri=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11427-010-4088-z&casa_token=jNdkXtH7qXEAAAAA:qUgnBL1rCGJzOQZ2rGog7mBEqDSwmZkxT8S3TI7_0ewCYNJWIZ9o42JI4QaNx2EfehJ0p-aGBKBJcd91Mw - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02001/full - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394015003572 - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01025 - https://escholarship.org/content/qt35d004q0/qt35d004q0.pdf - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051119301000 - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02568/full - http://journal.psych.ac.cn/xlxb/EN/abstract/abstract3575.shtml - https://idp.springer.com/authorize/casa?redirect_uri=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11571-020-09590-w.pdf&casa_token=vy0I65jymhcAAAAA:A9ZSun2vrmJpVf2jc1hTs_pMYXoHMmDgUfY6NrN5MpachZXOOj2cki1dCikZdv8lqJPKCOP3dxstv1yCyw - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00673/full - https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2_IgoLXDx58C&oi=fnd&pg=PA142&dq=chunk&ots=ed2XVJ-I6f&sig=vHKaYEY91Txw3w1gK9xYoQTgLck - https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/psych_facpub/1571/ - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jocb.442?casa_token=AgFTa5I7ei4AAAAA:k2D2q27kptU50UjLvWbBmQNh2X0sucpSXd2ejjdWhEPLYVNI15ZXOUZAcP6lczeZELT7lJ1m_qEvg8Z0 - https://iccm-conference.neocities.org/2012/proceedings/papers/0033/paper0033.pdf - supported-by:: [[R: zhangChunkDecompositionContributes2015]] [[R: wellerInteractiveInsightProblem2011]] - What are chunks?? - "chunks" for Knoblich are *not* similar to [[Design Patterns]] or [[Frames]] - they are more like visual features, that exist at multiple levels of hierarachies. (cf. - Knoblich characterizes [[Chunk]]s as #> "patterns that capture recurring constellations of features or components" (p. 1535) - ![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fmegacoglab%2F_jL1XWtx0l.png?alt=media&token=85dd6f16-4814-40d4-975f-114c303aaddc) - To [[@chaseMindEyeChess1973]] on the idea of [[Chunking]] as a mechanism for expert performance #expertise - Which itself goes back fruther to [[de Groot]], back in the mid-1960's - Be careful, though! Their idea of [[Chunking]] is closer to the idea of [[compression]] - packing a huge amount of information into a smaller unit, abstracting away a lot of things. - Observed some transfer effects across blocks: once you see a constraint relaxed or decompose a chunk, a later problem that . - Somewhat anecdotal in Experiment 1, and directly validated in Experiment 2