Neuropsychology
Topics
Brain-computer interfaces • Traumatic Brain Injury Brain regions • Clinical neuropsychology Cognitive neuroscience • Human brain Neuroanatomy • Neurophysiology Phrenology • Common misconceptions
Brain functions
arousal • attention consciousness • decision making executive functions • language learning • memory motor coordination • sensory perception planning • problem solving thought
People
Arthur L. Benton • David Bohm António Damásio • Phineas Gage Norman Geschwind • Elkhonon Goldberg Donald O. Hebb • Kenneth Heilman Muriel D. Lezak • Benjamin Libet Rodolfo Llinás • Alexander Luria Brenda Milner • Karl Pribram Oliver Sacks • Roger Sperry • H.M. • K.C.
Tests
Bender-Gestalt Test Benton Visual Retention Test Clinical Dementia Rating Continuous Performance Task Glasgow Coma Scale Hayling and Brixton tests Lexical decision task Mini-mental state examination Stroop effect Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Wisconsin card sorting task
Tools
Johari Window
Mind and Brain Portal
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Problem solving forms part of thinking. Neuropsychology is the applied scientific discipline that studies the structure and function of the Brain related to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors A brain-computer interface (BCI sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal Traumatic brain injury (TBI also called intracranial injury, occurs when Physical trauma injures the Brain. Anatomical regions of the brain are listed vertically following hierarchies that are standard in Neuroanatomy. Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-specialty of clinical Psychology that specialises in the diagnostic assessment and treatment of patients with Brain injury or Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrate underlying Cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates The human brain controls the Central nervous system (CNS by way of the Cranial nerves and Spinal cord, the Peripheral nervous system (PNS Neuroanatomy is the science for localizing function in the Human brain. Neurophysiology (from Greek grc νεῦρον neuron, "nerve" grc φύσις physis, "nature origin" and grc -λογία Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν phrēn, "mind" and λόγος Logos, "knowledge" is a defunct field of study once The human brain controls the Central nervous system (CNS by way of the Cranial nerves and Spinal cord, the Peripheral nervous system (PNS Wikipedia articles related to Brain Function Visual system Auditory system Olfactory system Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake Attention is the Cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things Consciousness has been defined loosely as a constellation of attributes of Mind such as Subjectivity, Self-awareness, Sentience, and the Decision making can be regarded as an outcome of mental processes ( cognitive process) leading to the selection of a course of action among several alternatives The executive system is a theorized Cognitive system in Psychology that controls and manages other cognitive processes In the Philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a Language that is spoken or written in phonemic-alphabetic or phonemically-related In the fields of Neuropsychology, Personal development and Education, Learning is one of the most important Mental function of humans In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information Gross motor coordination addresses the Gross motor skills walking running climbing jumping crawling lifting one's head sitting up etc In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. Planning in Organizations and Public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a Plan; and the psychological process of Thought and thinking are mental forms and Processes respectively ("thought" is both David Joseph Bohm ( December 20 1917, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania – October 27 1992, London) was an American António Rosa Damásio, GOSE, pron. ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (b Phineas P Gage (July 9? 1823 – May 21? 1860 was a railroad worker now remembered for his incredible survival of a Traumatic brain injury which destroyed one or both of Norman Geschwind (1926-1984 can be considered the father of modern Behavioral neurology in America Elkhonon Goldberg (b 1946 Riga, Latvia) is a Neuropsychologist and Cognitive neuroscientist known for his work in hemispheric specialization Donald Olding Hebb ( July 22, 1904 &ndash August 20, 1985) was a Canadian Psychologist who was influential in the area of Neuropsychology Kenneth M Heilman is an American Behavioral neurologist. Biography Early life and career Kenneth Heilman was born and raised in Brooklyn Muriel Deutsch Lezak is an American neuropsychologist best known for her book Neuropsychological Assessment, widely accepted as the standard in the field Benjamin Libet ( April 12, 1916 - July 23, 2007) was a researcher in the Physiology department of the University of California Rodolfo R Llinás (b Bogotá, Colombia in 1934 is the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the department of Physiology & Neuroscience Alexander Romanovich Luria Александр Романович Лурия ( July 16, 1902 - August 14, 1977) was a famous Soviet Dr Brenda Milner CC FRS (born 15 July 1918, Manchester England) has contributed extensively to the research literature Karl H Pribram (born February 25, 1919 in Vienna Austria) is a professor at Georgetown University and George Mason University Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE (born July 9, 1933, London is a British Neurologist residing in the United States who has written popular books about Roger Wolcott Sperry ( August 20, 1913 – April 17, 1994) was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who KC (Also known as Patient KC) is a famous patient in Neuropsychology who suffers from Anterograde amnesia and temporally graded Retrograde amnesia Neuropsychological tests are specifically designed tasks used to measure a psychological function known to be linked to a particular Brain structure or pathway The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test, or simply the Bender-Gestalt test, is a Psychological test first developed by child Neuropsychiatrist Lauretta The Benton Visual Retention Test (or simply Benton Test) is an individually administered test for ages 8-adult that measures Visual perception and Visual memory The Clinical Dementia Rating or CDR is a numeric scale used to quantify the severity of Symptoms of Dementia (i A Continuous Performance Task/Test, or CPT, is a Psychological test which measures a person's sustained and selective Attention and impulsivity The Glasgow Coma Scale or GCS, sometimes also known as the Glasgow Coma Score is a neurological scale which aims to give a reliable objective The Hayling and Brixton tests are Neuropsychological tests of Executive function created by psychologists Paul W The lexical decision task is a procedure used in many Psychology and Psycholinguistics experiments The mini-mental state examination ( MMSE) or Folstein test is a brief 30-point questionnaire test that is used to assess Cognition. Demonstration Say aloud the colors of each of these words as fast Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS is a general test of intelligence ( IQ) published in February 1955 as a revision of the Wechsler - Bellevue test The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST is a Neuropsychological test of "set-shifting" i A Johari window is a cognitive psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States used to help people better understand Thought and thinking are mental forms and Processes respectively ("thought" is both Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or fundamental skills (Goldstein & Levin, 1987). Intelligence (also called intellect) is an Umbrella term used to describe a property of the Mind that encompasses many related abilities such as the capacities Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines but is generally accepted to mean the process of awareness or thought It occurs if an organism or an artificial intelligence system does not know how to proceed from a given state to a desired goal state. System (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek systēma is a set of interacting or interdependent Entities, real or abstract It is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping. A problem is an obstacle which makes it difficult to achieve a desired goal objective or purpose Problem finding means problem discovery It is part of the larger problem process that includes Problem shaping and Problem solving. Problem shaping means revising a question so that the solution process can begin or continue

