Foundations of Cognitive Psychology: Preface - Preface

Thepossibilitythatthereareseveralhundredplausiblelearningandthinking
strategies may be an important piece of metacognitive knowledge for teachers
and educational researchers. As teachers, this knowledge should lead us to
question whether we can expect very much general benefit from teaching any
single strategy and to consider instead designing courses that allow students
to choose among large numbers of strategies. As educational researchers, the
knowledge may lead us to try to simplify the evaluation task by searching for
categories ofstrategies thatmay be evaluatedtogether.
Whatcanwedotoreducethedifficultythatpeopleexperienceintransferring
skills? I offer the following speculation based distantly on observations made
by Simon and me: People employ certain fundamental categories when they
construct representations. I suggest that the most fundamental ones are object,
event, action, location, time, and attribute. When the elements of one problem
isomorph fall in the same categories as the corresponding elements of another
isomorph,thentransferbetweenthetwowillbeeasy.Forexample,itshouldbe
easy to transfer from a problem isomorph in which people are moved among
apartments to one in which checkers are moved among board positions, be-
causepeopleandcheckersarebothobjectsandapartmentsandboardpositions
are both locations. However, transfer should be difficult to a third isomorph in
which events are shuffled in time, because the categories of the elements of the
firsttwo problems are different fromthose inthe thirdproblem.
If this speculation is correct, it would suggest that we should not expect stu-
dents to transfer knowledge across category boundaries without help. Rather,
when full understanding of a principle requires students to generalize across
category boundaries, we should be prepared to provide the student with ex-
amples thatillustrate the applicationofthe principle in eachmajorcategory.

References

DeGroot,A.D. (1965).Thought and choice in chess.TheHague:Mouton.
Grove’s dictionary of music and musicians.(1954).J.A.F.Maitland (Ed.).Philadelphia: T.Presser.
Hayes, J. R. (1981).The complete problem solver. Philadelphia: TheFranklinInstitutePress.
Hayes, J. R., & Simon, H. A. (1976). Psychological differences among problem isomorphs. In N.
Castellan, Jr., D. Pisoni, & G. Potts (Eds.),Cognitive theory(Vol. II). Potomac, MD: Lawrence
ErlbaumAssociates.
Koechel ABC. (1965).H.Von Hase (Ed.). NewYork: C.F.PetersCorporation.
Polya,G.(1973).How to solve it. (2nd ed.).Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Table23.2
(continued)

Monster etiquettecomplicatedthesolutionoftheproblembecauseitrequiresthat:

1. only one monstermay be changed at atime;


2. iftwomonstershavethesamesize,onlythemonsterholdingthelargeglobemaybechanged;


3. amonster maynotbe changedtothe same size asa monsterholdinga largerglobe.
   By whatsequence of changes couldthe monsters have solvedthisproblem?

Note:From Hayes, J. R., & Simon, H. A. (1976). Psychological differences among problem iso-
morphs.InN.Castellan,Jr.,D.Pisoni,&G.Potts(Eds.),Cognitive theory(Vol. II, pp. 23–24).
Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

ThreeProblemsinTeachingGeneralSkills 563