Generation and Development of Strategy on a Logical-Deduction Task

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to assess the generation and development of strategic expertise during problem solving. 40 undergraduates solved four nontrivial logical-deduction problems in a 1-hr period. Even though the instructions were deliberately impoverished regarding strategic hints, orderly effective uniform strategies emerged near the outset of the problem-solving session, and they emerged at a faster rate than had been previously thought. The decision-making process underlying generation and development of strategy was nonMarkovian. The rapid emergence of expertise seen in this study seems to contrast with the view of strategic expertise implicit in much of the literature on problem solving, namely, that such expertise develops as a result of lengthy experience with the task.