Contents 1 Overview 2 USA and Canada 3 Europe 4 Characteristics of difficult problems 5 Some problem-solving techniques 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

Overview

The nature of human problem solving methods has been studied by psychologists over the past hundred years. Mental health professional A psychologist is a practitioner of Psychology, the systematic investigation of the mind including Behavior, Cognition, There are several methods of studying problem solving, including; introspection, behaviorism, simulation and computer modeling, and experiment. Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of Conscious inner Thoughts desires and Sensations It is a conscious mental and usually Behaviorism or Behaviourism, also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior is a philosophy of Psychology based on the Simulation is the imitation of some real thing state of affairs or process A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a Computer program, or network of computers that attempts to simulate an In scientific inquiry an experiment ( Latin: Ex- periri, "to try out" is a method of investigating particular types of research questions or

Beginning with the early experimental work of the Gestaltists in Germany (e. Gestalt psychology (also Gestalt of the Berlin School) is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. g. Duncker, 1935), and continuing through the 1960s and early 1970s, research on problem solving typically conducted relatively simple, laboratory tasks (e. g. Duncker's "X-ray" problem; Ewert & Lambert's 1932 "disk" problem, later known as Tower of Hanoi) that appeared novel to participants (e. The Tower of Hanoi or Towers of Hanoi (also known as The Towers of Bramha) is a Mathematical game or Puzzle. g. Mayer, 1992). Various reasons account for the choice of simple novel tasks: they had clearly defined optimal solutions, they were solvable within a relatively short time frame, researchers could trace participants' problem-solving steps, and so on. The researchers made the underlying assumption, of course, that simple tasks such as the Tower of Hanoi captured the main properties of "real world" problems, and that the cognitive processes underlying participants' attempts to solve simple problems were representative of the processes engaged in when solving "real world" problems. Thus researchers used simple problems for reasons of convenience, and thought generalizations to more complex problems would become possible. Perhaps the best-known and most impressive example of this line of research remains the work by Newell and Simon (1972).

