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ard the other string as far as you can, the other string is just barely
out of reach. In the corner of the room is a table with a screwdriver on it. Your task is to hold onto
both strings at the same time. To solve the problem, you must recognize that the screwdriver can be
tied to the bottom of the other string and used as a pendulum weight. Then you can swing that
string back and forth. While it is swinging, you can now grab the other string, pull it toward the
swinging string and grab it when it swings toward you. Functional fixedness often prevents people
from seeing how to properly use the screwdriver. (Note: Some problems are much easier to solve if
you can visually represent the problem. This is one of those problems. Students tend to have a much
easier time of it if they can see the situations represented in a drawing or photograph.)
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILES
Wolfgang K.hler (1887–1967)
K.hler was born in Estonia, grew up in northern Germany, and received his formal education at the
University of Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1909. K.hler trained under both Carl Stumpf and the
eminent physicist, Max Planck. While a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Frankfurt,
K.hler served as a research participant for Max Wertheimer in studies of the phi illusion. This
experience stimulated K.hler’s interest in such perceptual phenomena. With Werthiemer and
another Frankfurt colleague, Kurt Koffka, he sparked the Gestalt movement in psychology. While
stationed on Tenerife Island in the Canaries during World War I, K.hler conducted a classic
program of research on insight learning in apes. In 1925, The Mentality of Apes was published and
became a monumental contribution to Gestalt literature. In response to growing Nazism in Europe,
K.hler immigrated to the United States, assuming a position at Swarthmore College in 1935. During
his American tenure, K.hler received many awards and citations from scientific associations,
including presidency of the American Psychological Association in 1959.
Herbert Simon (b. 1916)
Herbert Simon is a modern Renaissance man. He is a creative and influential economist,
psychologist, political scientist, sociologist, computer scientist, and philosopher. Simon is best
known as the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. Simon departed from then classic
economic theory by describing how modern businesses, in an increasingly complex world that
contains more relevant information than they can use, reach decisions that do not maximize profits
but merely seek to reach satisfactory goals.
Simon has been a member of Carnegie-Mellon University’s psychology department since 1949. He
is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books on problem solving, models of thought,
discovery, organizations, public administration, and automation. Simon’s father, an electrical
engineer, and mother, an accomplished pianist, taught him that curiosity is the beginning of all
science and is to be encouraged in all areas. If there was a question or phenomenon the Simons
failed to understand, they immediately set out to find the answers and reasons.
Simon applied the same rigorous methodology to his college major, political science, and to other
social science pursuits employed in the “hard” sciences. As a result, his insight was demonstrated
to a variety of college participants, and led to his receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago
in 1943 despite his being involved in numerous academic and work projects.
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CHAPTER 9: COGNITIVE PROCESSES
His major professional life divides into two periods. In the first, from 1947 to 1958, he focused on
decisions, particularly in organizations. This is Simon’s work that is best known in economics,
political science, and sociology. Since 1958, Simon’s major interest shifted to human problem
solving and artificial intelligence. Much of his work, done in collaboration with Allen Newell, is
best known in psychology and computer science. Simon demonstrated how psychological
phenomena such as intelligent decision making could be simulated by modem high-speed
computers. These mechanical information processors could be programmed to play a winning
game of chess or to produce their own programs to solve a problem.
One of the programs he developed, now known as the General Problem Solver (GPS), involves a
strategy that many expert human problem solvers use. Called subgoal analysis, this strategy
involves two processes that follow each other in repeated cycles. The first is to determine
appropriate subgoals and select a promising one f
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