Problem Solving: Cognitive Mechanisms and Formal Models

Intelligent mental representations of physical and social environments allow humans to navigate enormous search spaces, whose sizes vastly exceed the number of neurons in the human brain. This allows us to solve complex problems, using 'higher-level' thinking, related to logical reasoning and mathematics. As an area of research, problem solving has steadily grown over time. Researchers in Artificial Intelligence, a specialty within Computer Science, have been formulating theories of problem solving for the last 70 years. Psychologists, on the other hand, have focused their efforts on documenting the observed behavior of subjects solving problems, without formal modelling. This book represents the first effort to merge the behavioral results of human subjects with formal models of the causative cognitive mechanisms. The first coursebook to deal exclusively with the topic, it provides both a main text for elective courses and a supplementary text for courses such as cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.