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PubMed1991

The recognition and non-recognition of problem-solving stages in nursing practice.

A requirement for high-quality individualized nursing care is that nurses must recognize and attempt to solve patients' health problems. In this study, it was decided to investigate problem solving using a model similar to the nursing process derived from the general literature. Insight into nurses' perceptions and understanding of problem solving was gained by interviewing 116 nurses using vignettes of clinical problem solving. Data analysis revealed that many informants failed to discuss some problem-solving stages, in particular planning and evaluation. Conversely, problem assessment and implementation attracted more comment. The implications for these variations in nurses' problem-solving behaviour are examined in relation to contemporary nursing issues.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The right approach to solving problems.

A review of brain functioning, particularly as it relates to the use of the right brain suggests that this center of creativity is not often tapped. However, when a group of people gather to learn how to tap their creative potential, many difficult problems can be solved. As applied to solving recruiting problems, the use of creative problem-solving techniques can tap the vast potential in a medical group to find new solutions to the problems that never seem to go away. Conducting creative problem-solving sessions requires a skilled practitioner who can draw out the potential in group members. The process is not without some costs, as the authors point out, but the benefits can be well worth the effort.

Brain↗
PubMed1980

Developing competence in problem solving. A behavioral model.

Problem solving is an integral part of effective physical therapy practice. A model depicting the behaviors of the problem solver while solving problems is presented. The behaviors are related to each step in the problem-solving process and to cognitive, affective, and psychomotor functions of individuals. Guidelines for using the model in didactic and clinical activities are presented.

Humans↗
PubMed2001

Impact of undergraduate medical training on housestaff problem-solving performance: implications for problem-based curricula.

This article reports a study comparing the problem-solving performance of housestaff with undergraduate medical training in either conventional or problem-based schools. After reading two clinical cases, residents were required to write differential diagnoses and pathophysiological explanations. Biomedical and clinical knowledge used and reasoning strategies were identified. The results suggest that housestaff performance is influenced by the nature of instruction. Housestaff trained in a conventional curriculum (CC) focused on patient information, separated biomedical from clinical knowledge, and used data-driven strategies. Housestaff from problem-based learning curricula (PBLC) organized their knowledge around generated inferences, integrated biomedical and clinical knowledge, and used hypothesis-driven strategies. Data-driven reasoning appears to be impeded in PBLC, suggesting that PBLC students have difficulties in acquiring problem schemata. Previous investigations also found this pattern to be true for medical students trained in two different curriculum formats. Although all housestaff generated equal numbers of diagnostic hypotheses during the reasoning process, housestaff from the conventional curriculum generated a greater number of accurate hypotheses than residents in PBLC. These results are discussed in relation to assumptions in health professional curricula about the adequacy of hypothetico-deductive methods of reasoning as teaching mechanisms and the need for clinical and biomedical knowledge integration.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1992

Depression and social problem solving.

Twenty depressed patients with major depressive disorder, 20 nondepressed matched control subjects, and 17 patients with anxiety disorders were compared in different measures of social problem solving. Problem solving was assessed with the Means-Ends Problem-Solving Test (Study 1), the solution of personal problems, and a problem-solving questionnaire (Study 2). Results showed that, as predicted, depressed subjects suffered from a deficit in problem solving in all three measures. The majority of these deficits were also displayed by the clinical control group rather than being specific to a diagnosis of depression. However, depressed subjects produced less effective solutions than did normal and clinical control subjects. The results suggest that depressed and anxious patients may have difficulties at different stages of the problem-solving process.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Incubation and the persistence of fixation in problem solving.

