*Syllabus still under construction, but you get the general idea

Fall 2009: PSCH 455 Cognitive Psychology of Thinking
(Cognitive Division Core Course in Problem Solving, Reasoning & Decision Making)
CRN 29564

Instructor: Jennifer Wiley
Mondays from 2-4:50
Room 1076 BSB

PSCH 455 is one of the four required course for PhD students in the Cognitive Division of Psychology.  It rounds out the basic coverage of cognitive topics in our graduate curriculum sequence that is meant to be taken by all students over the first two years (the other courses are Memory, Language, and Skill & Concept Acquisition).  Registration is limited to graduate students.

The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with cognitive research traditions in problem solving, reasoning and decision making. Instruction is organized around class discussions of original empirical and theoretical journal articles. Emphasis is on classic and prototypical example articles that will provide students with neccessary background for future readings and research in these areas. Students will be responsible for leading discussion on assigned articles, probably twice during the semester.  Evaluation will be based article presentation, contributions to class discussion, and written assignments designed to assess understanding of the articles that were discussed, as well as the ability to understand and analyze new articles in the context of the readings.  Two 7 page papers are required.

Usual Syllabus Stuff:
No late papers will be accepted.
In case of emergencies, contact the instructor as soon as possible.

Students with Disabilities:
Reasonable accommodations will be made, but requests must be made during the first week of class.  Students with disabilities who require accommodations for access and participation in this course must be registered with the Office of Disability Services (ODS). Please contact ODS at 312/413-2103 or 312/413-0123.

Campus Policy on Observance of Religious Holidays:
The faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago shall make every effort to avoid scheduling examinations or requiring that student projects be turned in or completed on religious holidays. Students who wish to observe their religious holidays shall notify the faculty member by the tenth day of the semester of the date when they will be absent unless the religious holiday is observed on or before the tenth day of the semester. In such cases, the student shall notify the faculty member at least five days in advance of the date when he/she will be absent. The faculty member shall make every reasonable effort to honor the request, not penalize the student for missing the class, and if an examination or project is due during the absence, give the student an exam or assignment equivalent to the one completed by those students in attendance. If the student feels aggrieved, he/she may request remedy through the campus grievance procedure.

Professional Excuses:
Please let the instructor know about planned absences (i.e. for attendance at conferences) from the outset.  You will still be responsible for the material, but will not be penalized in your discussion grade for excused absences.

Plagiarism/Cheating:
Plagiarism is defined as the use (or submission) of another’s ideas, thoughts, or writing, without proper acknowledgment (quotation marks and citations). If you are ever unsure about what constitutes plagiarism, ask for guidance.  When you are composing a new research paper and reading and discussing other research papers in it, be sure to use your own words to describe the gist of other studies or other author's explanations.  Make sure that you discuss other papers in a way that supports the point you are making in your own paper. This is one good way to avoid reiterating someone else's words.  If you must use a direct quote or wording from a paper you are reading, then use quotation marks.  It is rare that you should have to do this in writing research papers, except for when you are describing exact instructions that were given in previous experiments. For the most part, you should be paraphrasing or summarizing other articles. Under these circumstances, do not use quotation marks, but when describing what was found in a previous study or suggested by a previous author, you must cite the source.

You will also be discussing our readings with other students in the course.  But, be sure to write your own assignments. Do not share your writing assignments with other students.

Any form of plagiarism or cheating will not be tolerated.  Students who are found to have plagiarized work any assignment may be subject to various disciplinary actions including a failing grade on the particular assignment, failure of the entire course, and possible expulsion from the University. For more information about the violation of Academic Integrity and its consequences please see the UIC Department of Student Judicial Affairs (http://www.uic.edu/depts /sja/integrit.htm).

Course Schedule:
Aug 24 – Introductions, Overview of Course and Syllabus

Aug 31 - Background
Ashcraft (1994) Chapter 12: Problem Solving

Newell & Simon (1974) Human Problem Solving (Chapters 3 & 4)

Greeno, J. (1978) Natures of problem solving abilities. In Estes Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes (Vol 5, pp. 239-270). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

Sept 7 - No Class (Labor Day)

Sept 14 Applying Information Processing Theory to Well-Structured Problem Solving 
Kotovsky, K., Hayes, J. R., & Simon, H. A. (1985). Why are some problems hard? Evidence from Tower of Hanoi. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 248-294.

