New Perspectives on Human Problem Solving

Abstract

In November 2008 at Purdue University, the 2 Workshop on Human Problem Solving was held. This workshop, which was a natural continuation of the first workshop devoted almost exclusively to optimization problems, addressed a wider range of topics that reflect the scope of the Journal of Problem Solving. The workshop was attended by 35 researchers from around the world. The program of the workshop is available at: http:// spiderman.psych.purdue.edu/problem_solving/workshop08/. There were two full days of talks and posters, covering insight, education, decision making and causality, combinatorial optimization and applications. The level of excitement was high, and the lively and informative discussions confirmed that, despite the fragmentation of the field, there is something special and unique about problem solving that is likely to help define the field, almost exactly 100 years after the Gestalt Psychologists established it for the first time. Defining the field is obviously important, but doing solid research and disseminating the results is absolutely critical. This special issue provides a nice sample of the current work on human problem solving illustrating a variety of experimental tools and conceptual frameworks. Why has problem solving remained one of the most important topics in human cognition? Problem solving is the activity in which people show their uniquely human gift for flexible cognition and adaptation. We are not always shackled victims of habit. We can think flexibly about situations that we have never come across before, and arrive at apt and fresh responses to them. We can change how we represent problems. We can come up with novel strategies for solving problems. In other words, we can program ourselves to solve problems. These capabilities still distinguish human problem solving from machine intelligence efforts. Long after humans have been replaced by machines in tasks where automatic algorithms can be deployed to effectively accommodate known situations, genuine problem solving requiring the creation of thinking tools, representations, strategies, and meta-cognitive awareness will still be a privileged domain of humans. Over time, we are getting a better understanding of what tasks require truly flexible problem solving