Extra work on unsolved problems may lead to more improvement if the new work is delayed rather than undertaken immediately after initial solution attempts. Such a result constitutes incubation in problem solving. "Unconscious work" on a problem, commonly assumed to be responsible for incubation effects, may not be necessary to observe the phenomenon. We hypothesize that fixation, a block to successful problem solving, may develop during initial solution attempts and persist, interfering with immediate extra work more than with delayed extra work. Five experiments are reported in which fixation was induced to prevent optimal performance on the initial test of Remote Associates Test (RAT) problems (e.g., Mednick, 1962). After the fixation manipulation in three of the experiments, the effects of incubation intervals were examined by retesting the fixated problems. Both fixation (poorer initial problem-solving performance) and incubation (more improvement after a delayed retest than an immediate retest) were found in all the experiments which tested for the effects. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, misleading distractors were presented alongside the RAT problems during the initial test of the problems to cause fixation. In Experiment 4, a block of paired associates--pairing the RAT words with the misleading distractors prior to problem solving--successfully induced fixation, indicating that the distractors affected memory retrieval. In Experiment 5, a trial-by-trial technique allowed fixation and incubation to be induced and tested separately for each item. All of our findings of incubation effects appear to have depended upon the initial induction of fixation. Although the experiments may not be representative of all naturally occurring cases of incubation, they provide a methodology for the study of fixation and incubation effects in problem solving in the laboratory.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Primer on clinical acid-base problem solving.

Acid-base problem solving has been an integral part of medical practice in recent generations. Diseases discovered in the last 30-plus years, for example, Bartter syndrome and Gitelman syndrome, D-lactic acidosis, and bulimia nervosa, can be diagnosed according to characteristic acid-base findings. Accuracy in acid-base problem solving is a direct result of a reproducible, systematic approach to arterial pH, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, bicarbonate concentration, and electrolytes. The 'Rules of Five' is one tool that enables clinicians to determine the cause of simple and complex disorders, even triple acid-base disturbances, with consistency. In addition, other electrolyte abnormalities that accompany acid-base disorders, such as hypokalemia, can be incorporated into algorithms that complement the Rules and contribute to efficient problem solving in a wide variety of diseases. Recently urine electrolytes have also assisted clinicians in further characterizing select disturbances. Acid-base patterns, in many ways, can serve as a 'common diagnostic pathway' shared by all subspecialties in medicine. From infectious disease (eg, lactic acidemia with highly active antiviral therapy therapy) through endocrinology (eg, Conn's syndrome, high urine chloride alkalemia) to the interface between primary care and psychiatry (eg, bulimia nervosa with multiple potential acid-base disturbances), acid-base problem solving is the key to unlocking otherwise unrelated diagnoses. Inasmuch as the Rules are clinical tools, they are applied throughout this monograph to diverse pathologic conditions typical in contemporary practice.

Acid-Base Equilibrium↗
PubMed2004

Goal specificity and knowledge acquisition in statistics problem solving: evidence for attentional focus.

Solving training problems with nonspecific goals (NG; i.e., solving for all possible unknown values) often results in better transfer than solving training problems with standard goals (SG; i.e., solving for one particular unknown value). In this study, we evaluated an attentional focus explanation of the goal specificity effect. According to the attentional focus view, solving NG problems causes attention to be directed to local relations among successive problem states, whereas solving SG problems causes attention to be directed to relations between the various problem states and the goal state. Attention to the former is thought to enhance structural knowledge about the problem domain and thus promote transfer. Results supported this view because structurally different transfer problems were solved faster following NG training than following SG training. Moreover, structural knowledge representations revealed more links depicting local relations following NG training and more links to the training goal following SG training. As predicted, these effects were obtained only by domain novices.

Attention↗
PubMed1982

Correlates of psychotropic drug use in women: interpersonal problem solving and depression.

Interpersonal problem solving ability was assessed in a community-based study with 179 French-speaking women who were consuming psychotropic drugs at varying frequencies. Significant differences were found between psychotrope consumers and nonconsumers in problem solving scores, with deficiencies in defining the problem characteristic of regular consumers. When subjects were separated on the basis of the Beck Depression Inventory scores, depressed women were differentiated only in their ability to generate alternatives and provide viable solutions to problems. The results are discussed in terms of difficulties with problem definition which might prompt a physician to prescribe, and the role of problem solving deficiencies in drug use maintenance.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Decomposing intuitive components in a conceptual problem solving task.