USA and Canada

In North America, initiated by the work of Herbert Simon on learning by doing in semantically rich domains (e. Herbert Alexander Simon ( June 15, 1916 February 9, 2001) was an American Political scientist whose research ranged Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from g. Anzai & Simon, 1979; Bhaskar & Simon, 1977), researchers began to investigate problem solving separately in different natural knowledge domains - such as physics, writing, or chess playing - thus relinquishing their attempts to extract a global theory of problem solving (e. Most generally domain knowledge is the Knowledge which is valid and directly used for a pre-selected Domain of human endeavor or an autonomous computer activity Chess is a recreational and competitive Game played between two players. g. Sternberg & Frensch, 1991). Instead, these researchers have frequently focused on the development of problem solving within a certain domain, that is on the development of expertise (e. An "expert" ( is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or Skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly justly g. Anderson, Boyle & Reiser, 1985; Chase & Simon, 1973; Chi, Feltovich & Glaser, 1981).

Areas that have attracted rather intensive attention in North America include such diverse fields as:

• Reading (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1991)
• Writing (Bryson, Bereiter, Scardamalia & Joram, 1991)
• Calculation (Sokol & McCloskey, 1991)
• Political decision making (Voss, Wolfe, Lawrence & Engle, 1991)
• Managerial problem solving (Wagner, 1991)
• Lawyers' reasoning (Amsel, Langer & Loutzenhiser, 1991)
• Mechanical problem solving (Hegarty, 1991)
• Problem solving in electronics (Lesgold & Lajoie, 1991)
• Computer skills (Kay, 1991)
• Game playing (Frensch & Sternberg, 1991)
• Personal problem solving (Heppner & Krauskopf, 1987)
• Mathematical problem solving (Polya, 1945; Schoenfeld, 1985)
• Social problem solving (D'Zurilla & Goldfreid, 1971; D'Zurilla & Nezu, 1982)

Europe

In Europe, two main approaches have surfaced, one initiated by Donald Broadbent (1977; see Berry & Broadbent, 1995) in the United Kingdom and the other one by Dietrich Dörner (1975, 1985; see Dörner & Wearing, 1995) in Germany. George Pólya (b December 13, 1887 &ndash d September 7, 1985, in Hungarian Pólya György) was a Hungarian Donald Eric Broadbent ( Birmingham, 1926 - April 10 1993) was an influential English experimental psychologist. Prof Dr Dietrich Dörner (born 1938 in Berlin is professor and dean for General and Theoretical Psychology at the Institute of Theoretical Psychology at the Otto-Friedrich The two approaches have in common an emphasis on relatively complex, semantically rich, computerized laboratory tasks, constructed to resemble real-life problems. The approaches differ somewhat in their theoretical goals and methodology, however. The tradition initiated by Broadbent emphasizes the distinction between cognitive problem-solving processes that operate under awareness versus outside of awareness, and typically employs mathematically well-defined computerized systems. The tradition initiated by Dörner, on the other hand, has an interest in the interplay of the cognitive, motivational, and social components of problem solving, and utilizes very complex computerized scenarios that contain up to 2,000 highly interconnected variables (e. g. , Dörner, Kreuzig, Reither & Stäudel's 1983 LOHHAUSEN project; Ringelband, Misiak & Kluwe, 1990). Buchner (1995) describes the two traditions in detail.

To sum up, researchers' realization that problem-solving processes differ across knowledge domains and across levels of expertise (e. g. Sternberg, 1995) and that, consequently, findings obtained in the laboratory cannot necessarily generalize to problem-solving situations outside the laboratory, has during the past two decades led to an emphasis on real-world problem solving. This emphasis has been expressed quite differently in North America and Europe, however. Whereas North American research has typically concentrated on studying problem solving in separate, natural knowledge domains, much of the European research has focused on novel, complex problems, and has been performed with computerized scenarios (see Funke, 1991, for an overview).

Characteristics of difficult problems

As elucidated by Dietrich Dörner and later expanded upon by Joachim Funke, difficult problems have some typical characteristics that can be summarized as follows:

• Intransparency (lack of clarity of the situation)
  • commencement opacity
  • continuation opacity
• Polytely (multiple goals)
  • inexpressiveness
  • opposition
  • transience
• Complexity (large numbers of items, interrelations, and decisions)
  • enumerability
  • connectivity (hierarchy relation, communication relation, allocation relation)
  • heterogeneity
• Dynamics (time considerations)
  • temporal constraints
  • temporal sensitivity
  • phase effects
  • dynamic unpredictability

The resolution of difficult problems requires a direct attack on each of these characteristics that are encountered. Prof Dr Dietrich Dörner (born 1938 in Berlin is professor and dean for General and Theoretical Psychology at the Institute of Theoretical Psychology at the Otto-Friedrich Joachim Funke (born July 19, 1953 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is professor for Experimental and Theoretical Psychology at the University In general usage complexity often tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement Heterogeneous is an adjective used to describe an object or system consisting of multiple items having a large number of structural variations Predictability (also called banality) refers to the degree that a correct Prediction or Forecast of a System 's state can be made either

