CHAPTER 11:

THINKING
Lecture 3

UKZN INSPIRING GREATNESS

 Schaie’s perspective on the
development of thinking in adulthood
• Schaie criticised the Piagetian approach for not considering how thinking develops beyond
adolescence.
• Schaie argued that adult thinking develops in different progressive stages:
• Achieving stage: During young adulthood, individuals use their intellectual competencies in the areas of
problem-solving and decision-making. (For example, they choose a partner and/or decide on a career.)

• Responsibility stage: Individuals are now required to be independent thinkers. (They must develop
their own solutions to problems and make their own decisions. E.g. with regards to their family and
community).

• Executive stage: Individuals in middle adulthood learn to apply their problem-solving and decision-
making skills to management situations, e.g. family, career, community.

• Reintegration stage: Individuals in late adulthood now use their accumulated intellectual skills to assess
life and to give meaning to their past.
Challenges to the Constructivist approach

• The constructivist approach attempted to establish universal

principles that lie behind thinking.
• It assumes that all humans of normal intellect are faced, at a general
level, with the same forms of adaptation and will therefore move in
the direction of more and more abstract thought.
• However, other theorists disagreed with this - people do not always
reason logically, although we are better at it in culturally appropriate
contexts.
 Reasoning

• Piaget’s focus on abstract, logical thinking came out of his interest in

the nature of scientific thinking.
• Reasoning is a characteristic of thinking in science.
• Reasoning refers to systematically drawing conclusions from
statements or facts.
• Two kinds of reasoning have received considerable attention:
deduction and induction
 Reasoning
• Deductive reasoning (deduction) involves working from
general statements to draw particular conclusions that
are true in relation to these statements e.g. syllogism.
• A syllogism is a particular form of deductive reasoning that
has two premises (propositions) that are followed by a
conclusion.

• For example:
• Proposition 1: All humans die before they are thirty.
• Proposition 2: I am a human.
• Conclusion: I will die before I am thirty.

• Deductive reasoning: general ideas lead to specific

conclusions.
 Reasoning
• Inductive reasoning (induction) is reasoning that draws
conclusions from particular cases. It is the process whereby
people project information from a known case or cases to an
unknown case or case.

• E.g. your home is broken into one night; even though you
previously felt safe, you now think that your house will be broken
into again the next night or some night in the near future.

• Inductive reasoning: specific observations lead to general

conclusions.
 The Information-
processing
approach
• In the 1960s, computers became highly efficient and
effective processors of information.
• The information-processing approach emerged; this
saw the computer as a useful metaphor for
understanding how humans process information.
• The IP approach worked to produce models to
describe the step-by-step ways that humans solve
problems.
• Problem solving involves searching through a
problem space (i.e., processing information to
achieve a goal). This problem space is defined
by a starting state and the steps to be taken to
reach the end state (the goal).
• A state–action analysis provides a description
of the states, steps and strategies taken within a
problem space.
Example of a state-action analysis
• Melissa bakes 25 chocolate chip cookies for a church fundraiser. Her sister Violet bakes 37 bran
muffins and her friend Cayleigh bakes 97 oats crunchies. How many baked goods did they bring in
total?
• 1. You are required to calculate the total number of baked goods that Melissa, Violet and Cayleigh
brought to the church fundraiser. This is the end state.
• 2. The starting state is the information given in the problem: the number of cookies, muffins and
crunchies.
• 3. The gap between these states creates the problem space.
• To solve the problem requires transforming the starting information into a form that provides an
answer to the question: what is the total number of baked goods?
• 25 + 37 + 97 = 159 baked goods in total.
Information-processing contd.

• The IP approach has gained useful information by comparing the

thinking of experts and novices.
• Experts are people who perform well on a particular task.
• Experts use more abstract ideas and interpret what they see in
terms of rules and principles. Experts also spend more time trying
to understand the nature of the problem before starting to solve
it. Experts often use their prior knowledge in solving problems.
Experts are also more aware of errors.
• Novices are new to the task.
 Information-processing contd.
• Challenges for the information-processing approach
• Many of the insights from the IP approach have come from
studies of problem-solving.
• There are, however, at least two kinds of problems: well-
defined and ill-defined problems:
• In a well-defined problem, the elements of the problem
are clearly defined, e.g. the starting state and the end state.
• In an ill–-defined problem, one or more of these elements
is/are unclear.

