Exploring the Depths of Thought: Automization, Chunking and Problem Solving.

2 months ago

Hello family, so we ended yesterday's blog-isode by looking at how the things we do can get automated over a period.

I suggest you read that blog-isode to get a better understanding of what we will be discussing in today's blog-isode:

Source

Let's Continue:

The automatization of subcomponents in skilled activities, however, has a side
effect.

Once the plan is set into motion, its execution may be difficult to stop.

An example is reading. When we see a billboard on a highway, we can't help but read
what it says, whether we want to or not. The forms on the sign proclaim that they
are letters and words: this is enough to trigger our automatized reading routines.

A demonstration of this phenomenon is the Stroop effect (named after psychologist John Ridley Stroop).

In this experiment, subjects are asked to name the colors in which groups of letters are printed as quickly as they can.

In one case, the letter groups are unrelated consonants or vowels. In this condition,
the subjects have little trouble. After a little practice, they become very proficient
at rattling off the colors, "red, green. .."

The subjects' task becomes more difficult in a condition in which the letters are grouped into words, specifically color names. Diabolically enough, these are not the names of the colors in which the words are printed.

Now the subjects respond much more slowly. They are asked to say green, red, yellow. .."

But they can't help themselves from reading the words "yellow, black.. ." for reading is an automatized skill.

As a result, there is violent response conflict. This conflict persists even after lengthy practice. One way subjects finally manage to overcome it is by learning to unfocus their eyes. By this maneuver, they can still see
the colors but can no longer recognize the words.

Hope it's getting interesting now?

Back to Chunking:

As at now, we know very little about the mechanisms that underlie the chunking process. Associationists propose that the explanation involves chaining. In their
view, many skilled acts are highly overpracticed stimulus-response chains in
which the first movement provides the kinesthetic stimulus for the second, which
produces the stimulus for the third, and so on.

This interpretation is almost certainly false.

As Karl Lashley(American psychologist) pointed out, a trained pianist may reach a rate of sixteen successive finger strokes a second when playing an arpeggio.

This speed is too high to allow time for a sensory message to reach the brain and for a motor command to come back to the fingers according Lashley.

We can only conclude that there is a learned neural program that allows the successive finger movements to occur without alternative sensory monitoring, but the nature of the mechanism that underlies this process is still a matter of debate.

We may not understand precisely how this complex chunking is acquired, but
there is little doubt of its importance. It is hard to imagine any organized, skilled
behavior in which this process does not play a role.

In Bryan and Harter's words,

"The ability to take league steps in receiving telegraphic messages, in reading, in
addition, in mathematical reasoning and in many other fields, plainly depends
upon the acquisition of league-stepping habits. .. The learner must come to do
with one stroke of attention what now requires a half a dozen, and presently, in
one still more inclusive stroke, what now requires thirty-six."

The expert can, if necessary, attend to the lower-level units of his skill, but for the most part these have become automatic. This submergence of lower-level units in the higher chunk frees him to solve new problems.

"Automatism is not genius, but it is the hands and feet of genius" according to Bryan and Harter.

Psychologists have devised many experimental situations to study human problem solving.

Subjects have been asked to decipher anagrams, to manipulate various concrete objects so as to produce a desired result, or
to find the solution to various geometrical problems.

Considering this variety of tasks, it is hardly surprising that there are differences in the way in which they are attacked:

a subject who tries to join nine dots with one continuous line will call upon a somewhat diferent set of mental skills than one who has to rearrange the letters STIGNIH into an English word.

The question is whether there is a common thread that runs through all attempts at problemn solving, no matter what the particular problem may be.

Many psychologists believe that hierarchical organization is such a common feature.

The role of organization in problem solving was highlighted in a classic study
by the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker, who asked his subjects to "think out loud" while they tried to find the solution.

One of Duncker's problems was cast in medical terms:

Suppose a patient has an inoperable stomach tumor. There are certain rays which can destroy this tumor if their intensity is large enough. At this intensity, however, the
rays will also destroy the healthy tissue which surrounds the tumor (e.g., the stomach
walls, the abdominal muscles, and so on). How can one destroy the tumor without
damaging the healthy tissue through which the rays must travel on their way?

Duncker's subjects typically arrived at the solution in several steps:

They first reformulated the problem so as to produce a general plan of attack. This in turn
led to more specific would-be solutions. For example, they might look for a
tissue-free path to the stomach and so propose to send the rays through the
esophagus.

Yeah!

A good idea which unfortunately will not work--rays travel in straight lines and the esophagus is curved.

After exploring several other general
approaches and their specific consequences, some subjects finally hit upon the
appropriate general plan.

They proposed to reduce the intensity of rays on their way through healthy tissue and then turn up this intensity when the rays reach
the tumor.

This broad restatement of what is needed eventually led to the correct
means, which was to send several bundles of weak rays from various
points outside so that they meet at the tumor where their effects will summate.

The Bus Stops Here for today:

Thank you, friends, for staying with me through these blogisodes. Your thoughts and opinions are always welcome and appreciated. I'd be happy to hear them. We will build on this in tomorrow's blogisode. Until then, stay safe, friends.♥️