Deductive Modeling of Human Cognition

This is the general idea of the problem space hypothesis. The part icular detai ls of the construct ion of a space and the search through it depends on the task and on the person who solves i t . For instance, if the task is simple, as in the item-recognition task <16> and the three-term ser ies task <8>, the process of constructing a problem space is t r i v i a l . The task is easi ly assimilated to the knowledge of the problem solver. A person w i l l probably also generate a strategy quickly and execute it immediately and the time to solution is short. In contrast, the Tower of Hanoi puzzle and the Missionaries and Cannibals problem are examples where a human problem solver may have troubles in constructing a relevant problem space and a strategy. The time to solution w i l l , of course, be longer compared to simple tasks.