Cognitive psychology
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.)
The three steps in analogical problem solving are 1) noticing a similar relationship between the source and target problem 2) mapping the correspondence between the source story and target and 3) applying the mapping to create a corresponding resolution to the target problem. (Goldstein, 2015)
A personal experience I have using analogical problem solving is an example from work. My target problem was one of my teammates had generated a sales order for an assembly (important to note here that we are make-to-order so we do not hold any stock of finished product) that our customer needed urgently. When placing the order, she entered the incorrect country code and it was not detected until the order was in transit. The order was stopped overseas with a clearance delay and we were having a hard time getting the shipment released.
The source problem was a few months back, our customer had inadvertently supplied us with an incorrect shipping address. After contacting the carrier, we could generate and supply all new customs documentation and commercial invoices to have the shipment released. Fortunately, this only delayed delivery to the customer by one day.
Once I received notice of the current order in transit to an incorrect destination, I could recall our previous venture (step one). Once I began mapping the correspondence, I noticed that the orders were both shipping to international locations and knew that our documentation would have to be corrected before the shipment could be released from customs to proceed to the final (corrected) destination. I then applied the mapping to the target problem by asking that our shipping department release updated documents and contact the carrier right away. Because we had contacted them with the documentation up front and did not have any communication delay, we were able to divert the shipment to reach the customer in time.
The step that was most difficult to achieve in this process was noticing a similar relationship. Part of my job is to problem solve so it’s what I do all day long, however when posed with this prompt I sat staring at a blank piece of paper for quite some time. Although my example is fairly simple and straight forward, my ability to recall the details of the requirements for the carrier in the source story helped us to reach a resolution much quicker and avoid any impact to our customer (if you work in customer service of any kind I’m sure you under how important this is!)
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