Additional Readings:
Unsworth, N., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory capacity and fluid abilities: Examining the correlation between Operation Span and Raven. Intelligence, 33, 67-81. (Andy)

Welsh, M.C., Satterlee-Cartmell, T., & Stine, M. (1999). Towers of Hanoi and London: Contribution of working memory and inhibition to performance. Brain and Cognition, 41, 231-242. (Anna Maria)

Sept 21 Expertise

Everyone reads:
Chase & Simon (1973) The mind's eye in chess. In Chase, Visual Information Processing.
Bedard, J. & Chi, M. T. H. (1992) Expertise. Current Directions in Psychological Science. Vol 1(4), Aug 1992, 135-139.

Student Presentation Readings:
Gobet, F. & Simon, H.A. (1996). The roles of recognition processes and look-ahead search in time-constrained expert problem solving: Evidence from grand-master-level chess. Psychological Science, 7, 52-55. Corrected Table 1 appears in Psychological Science, 1996 (Nov) Vol 7(6), 381. (Table in Erratum)  (Allison)

Chi, M., Feltovich, P., & Glaser, R. (1981). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 5(2), 121-152. (Dave)

Ross, B. H. (1996) Category representations and the effects of interacting with instances.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition. Vol 22(5), 1249-1265.  (Tara)

Voss, J. E, Greene, TR, Post, T A., & Penner, BC (1983). Problem solving skill in the social sciences. In G H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation. (Dan)

 Sept 28  Mathematical Problem Solving
Cummings, Kintsch, Reusser, & Weimer (1988) The role of understanding in solving word problems. Cognitive Psychology, 10, 405-438. (Rebecca)

Koedinger, K. R. & Nathan, M. J. (2004). The real story behind story problems: Effects of representations on quantitative reasoning. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13 (2), 129-164. (Katie)

Siegler, R. (1996) Emerging minds : the process of change in children's thinking. (Chapters 3 & 4, pages specific to development of arithmetic problem solving skills pp. 49-71, 84-100, Kevin)

Oct 5 Analogical Problem Solving: Transfer & Abstraction

Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1983).  Schema induction and analogical transfer.  Cognitive Psychology, 15, 1-38.

Ross, B.H., & Kilbane, M.C. (1997). Analogical mapping views and the effects of principle explanations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23(2), 427-440. (Chris)

Atkinson, R. K, Renkl, A.,  & Merrill, M. M.. (2003) Transitioning From Studying Examples to Solving Problems: Effects of Self-Explanation Prompts and Fading Worked-Out Steps. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 774-783. (Kate)

Vanderstoep, S. W. &. Seifert, C. M. (1993) Learning "How" Versus Learning "When": Improving Transfer of Problem-Solving Principles. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3, 93-111. (Brendan)

Oct 12 Creative/Insightful Problem Solving  (with special guest Stellan Ohlsson)

Metcalfe, J., & Wiebe, D. (1987). Intuition in insight and noninsight problem solving. Memory & Cognition, 15, 238-246

Sio, U. & Ormerod, T.C. (2009). Does Incubation Enhance Problem Solving? A Meta-Analytic Review. Psychological Bulletin , 135, 94-120.

Knoblich, G., Ohlsson, S., Haider, H. & Rhenius, D. (1999). Constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition in insight problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 1534-1555.

Oct 19 Creativity/Insight continued

Wiley, J. (1998) Expertise as mental set: The effects of domain knowledge in creative problem solving. Memory & Cognition, 26, 716-730.

    Other papers mentioned today Ricks, Turley-Ames & Wiley, 2007; Schooler, Ohlsson, & Brooks, 1993; Lost in the Sauce, Sayette

Bowden, E.M. & Jung-Beeman, M. (2003) Aha! Insight experience correlates with solution activation in the right hemisphere . Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 730-737.

