Familiar Thematic

Transfer Effects on Familiar Thematic to Unfamiliar Thematic Problem solving can be a complex task especially if the person is unfamiliar with the content. People use problem solving every day and often relate to past experiences in order to help them solve a novice problem According to Glaser (1984) the psychology field is gaining a further understanding of the way people think and they don’t need above intelligence to be able to problem solve. However, at the very least they do need to understand what the topic is about (Glaser, 1984). In the education system, it is often popular for students to lack an insight understanding of what they are being taught (Perkins 1991). A study on insight in education found that by teachers using mental …show more content…
The four-card selection is composed of cards containing a vowel or consent on one side, and an even number or odd number on the other side. An if-then rule is presented and the participant must flip over the cards, which violate that rule. This foundational study reported that individuals struggled with abstract content when using conditional reasoning. Individuals posed a tendency to confirm their own hypothesis and focused on irrelevant information towards the rule given (Wason, 1966). It is important to consider the content in this study was abstract and individuals were not able to relate to it; hence, they could not problem solve effectively.
Content in problem solving has been shown to be a significant factor when engaged in conditional reasoning. According to Pollard and Evans (1987) the individual needs to be able to understand and relate to the content being presented. The participants, who were presented with a familiar thematic scenario, enhanced the facilitation of conditional reasoning (Pollard & Evans, 1987). These findings highlight the importance of thematic problem solving in conditional reasoning. When individuals understand the subject matter and it is within the context they can reason better and problem …show more content…
The most relevant finding were found in experiment three in which participants were presented with a thematic scenario followed by an abstract scenario to see if transfer effects could occur. In this case the thematic problem was a rule regarding beer and drinking age. Those in the no transfer effect performed better than those in the transfer effect because it did not cause them to transfer the information. In the no transfer effect there was no significant improvement, which implies that transfer effects from thematic to abstract scenarios are unsuccessful ( Griggs & Cox,