Research into intuitive problem solving has shown that objective closeness of participants' hypotheses were closer to the accurate solution than their subjective ratings of closeness. After separating conceptually intuitive problem solving from the solutions of rational incremental tasks and of sudden insight tasks, we replicated this finding by using more precise measures in a conceptual problem-solving task. In a second study, we distinguished performance level, processing style, implicit knowledge and subjective feeling of closeness to the solution within the problem-solving task and examined the relationships of these different components with measures of intelligence and personality. Verbal intelligence correlated with performance level in problem solving, but not with processing style and implicit knowledge. Faith in intuition, openness to experience, and conscientiousness correlated with processing style, but not with implicit knowledge. These findings suggest that one needs to decompose processing style and intuitive components in problem solving to make predictions on effects of intelligence and personality measures.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Childhood physical punishment and problem solving in marriage.

Drawing from social learning theories and symbolic interactionist understandings of social life, the authors suggest that physical punishment teaches aggressive and controlling strategies for solving the problems of living together and hinders the development of important problem-solving skills, specifically the ability to role take with others. These strategies and skills become part of an individual's toolkit for problem resolution within his or her marriage. The analysis is based on 188 married couples in Washington State who participated in a longitudinal study of the first 2 years of marriage. The analysis reveals the following: Individuals who were physically punished during childhood are more likely to engage in physical and verbal aggression with their spouses, individuals who were physically punished during childhood are more controlling with their spouses, and individuals who were physically punished during childhood are less able to take their spouse's perspective.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Enhancing social problem solving in children with autism and normal children through computer-assisted instruction.

Children with autism have difficulty in solving social problems and in generating multiple solutions to problems. They are, however, relatively skilled in responding to visual cues such as pictures and animations. Eight distinct social problems were presented on a computer, along with a choice of possible solutions, and an option to produce alternative solutions. Eight preschool children with autism and eight matched normal children went through 10 training sessions interleaved with 6 probe sessions. Children were asked to provide solutions to animated problem scenes in all the sessions. Unlike the probe sessions, in the training sessions problem solutions were first explained thoroughly by the trainer. Subsequently these explanations were illustrated using dynamic animations of the solutions. Although children with autism produced significantly fewer alternative solutions compared to their normal peers, a steady increase across probe sessions was observed for the autistic group. The frequency of new ideas was directly predicted by the diagnostic category of autism. Results suggest young children with autism and their normal peers can be taught problem-solving strategies with the aid of computer interfaces. More research is required to establish whether such computer-assisted instruction will generalize to nontrained problem situations in real-life contexts.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2004

Extending self-organizing particle systems to problem solving.

Self-organizing particle systems consist of numerous autonomous, purely reflexive agents ("particles") whose collective movements through space are determined primarily by local influences they exert upon one another. Inspired by biological phenomena (bird flocking, fish schooling, etc.), particle systems have been used not only for biological modeling, but also increasingly for applications requiring the simulation of collective movements such as computer-generated animation. In this research, we take some first steps in extending particle systems so that they not only move collectively, but also solve simple problems. This is done by giving the individual particles (agents) a rudimentary intelligence in the form of a very limited memory and a top-down, goal-directed control mechanism that, triggered by appropriate conditions, switches them between different behavioral states and thus different movement dynamics. Such enhanced particle systems are shown to be able to function effectively in performing simulated search-and-collect tasks. Further, computational experiments show that collectively moving agent teams are more effective than similar but independently moving ones in carrying out such tasks, and that agent teams of either type that split off members of the collective to protect previously acquired resources are most effective. This work shows that the reflexive agents of contemporary particle systems can readily be extended to support goal-directed problem solving while retaining their collective movement behaviors. These results may prove useful not only for future modeling of animal behavior, but also in computer animation, coordinated movement control in robotic teams, particle swarm optimization, and computer games.

