Abstract
The Missionaries-Cannibals (MC) and Tower of Hanoi (TH) are two transformation problems that have been utilized repeatedly by investigators interested in strategies underlying problem-solving performance. The present study compared performance on various parameters of these two tasks with performance on a psychometric measure of general intelligence (the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery, or MAB) and on the Hidden Figures test. Correlational analyses revealed a low to moderate association between performance on the two puzzles. In addition, while the TH puzzle was moderately correlated with intelligence, the MC puzzle was at best only weakly correlated with MAB scores. The results are interpreted in terms of Sternberg's experiential subtheory of intelligence and the constructs of novelty and automaticity. When faced with novel problems, subjects appear to draw primarily upon verbal abilities and skills. As the problems' processing demands become increasingly automatized, subjects rely less on verbal abilities and more on those abilities that they employ while working on performance subtests.
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