Complete 6 pages APA formatted article: Describe Gick and Holyoak’s (1980) Experiment 4 and assess its contribution to the study of problem solving.

Complete 6 pages APA formatted article: Describe Gick and Holyoak’s (1980) Experiment 4 and assess its contribution to the study of problem solving. Use another empir. The solution to the problem was contained in the story. In experiment 1, 2 and 3, the subjects were given the hint of using the story to solve the problem and this produced systematic results when the experiment was repeated. In experiment 4 where the hint was omitted the there was a lower percentage of the subject succeeding in solving the problem. It was thus concluded that the hint was a crucial point in solving of the radiation problem. From this experiment, Gick and Holyoak discovered the conditions that are necessary in creating positive transfers of the story analogue used in solving radiation problems. When the experimental subjects were given analogue and were required to compare the similarities between the two analogs before being given the radiation problem, there was positive transfer from the story analogs to the solving of the radiation problem (Marshall 1995). Comparing two analogs assisted the subject in creating a solid schema that was used in solving new problems (Gick and Holyoak 1980). This paper gives a description of experiment 4 and the contributions it has made to the study of problem solving. Description of Experiment 4 In this experiment, the entire subject was given two story analogs. Four different stories were used where the subjects were either given two stories from the same domain either the fire fighter or the military domain. They could also be from different domains. The conditions that all the subjects were subjected were similar. The subjects were required to describe the analogs similarities. It was however discovered that there was no correlation between the analog similarities and solutions frequencies. The descriptions of the subjects were also studied for schema quality. It was observed that the subjects said that the diagrams that had been presented to them illustrated a similarity between the analogs (Runco & Pritzker 1999). These subjects were labeled as having goof schemas (Mandl & Levin 1989). It was observed that people who had been given interpretive diagrams of the analogs had a higher score in creating good schemas compared to those who did not receive any diagrams. It was observed that in cases of dissimilar analogs where the subjects were given tree diagrams, there was a high tendency to create good schemas. The creations of good schema correlated with higher frequencies in problems solving (Davidson 2003). This was not the same to similar analogs where good schema did not translate to high frequency of solutions. Gick and Holyoak contribution to the study of problem solving Gick and Holyoak studies showed that analogical reasoning is a process where knowledge is mapped from the source domain to the problem situations. Solving of the radiation problem required that the subjects draw some similarities and create a schema that relates the source and the target domain. The result from this experiment showed that analogical reasoning is dependent on two factors. One is the ability of recognize the problem situation such as in the case of creating a convergence schema. The other condition is creating a well arranged schema depending on prior knowledge (Gick and Holyoak 1980). It is thus seen that the prior knowledge that a person has about a certain problem is crucial in developing a working solution.