Thinking as a solution of problems

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about the phenomenon of insight and approaches to solving problems.

Studies in the psychology of thinking starts at the end of the XIX century in the city of Würzburg, the corresponding school and was named the Würzburg school of psychology of thinking. Prior to this, psychologists believed that thinking is no different from the rest of the processes of perception, memory, and it is subject to the same laws of association, and we find a solution for the associations in our past experience. Vyurtsburzhtsy first try to understand the specifics of thinking, they even came up with this special method based on the received time in the psychology method of introspection, or peering inside. But it is very difficult to peer inside yourself, even solving simple mental tasks, such as for example understanding the meaning of the proverb. So they came up with to break up the monitoring process into small pieces and observe, for example, what happens in the moment when a proverb read that at a time when its meaning was understood that at the moment when we began to explain the meaning and so on.

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This introspection was called systematic experimental. But, in fact, tasks that used the Wurzburg psychologists were not thinking problems in the strict sense of the word. They somehow relied on past experience. And the most important discovery of psychology vyurtsburzhtsev was that they found that thinking, apparently, is not confined to the sensory images that are stored in our memory. It's not just the connection between the images themselves, but this is something different from them, and not reducible to them. In fact, the most important discovery was the discovery vyurtsburzhtsev ugly nature of thinking. As the thinking units have been providing thought as a focus on the search for a solution, as a consciousness, a rule, or the relationship between some elements, or of the intention to solve the mental problem. This sensuous ugly way of thinking was later picked up by a follower of the Würzburg school, who worked later, was not part of this school, but it belonged to the ideological. It was Otto Selz, a psychologist, later died at Auschwitz, who tried to understand how a person decides its tasks, analyzing the structure of the problem. What is the problem? We have something given - we know this, we need to find something - we do not know. And in order to find it, we need to use some sort of operation, or some method.

What is the unsolved problem? This is such an unfinished complex, including this initial, desired and the method of the desired location. And the main operation, which we use in solving problems - an operation to fill this complex. How can we fill? And Brawn is analyzing their experimental data - also on simple tasks like selecting a synonym to the word - several possible ways to compensate. Firstly, we can just find a solution to past experience - to take and move, if we have to solve such problems. This routine will be called actualization means. We just take out the money and immediately find the solution. When finished there is no solution, we can try to find in our past experience complex, similar to our unfinished, but already completed, in which there is required, and the method for its determination, try to abstract the method of past experience and transfer it to our urgent task.

And what if in our experience of the finished, completed the complex not? Then the abstraction can not be made from the past, but, for example, from the observation of some of the situation around us, which is similar to our unfinished complex. But to do that all the time we need to keep it in mind. Brawn suggests that this is what Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. He needed something that would connect the earth and the sky, would make it possible to ground lightning, and one day he saw a kite, whose tail hanging down. It was completed complex, from which Benjamin Franklin abstracted method and got the solution of his task.

But it is not clear what to do with this creativity - poetic, artistic, and so on. Brawn in this situation uncomfortable, because every time for it replenishing complex - is to use past experience. As Vyurtsburzhtsy, he believes that thinking is based on past experience, and we are only the non-sensuous abstract the method that allows you to find a solution. He writes about a particular evaluative combined effects, goal-setting, which creates a work of art, a poem, and so on. But the combination of such effects, which is also already present in our previous experience. That is, the poet, to do one way or another based on past experience. And only in such a school of psychology of thinking as Gestalt psychology, psychology of integrity, the idea that thinking is based on past experience, to be fully crossed.

