13 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Qianli Yang, Zhihua Zhu, Ruoguang Si, Yunwei Li + 2 more
Human intelligence is characterized by our remarkable ability to solve complex problems. This involves planning a sequence of actions that leads us from an initial state to a desired goal state. Quantifying and comparing problem-solving capabilities across species and finding its evolutional roots is a fundamental…
Mattia Eluchans, Gian Luca Lancia, Antonella Maselli, Marco D’Alessando + 2 more
We humans are capable of solving challenging planning problems, but the range of adaptive strategies that we use to address them are not yet fully characterized. Here, we designed a series of problem-solving tasks that require planning at different depths. After systematically comparing the performance of participants…
Pizza Ka Yee Chow, Kenta Uchida, Itsuro Koizumi
Urban areas are expanding exponentially, leading more wildlife species to reside and settle in this environment. Urban environmental characteristics, such as human disturbance or green coverage, have been shown to affect some cognitive abilities such as innovative problem-solving performance of wildlife species.…
Tarun Khajuria, Kadi Tulver, Jaan Aru
Human vision is not merely a passive process of interpreting sensory input but can also function as a problem-solving process incorporating generative mechanisms to interpret ambiguous or noisy data. This synergy between the generative and discriminative components, often described as analysis-by-synthesis, enables…
Mengting Liu, Robert A. Backer, Rachel C. Amey, Chad E. Forbes
During performance in everyday contexts, multiple networks draw from shared executive resources to maintain attention, regulate arousal, and problem solve. At times, requirements for attention and self-regulation appear to be in competition for a “limited pool” of resources. How does the brain attempt to resolve…
Théophile Bieth, Marcela Ovando-Tellez, Alizée Lopez-Persem, Beatrice Garcin + 5 more
Problem-solving often requires creativity and is critical in everyday life. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying creative problem-solving remain poorly understood. Two mechanisms have been highlighted: forming new connections from and between the problem elements and insight solving (with a sudden…
Yuxuan Li, James L. McClelland
When we choose actions aimed at achieving long-range goals, proximal information cannot be exploited in a blindly myopic way, as relevant future information must often be taken into account. However, when long-range information is irrelevant to achieving proximal subgoals, it can be desirable to focus exclusively on…
Juan Pablo Franco, Peter Bossaerts, Carsten Murawski
Many everyday tasks require people to solve computationally complex problems. However, little is known about the effects of computational hardness on the neural processes associated with solving such problems. Here, we draw on computational complexity theory to address this issue. We performed an experiment in which…
Alexander V. Lebedev, Jonna Nilsson, Martin Lövdén
Researchers have proposed that solving complex reasoning problems, a key indicator of fluid intelligence, involves the same cognitive processes as solving working memory tasks. This proposal is supported by an overlap of the functional brain activations associated with the two types of tasks and by high correlations…
Michael J. Randazzo, Youssef Ezzyat, Michael J. Kahana
Neural activity associated with successful cognition appears as a tilt in the power spectrum of the local field potential, wherein increases in high-frequency power accompany decreases in low frequency power. Whereas this pattern has been shown in a wide range of memory tasks, it is unknown whether this increased…
Juan P. Franco, Karlo Doroc, Nitin Yadav, Peter Bossaerts + 1 more
The survival of human organisms depends on our ability to solve complex tasks in the face of limited cognitive resources. However, little is known about the factors that drive the complexity of those tasks. Here, building on insights from computational complexity theory, we quantify the computational hardness of…
Melanie N. French, Kalina Eneva, Jean M. Arlt, Angelina Yiu + 1 more
Eating disorders (EDs) are a serious public health concern, affecting about 5.2% of American women. The effects of negative affect on problem-solving and its psychophysiological correlates are poorly understood in this population. This study examined respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and skin conductance responses of…
Roland H. Grabner, Clemens Brunner, Valerie Lorenz, Stephan E. Vogel + 1 more
There is broad consensus that adults solve single-digit multiplication problems almost exclusively by fact retrieval (i.e., retrieval of the solution from an arithmetic fact network). In contrast, there has been a long-standing debate on the cognitive processes involved in solving single-digit addition problems. This…