According to the Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1998; Sweller, Van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998), working memory is very limited when handling new information. Hence, when the processing of information requires the solver to organise, contrast or compare, the solver is only able to consider two or three items simultaneously. Further, new information is lost within 15 to 30 seconds if it is not rehearsed (Artino, 2008). This suggests that the requirements o f training may have resulted in intrinsic cognitive load i.e., the mental work load required for problem solving, therefore impinging on working memory. In fact, cognitive overload may have been an issue across all five training experiments reported in this thesis. For example, participants may have found it difficult to monitor which heuristics they had applied in attempting to solve test problems or which words they had assessed in identifying the ambiguous words in Experiments 1 and 2. Also, in Experiment 3, participants were encouraged to produce an exhaustive list o f functions for items in a problem which may have impinged on working memory as it required participants to
remember all the functions they had considered. Perhaps the demands on working memory were greatest in Experiments 4 and 5. That is, inconsistency checking
required by the training may have been difficult for participants to perform because of the need to attempt to examine one’s own representation o f the problem and then to compare it with the problem specification.
One suggestion for reducing cognitive load is through the use o f an external memory aid (e.g., pen and paper). Research evidence indicates that it is necessary to provide an external memory aid for problem solving to facilitate the selection of an appropriate solution path (Cary & Carlson, 1999). In addition, it has been suggested that people are likely to use an external memory aid (e.g., to make notes) when they believe the benefits o f using it outweigh the costs o f not doing so (Cary & Carlson, 2001). Rigney (1978) also suggested that tasks such as note taking act as an ‘orienting task’ as it ‘orients’ the trainee to develop appropriate learning strategies. Future research needs to ensure that training does not fail due to inappropriate memory demands, and therefore should include a condition in which a memory aid could be used in order to reduce and evaluate the effect o f such cognitive workload. Further, in relation to the generic training studies, asking participants to make notes during problem solving may facilitate a more precise and detailed comparison between the external written representation and the problem specification.
One o f the difficulties experienced in design training for verbal insight problem solving was the limited choice o f problems. Cunningham and MacGregor (2006) proposed rebus puzzles as candidates for insight problem solving which require further investigation. A rebus combines verbal and visual clues to create a familiar phrase (e.g., you ju st me = ‘just between you and m e’). It is argued that rebus problems require restructuring because past experiences of reading result in the
solver focusing on syntax rather than the semantic meaning. The solution to a rebus puzzle ignores grammar and instead the spatial relationships of components in a problem must be given a verbal interpretation. Furthermore, our past experiences of reading ignore print characteristics such as bold letters or capital letters whereas such characteristics are important to the solution o f rebus problems (e.g. PUNISHMENT = ‘capital punishment’). The advantage for using rebus problems is that the level of difficulty can be manipulated (MacGregor & Cunningham, 2008) in terms of the number o f implicit assumptions involved. Many studies have attempted to control for problem difficulty by comparing performance on ‘insight’ problems with ‘non insight problems that were matched on overall solution rates (e.g., Gilhooly & Murphy, 2005; Jung-Beeman et al., 2004; Lavric et al., 2000; Metcalfe & Wiebe, 1987; Schooler et al., 1993). However, rebus problems are similar to verbal insight problems because past experiences trigger an incorrect cognitive representation and restructuring of the representation is required for solutions. To further shed light on the role o f
representational change in insight problem solving, future research could adapt the training designs tested herein using rebus problems that involve one implicit assumption, as did the verbal insight problems employed in this research.
Finally, it is unknown to what extent the training effects are durable as participants were tested immediately after completion of the training programmes. The success o f training will be better determined if future research tested participants after a longer duration elapsed between time o f training and time o f testing.
9.5. Conclusions
The challenges that verbal insight problem solving pose to the training designer is that such problems do not have a clear state and that the overall nature of
the constraints associated with these problems vary greatly, which may explain why there is a paucity of training research in this area. The experiments reported in this thesis provide convincing evidence that habitual responses triggered by verbal insight problems are possible to overcome through training that induces a shift in
representation. The implication of these results is that domains which require problem solvers to interpret situations in an unusual way would benefit from training similar to that developed in this thesis, to help avoid the constraints imposed by problem
solvers’ past experiences. In particular, a psychological shift in representation can be induced by developing awareness of incorrect representations which is coupled with practice in identifying and correcting these faulty representations. In conclusion, the current thesis made some important advances in research in this area.
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