Animals↗
PubMed1994

Development of a coding system for marital problem solving efficacy.

Efficacy in marital problem solving has received little attention, and work on general problem solving efficacy does not address marital issues. This study examined the ability to discriminate between groups and criterion validity of an efficacy-focused marital problem solving measurement method, the Marital Efficacy Coding System, which combines marital problem scenarios with general social problem solving assessment procedures. This system was administered to nondistressed married subjects, participants in marital therapy, and divorced or separated individuals. Participants were asked to develop a set of discrete steps or 'means' as solutions to marital problem scenarios. The content was coded by a number of means, participants' ratings of problem frequency and typicality of response, and coders' ratings of efficacy and equality. Overall percentage agreement between coders was 73.4%. Marital Efficacy Coding System variables, including problem frequency, solution typicality, and solution efficacy, were shown to significantly differentiate between participants high and low in marital satisfaction and to possess significant predictive ability.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Memory for impasses during problem solving.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the relative memorability of solved versus unsolved problems in long-term memory. In each experiment, subjects worked on a set of potentially solvable word problems, with the time spent on each problem held constant. Problem memorability was then measured with a free-recall task. In Experiment 1, in which a majority of problems were solved, unsolved problems were better remembered. In Experiments 2 and 3, we expanded on these results by manipulating problem difficulty and thus the ratio of solved to unsolved problems. When unsolved problems were as frequent as or more frequent than solved problems, no memory differences were found. Across all three experiments, the ratio of solved to unsolved problems was found to be a significant predictor of unsolved-problem memorability, but was not significantly related to the memorability of solved problems. The results illustrate that when impasses in problem solving are infrequent, they are more available in memory than are solved problems. It is speculated that this memory phenomenon may facilitate the recognition of opportunities to return to problems that have been terminated short of solution.

Female↗
PubMed2005

A pilot study on the effectiveness of tele-analogy-based problem-solving training for people with brain injuries.

People with brain injuries must often deal with cognitive problems, including social problem solving. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a 20-session, online, interactive, skill-training programme on the solving of problems using analogies. It was hypothesized that the programme could help people with brain injuries learn better problem-solving skills through systematic, theoretically driven learning strategies. Fifteen Hong Kong-Chinese with brain injuries participated in this pilot study. They were randomly assigned to an online programme, a computer-assisted programme or a therapist-administered programme. The three programmes had a similar structure and contents, including basic components problem solving, reflective sessions and functional problem solving. Outcome measures included the Category Test of Halstead-Reitan Test Battery, and a daily problem-solving performance and self-efficacy checklist. The results showed that the subjects of the three programmes generally demonstrated higher post-training self-efficacy and basic problem-solving skills. The group using the online programme, however, showed better and quicker improvements in problem-solving performance, and demonstrated a general trend towards making fewer errors in complex problem-solving tasks. In conclusion, people with brain injuries can use the successful problem-solving experiences obtained in the training programmes with different delivery modes to solve daily living problems that are similar in nature. However, the generalizability of the effects of the programme is still to be determined.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Relationship between students' self-assessment of their capabilities and their teachers' judgments of students' capabilities in mathematics problem-solving.

The study examined the judgments made by four seventh-grade mathematics teachers of their 107 students' competence in solving mathematics problems. Simultaneously, the 107 students made self-efficacy judgments about their capability in solving mathematics problems. The two sets of judgments were tested for predicting students' mathematics performance. Also, students' prior mathematics achievement was studied for its influence on both teachers' and students' judgments and students' mathematics performance. Teachers were asked to make judgments of each student for every mathematics problem solved. Results were consistent with prior research indicating that students' mathematics self-efficacy beliefs were highly predictive of their performance. Path analysis indicated that the mathematics teachers' judgments were also highly predictive of students' performance and self-efficacy. In turn, these variables predicted students' postperformance judgments. Combining students' self-efficacy judgments and teachers' judgments of students increased predictiveness for students' mathematics performance. Educational implications were also discussed.

Achievement↗