In reform mathematics, greater emphasis is placed on problem solving relative to basic skills, where basic operations can be done with calculators. Reform mathematics is one name for mathematics instruction based on recommendations originally published in 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM However some "problems" may actually have standard solutions taught in higher grades. For example, kindergarteners could be asked how many fingers are there on all the gloves of 3 children, which can be solved with multiplication. ^[1]

Some problem-solving techniques

There are many approaches to problem solving, depending on the nature of the problem and the people involved in the problem. The more traditional, rational approach is typically used and involves, eg, clarifying description of the problem, analyzing causes, identifying alternatives, assessing each alternative, choosing one, implementing it, and evaluating whether the problem was solved or not.

Another, more state-of-the-art approach is appreciative inquiry. That approach asserts that "problems" are often the result of our own perspectives on a phenomena, eg, if we look at it as a "problem," then it will become one and we'll probably get very stuck on the "problem. " Appreciative inquiry includes identification of our best times about the situation in the past, wishing and thinking about what worked best then, visioning what we want in the future, and building from our strengths to work toward our vision. ^[2]

1. divide and conquer: break down a large, complex problem into smaller, solvable problems.
2. Hill-climbing strategy, (or - rephrased - gradient descent/ascent, difference reduction) - attempting at every step to move closer to the goal situation. For the analytical method called "steepest descent" see Method of steepest descent. The problem with this approach is that many challenges require that you seem to move away from the goal state in order to clearly see the solution.
3. Means-end analysis, more effective than hill-climbing, requires the setting of subgoals based on the process of getting from the initial state to the goal state when solving a problem.
4. Working backwards
5. Trial-and-error (also called guess and check)
6. Brainstorming
7. Morphological analysis
8. Method of focal objects
9. Lateral thinking
10. George Pólya's techniques in How to Solve It
11. Research: study what others have written about the problem (and related problems). Trial and error, or trial by error, is a general method of Problem solving for obtaining Knowledge, both Propositional knowledge and Know-how Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of Ideas for the solution to a Problem. Morphological analysis can refer to Morphological analysis (problem-solving or general morphological analysis a method developed by Fritz Zwicky for exploring The technique of focal object for Problem solving involves synthesizing the seemingly non-matching characteristics of different objects into something new Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist physician and writer George Pólya (b December 13, 1887 &ndash d September 7, 1985, in Hungarian Pólya György) was a Hungarian George Pólya 's 1945 Book How to Solve It is a small volume describing methods of Problem solving. Research is defined as Human activity based on Intellectual application in the investigation of Matter. Maybe there's already a solution?
12. Assumption reversal (write down your assumptions about the problem, and then reverse them all)
13. Analogy: has a similar problem (possibly in a different field) been solved before?
14. Hypothesis testing: assuming a possible explanation to the problem and trying to prove the assumption. Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring Information from a particular subject (the analogue or source to another particular subject (the target and A statistical hypothesis test is a method of making statistical decisions using experimental data
15. Constraint examination: are you assuming a constraint which doesn't really exist?
16. Incubation: input the details of a problem into your mind, then stop focusing on it. The subconscious mind will continue to work on the problem, and the solution might just "pop up" while you are doing something else
17. Build (or write) one or more abstract models of the problem
18. Try to prove that the problem cannot be solved. Where the proof breaks down can be your starting point for resolving it
19. Get help from friends or online problem solving community (e. g. 3form, InnoCentive)
20. delegation: delegating the problem to others. 3form Free Knowledge Exchange is one of the earliest examples of Human-based computation and Human-based genetic algorithm (Kosorukoff 1998 InnoCentive is an " Open innovation " company that takes Research and development problems in a broad range of domains such as Engineering,
21. Root Cause Analysis
22. Working Backwards (Halpern,2002)
23. Forward-Looking Strategy (Halpern, 2002)
24. Simplification (Halpern, 2002)
25. Generalization (Halpern, 2002)
26. Specialization (Halpern, 2002)
27. Random Search (Halpern, 2002)
28. Split-Half Method (Halpern,2002)

See also

Notes

1. ^ 2007 Draft, Washington State Revised Mathematics Standard
2. ^ Problem Solving

References

External links

• Computer Skills for Information Problem-Solving: Learning and Teaching Technology in Context
• Problem solving-Elementary level
• CROP (Communities Resolving Our Problems)
• Teach Kids Math With Model Method

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