Symposium on Problem Solving and Goal-Directed Sequential Activity

Background and Motivation Problem solving is one of the hallmarks of human cognition. The term covers a wide range of behaviors, including abilities for solving unfamiliar puzzles, designing new artifacts, generating extended plans, and pursuing complex routine activities. These each require people to carry out sequences of mental or physical steps to achieve their objectives. They can involve reasoning, subgoaling, recognizing alternatives, evaluating them, and guiding search through large spaces. The study of problem solving played a crucial role in the early development of cognitive science as a field. Research on this topic revealed basic insights about the representations and processes that underlie high-level cognition. Empirical studies of human problem solving provided some of the first evidence for the computational nature of human thinking, and related computational models led to major theoretical advances concerning heuristic search, goal processing, expert performance, and production systems. There is little question that, without its early emphasis on problem solving, cognitive science would be a very different discipline. In recent years work on this topic has been poorly represented at the annual Cognitive Science meeting. Some might draw the mistaken conclusion that research has stalled or that there remain no open issues. In fact, research has continued and has produced clear advances. Thus, problem solving or, more generally, goal-directed sequential activity is now typically understood within the context of the wider cognitive architecture, including how it uses domain-specific knowledge and heuristics in the service of goals. This symposium will draw together some of the recent work in this area, with the aims of highlighting progress and clarifying outstanding issues and contemporary research questions.