• In everyday life, many problems are ill-defined because there are no

clear solutions. Sometimes we do not even know what the starting
point is or what kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves.
So how applicable are the findings of the IP approach for
understanding the thinking behind the everyday problems of human
life?
• Problem solving strategies:

• People use a number of strategies in problem solving. These include algorithms,

heuristics, analogies, workingbackwards and means–end analysis.
• Algorithms – this is a step-by-step process that will ensure the achievement
of a goal/provide the solution. (e.g. a formula).
• When the number of possible solutions is too large, an algorithm may be
too time-consuming. In this case, heuristics may be used.
• Heuristics – is a short-cut method, a rule of thumb that reduces the problem
space.
• Analogies – these are heuristic devices that involve seeing a similarity
between a current problem and one that has been encountered in the past.
• Working backwards – this is a heuristic device that involves working
backwards from the end state of a problem to the starting state.
• Means-end analysis – this is a heuristic device that involves breaking down a problem
into a series of sub-problems. Each sub-problem is solved until a final solution to the
original problem is arrived at.
• (Example of means-end analysis: suppose your psychology textbook is stolen. The
solution to your problem could be to follow these steps: visit the psychology course
coordinator, make a list of all students who did the course previously, contact them,
arrange to buy one of their textbooks.)
Barriers to Problem-Solving:

• Mental set: occurs when problem-solvers continue to use the same solution they have used with
previous problems, even though there may be more efficient ways of solving a particular problem.
• Functional fixedness: occurs when problem-solvers focus on a particular characteristic of an
object, and fail to see alternative characteristics of the object that would assist in solving the
problem at hand.
Problem Solving
Divergent thinking is a thought
process used to generate creative
ideas by exploring many possible
solutions. It typically occurs in a
spontaneous, free-flowing, "non-
linear" manner, such that many
ideas are generated in an
emergent cognitive fashion.
Convergent thinking is the type
of thinking that focuses on coming
up with the single, well-
established answer to a problem.
It is oriented toward deriving the
single best, or most often correct
answer to a question.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the intellectually
disciplined process of actively and
skillfully conceptualizing, applying,
analyzing, synthesizing, and/or
evaluating information gathered from,
or generated by, observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief
and action.
The Socio-
historical
approach to
thinking
The socio-
historical approach
• The socio-historical approach argues that thinking
is a social process, and is linked to the interaction
between the individual and the setting in which the
thinking occurs.
• The Socio-historical approach argues that as
thinking develops in children, any function appears
twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the
individual level.
The socio-
historical
approach contd.

• Thus, the symbols, schemas and

scripts for thinking that are
internalised from social
interactions become the tools for
our own thinking.
• Thinking cannot be separated
from the social context in which it
is used.
The socio-
historical
approach contd.
• Vygotsky is regarded as the founder of
this approach.
• Believed that parents, caregivers,
peers, and the culture at large are
responsible for developing the brain's
higher-order functions.
• According to Vygotsky, learning has its
basis in interacting with other people.
• Once this has occurred, the
information is then integrated on the
individual level.
 • Unlike Piaget’s notion that children’s
The development must necessarily precede their
socio- learning, Vygotsky argued, “learning is a
necessary and universal aspect of the
historical process of developing culturally organized,
specifically human psychological function”
approach
• In other words, social learning precedes (i.e.,
contd. come before) development.
Socio-historical approach contd.

Studies of everyday thinking show that it differs from the kind of thinking that is studied
in more formal settings.

In everyday thinking, people incorporate aspects of the task environment into their
problem solving.

The socio-historical approach argues that thinking is domain specific; i.e. thought will
change across contexts and will be affected by the resources for thinking that are
available in that context.

This raises the cultural relativism debate; it also suggests that thinking is flexible and that
local knowledge should be accessed..
 Conclusion
• Thinking is not only one kind of activity and does not
have only one form.
• There are many kinds of thinking, and the structure and
nature of thought changes depending on the context
within which it occurs.
• Hence, psychologists will approach thinking from
different perspectives and each approach will tend to
investigate the type or form of thinking that relates to
that approach.
• As a result, there is no simple answer to the question:
what is thinking?
• This chapter has tried to capture some of the fascinating
and insightful ways psychologists answer this question.
They all add up to a rich picture of the complex and
changing nature of the human cognition.