And the main theoretician here was also quite early died Karl Duncker, who believed that the solution to the problem can never be brought from the outside - from the past experience of observing what is happening around. It can only arise from an analysis of the conflict between the terms and conditions we solved the problem and not the other way. If we do not understand the conflict, the solution of the problem we will not grow out of it. In fact, the work Dunker continued study of thinking that in the years of World War I spent with monkeys Gestalt psychology, Wolfgang Köhler, who worked in a nursery on the island of Tenerife and asks the monkey to solve problems, ready-made solutions for which they did not. For example, to get suspended from the ceiling or a banana to get the bait outside of the cell to which the monkey does not reach. What then found Köhler? He saw that the monkeys scurrying around, jumping, suddenly freeze and properly solve the problem, realizing, apparently, the conflict between what they have and what they need. For example, a foot too short, the banana is too high, then you need to reduce this gap. Or an apple is too far away, the paw before it falls short - it is necessary to close the gap. That is, the need to restructure the situation, change its structure. This restructuring of the situation, which leads to an instantaneous change in the behavior of the animal and leads to the solution of the problem, Köhler outlined the word "insight". And in the same sense the word "insight" will go to the description of the solution of mental problems man.

What is its objective insight on the structure? It is on this question tried to answer Karl Duncker, using the so-called small creative tasks that usually had some practical way. A typical problem Dunker: metal ball falls on the metal surface and instantly rebounds. How to prove that at the time of contact with the surface of the ball is deformed? Dunker gives these tasks to their subjects and maintain a dialogue with them. Subjects ask clarifying questions, because the conditions are always a little underdetermined, and writes the experimenter, as a person asks, what it offers, and builds a family tree for solving the problem.

Discovering that the different ways to change the situation, different implementations correspond to the same functional solution to the same understanding of the conflict between the terms and conditions. For example, the ball falls too fast, and this is one interpretation of the conflict. Or the surface is too hard, it does not remain on the tracks - a different interpretation of the conflict. And then we can get a variety of implementation, for example, use some mild mediator. How did we come to this decision? Dunker assumes that all begins, in fact, with an understanding of the conflict, but not with the understanding of the fact of the conflict - we can understand that there is something does not fit, despair and throw the problem at all, just like a monkey could understand it jump not to the banana start to beat his chest and upset somewhere in the corner of the cage. Understanding the conflict involves a willingness to enter. And, in fact, getting into a situation, we can find this restructuring of the entire image, ie, a functional solution that can be implemented in one way or another.

Naturally, in the records of human reasoning, we have the first implementation, and from them we can understand what a functional solution there is. And there may be many implementations. The monkey can get the banana hanging from the ceiling, building a pyramid of boxes and can be used instead of the minister of boxes. The main thing is that the direction of thought was correct. Even Kohler analyzed smart errors when, for example, monkey correctly builds a pyramid of boxes, but at the bottom of the smallest places, but on top - a little more, and they break down. Also analyzed stupid mistakes, when a monkey looking at the other, building a pyramid from wall it holds, but to lure far, the conflict persists. What keeps thinking? Duncker suggests that thinking prevent static structure, that is, in fact, our past experience. If past experience is frozen for a solution to the problem, or how to say Gestalt psychologists operatively fixed, the problem we can not solve.

That is, if for some fixed value of the subject, it is very difficult to come to the fact that this item can be used in other functions. For example, Norman Mayer in certain studies thinking hung from the ceiling with two lines, put in the room table, put on the table, pliers and asked his subjects to tie the ends of the ropes, which man could not do: they do not hold for one another, as he held the first rope one hand, and the second - with the other hand. That is, he just could not catch them. When the experimenter advised to use a pair of pliers, a person could not quite understand how to use them. But if the experimenter accidentally touched his shoulder rope, and it began to sway, suggesting, in fact, the principle of solving the problem, people with no mention of pliers could figure bind them to a rope, shake, meanwhile, run, grab another rope and connect the ends of the rope together. That is, the functional fixation prevents us to solve problems, but if the principle of prompt decision, and tell when a person has not yet tired of the problem to solve, then most likely, it will be solved. Further experiments consisted mainly of thought in the study of the factors that influence the success of problem-solving. It can be non-specific factors, such as motivation, emotional state, personality traits of a person, and specific factors: a problem is formulated whether to give some tips, or, conversely, the false use of incorrect installation on the properties of the object, and so on.