Kounios, J. & Jung-Beeman, M. (2009). The Aha! moment: The cognitive neuroscience of insight. Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Oct 26 Problem Solving Reaction Paper
The goal of this reaction paper is to read this new article on your own, summarize its findings, and discuss it in terms of the articles we have read.  The new article is Gick & McGarry (1992) “Learning from Mistakes: Inducing Analogous Solution Failures to a Source Problem Produces Later Successes in Analogical Transfer”.  Your task is to unpack the experiments that were done, describe the alternative predictions that could be made, and discuss the results that were found.  Be sure to relate these experiments and results to ideas we have discussed from other articles including the role of problem representation, sources of difficulty, role of prior knowledge, role of similarity, spontaneous use of analogy, explanation, and impasse in problem solving.  Feel free to include other areas of overlap with our readings.

The main purpose of this assignment is for you to show your understanding of the papers we read for class by using them to help you interpret a new paper on a related topic. You are expected to work alone to interpret the article and to make connections to the readings, so that your reaction paper reflects your own understanding.  Have fun reading and thinking, and I look forward to hearing your impressions!

Your essays should be around 7 pages with APA style citations.  A reference section should be attached.  We will not have class next week, so you are expected to spend around 9 hours working on this paper. Papers are due by Sunday, November 1 at 5pm.

Nov 2 Reasoning: Syllogisms and Mental Models

Background reading: Halpern Chapter

Henle, M. (1962). On the relation between logic and thinking. Psychological Review, 69, 366-378.

Evans, J. St. B., Handley, S. J., Harper, C. N. J & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1999) Reasoning about necessity and possibility: A test of the mental model theory of deduction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 25(6), 1495-1513

Nov 9 Reasoning: Conditionals and Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas

Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1985). Pragmatic reasoning schemas. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 391-41.  (Peter?)

Dawson, E., Gilovich, T., & Regan, D.T. (2002). Motivated reasoning and performance on the Wason selection task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379-1387. (Lisa, D: Salas, Cosejo, Jenna)

Goel, V., Shuren, J., Sheesley, L. and Grafman, J. (2004). Asymmetrical Involvement of Frontal Lobes in Social Reasoning. Brain, 127,  783-790. (Brady, D: AM, Kate, Katie)

Ahn, W. K. & Graham, L. M. (1999) The Impact of Necessity and Sufficiency in The Wason Four-Card Selection Task, Psychological Science, 6, 237-242 (Melanie, D: Chris, Dan)

Blanchette, I. & Richards, A. (2004). Reasoning about emotional and neutral materials: Is logic affected by emotion? Psychological Science, 15(11), 745-752. (Jane, D- Tara, Rebecca, Kevin)

Montgomery, C., Fisk, J.E.1, Newcombe, R., Wareing, M., & Murphy, P. (2005). Syllogistic reasoning performance in MDMA (Ecstasy) users. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 13, 137-145. (Ashley, D: Jaeger, Schuster, Jarosz)

Nov 16 Heuristics and Biases

Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1986) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. In Arkes, Hal R. (Ed), Hammond, Kenneth R. (Ed), et al. (1986). Judgment and decision making: An interdisciplinary reader. (pp. 38-55). Cambridge, England UK: Cambridge University Press.

Trabasso, T., & Bartolone, J. (2003). Story understanding and counterfactual reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 904-923. (background reference on simulation heuristic, simulation.pdf)

Hertwig, R. & Gigerenzer, G. (1999) The "conjunction fallacy" revisited: How intelligent inferences look like reasoning errors.  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12(4), 275-305. (background reading on original finding, tk84.pdf)

Nov 23 Training Reasoning Skills

Fong, G.T., Krantz, D.H., & Nisbett, R.E. (1986). The effects of statistical training on thinking about everyday problems. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 253-292. 

Lehman, D. R; Lempert, R. O; & Nisbett, R. E. (1988) The effects of graduate training on reasoning: Formal discipline and thinking about everyday-life events. American Psychologist, 43(6),  431-442.

Nov 30  Rationality
Simon, H. A. Alternative Visions of Rationality. In H. Arkes & K. Hammond (eds.) Judgment and Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York: Cambridge, 1986, pp. 103-113.

Chase, V., Hertwig, R. & Gigerenzer, G. (1998). Visions of rationality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 206-214

Stanovich, K. and West, R. (1998). Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 161-188.

Final Paper
Reasoning topic TBA. Your paper should be 7-10 pages with references.
Papers are due by email to jwiley@uic.edu by 5pm Friday  December 15th.
Early papers happily accepted.