Consequences of History-Cued and Means-End Strategies in Problem Solving

There are two broad processes that people can use when attempting to solve a problem. The first of these is a means-ends strategy in which attempts are made to reduce differences between a given problem state and a goal or subgoal. Moves are generated by the goal or subgoals. The second is a history-cued process in which people use previous moves to generate subsequent moves. It is suggested that a means-ends strategy tends to reduce transfer effects. A history-cued strategy may facilitate rule induction, which in turn may be an important contributing factor to transfer. A series of four experiments using hybrid problems that are soluble either by rule induction or by means-ends analysis supported the above suggestion. Two additional experiments indicated that with respect to the insoluble problem effect, the use of history-cued strategy was, of itself, insufficient to induce transfer effects. In order for transfer to occur, the structure of the problems and the manner in which they were presented had to be such as to ensure that problem solvers perceived a close relation between problems.