Course Textbook:
Goldstein, B. E. (2015). Cognitive psychology, connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th. ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Original Question:
The analogical problem solving process involves three steps. After reviewing these steps, describe a personal experience you remember in which you used analogical problem solving skills. Which step was the most difficult to achieve?
Be sure to cite and reference all outside materials, including the text book. All posts should include at least one outside source. If you use the text book your citation should look like this (Goldstein, 2015) in the body of your post. If you are making a direct quote, you should also include the page number (Goldstein, 2015, p. 20). At the end of your post you should include the following Reference listing:
Goldstein, B. E. (2015). Cognitive psychology, connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th. ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Reply to the following response with 200 words minimum. (please make response as if having a conversation, respond directly to some of the statements in below post.)
Analogical problem solving is a three step process that includes, noticing, mapping and applying. Noticing is making the connection between a story and a situation, mapping is where you can use the story to solve the problem and lastly applying is taking what mapping did and actually applying it to the situation or problem. (Goldstein, 2015).
I think it is safe to say I have encountered areas where each of these have been a struggle. While the text refers to applying as being the most difficult area in analogical problem solving, I tend to find the applying part is most difficult. (Goldstein, 2015).
At work I often use analogical problem solving to illustrate and issue or describe a potential solution, I have absolutely no problem telling my co workers how are issue relates to another "story" of sorts and I can also help them see how we get to the solution but I can never seem to close the deal. I can lead the horse to water but I can't make it drink. Right now I seem to be pushing my mental capacity for problem solving because I can't think of one decent example!
At my office, I run a lot of the procedural things, paperwork, processes and a lot of administrative tasks. One of my co workers came up and was asking a lot of questions about a particular procedure, so I spelled it out for her... I related it to clicker training a dog. I said when you do this procedure correctly; I will reward you with the next step. Much like when a dog does something you want it to do, you click the button and provide praise, move along to the next thing.
I went over and over the procedure, explain in words, showing her, having her teach back to me and when she was left to her own devices... fail! No click! So in my opinion I was able to make the analogical relation to something she was familiar with, I was able to show her how clicker training and our procedure worked yet she wasn't able to make the final connection and that is where I find it very difficult.
I'm not entirely sure my example was the best one out of the bunch but it's something right J I think problem solving is so individualized and I love brainstorming new ideas to solve reoccurring problems.
What I really enjoy doing is digging into problems and finding the root cause of the problems and attacking that, versus attacking the surface level problems. Right now I'm dealing with some back and neck issues and only my symptoms are being treated the cause of the problem (bulging discs) are not being addressed. I guess that is another problem I could have broken down this week for an example.