Chapter 15 - Problem Solving and Situated Cognition

Summary

In the classical theory, the terms problem and task are interchangeable. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon introduced the expression task environment to designate an abstract structure that corresponds to a problem. It is called an environment because subjects who improve task performance are assumed to be adapting their behavior to some sort of environmental constraints, the fundamental structure of the problem. Task environments are differentiated from problem spaces, the representation subjects are assumed to mentally construct when they understand a task correctly. Puzzle and game cognition seems to fit the formal, knowledge-lean approach. The ideas of task environment and problem space have a formal elegance that is seductive. The four areas in which adherents of situated cognition ought to be offering theories are: hints, affordances, thinking with things, and self-cueing. Evidently, self-cueing helps beat the data driven nature of cognition.