Teaching Thinking and Problem Solving
Research Foundations
John Bransford
Robert Sherwood
Nancy Vye
John Rieser
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ABSTRACT: The goal of effectively teaching reasoning,
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thinking, and problem solving is now being pursued with
new vigor. Research of the past decade provides productive
ways of viewing the processes underlying these capabilities
and their development. Bransford, Sherwood, Vye, and
Rieser focus on two general research approaches. Thefirst
derives from studies of individuals who are experts in par-
ticular domains and emphasizes the role of domain-spe-
cific knowledge. A second emphasizes general strategic
and metacognitive knowledge; ideally, people who develop
the ability to learn new information and to monitor their
current levels of proficiency will be able to function more
effectively in a variety of contexts. Bransford and his col-
leagues conclude that many existing programs that are
designed to teach thinking and problem solving involve
an emphasis on general skills and strategies in contrast
to domain-specific knowledge. They argue that these pro-
grams can be strengthened by focusing more explicitly on
domain knowledge, especially when students are helped
to understand how different ways of learning new knowl-
edge can affect their abilities to solve relevant problems.
--The Editors
The topic of teaching thinking and problem solving is
currently receiving a great deal of attention. One reason
is that increasingly fast-paced changes in society make it
necessary for people to think for themselves and to solve
novel problems (Simon, 1980); another is that assessments
of student achievement suggest that today's students may
be failing to develop effective thinking and problem-solv-
ing skills (e.g., National Assessment of Educational Prog-
ress, 1983).
Books such as Mann's (1979) history of cognitive
process training remind us that the goal of teaching
thinking and problem solving is not unique to the 1980s.
Attempts to achieve this goal have been espoused for cen-
turies and have stimulated a variety of suggestions for
increasing thinking. Many have focused on the need to
develop "mental discipline" by subjecting students to the
rigors of learning difficult subjects such as mathematics
and Latin. Mann (1979) cited Plato's arguments: "Arith-
metic stirs up him who is by nature sleepy and dull, and
makes him quick to learn, retentive, and shrewd. He
1078
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London, Canada
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makes progress quite beyond his natural powers" (p. 125).
Similar ideas were espoused by Sir Francis Bacon, who
favored the study of mathematics as a remedy to students'
lack of attention (Mann, 1979, p. 13). In the 1800s, many
educators argued that the study of Latin would develop
the mental discipline necessary to learn in any domain.
Research conducted during the 1940s and 1950s
(e,g., Dunker, 1945; Katona, 1940; Wertheimer, 1959),
and especially during the 1970s and 1980s, goes consid-
erably beyond a general emphasis on "mental discipline"
as the active ingredient underlying effective thinking and
problem solving. Our goal in this article is to discuss some
of the relevant research and to consider its implications
for the issue of teaching thinking and problem solving.
Our major emphasis is on the need for both (a) general
problem solving strategies and (b) specific knowledge that
is organized in ways that are appropriate for individual
needs.
Beyond Mental Discipline: An
Illustrative Study
A study conducted by Ericsson, Chase, and Faloon (1980)
provides an excellent illustration of how modern analyses
of problem solving go beyond a mere emphasis on mental
discipline. They worked with a college student who
wanted to solve a basic memory problem: to remember
long strings of digits. The student worked on this problem
for over one year. Given a sequence of numbers such as
74189426, for example, the task was to repeat the num-
bers in the exact order in which they were heard. Most
adults can remember from 6 to 9 numbers with little
difficulty (e.g:, Miller, 1956); the.student who participated
in the Ericsson et al. study was no exception to this pattern
when he first began the experiment. By the end of the
study, however, the student's digit span had increased in
length from 7 digits to over 70 digits. This represents an
incredible improvement in performance. What happened
that allowed such a feat?
The critical data in the Ericsson et al. (1980) study
involved the student's ability to remember letter strings
rather than number strings. Although the student could
remember strings of over 70 numbers by the end of the
experiment, he could remember only about 7 letters. This
shows that his general capacity for holding information
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
Copyright 1986 by the American l~yehologieal Association, Inc. 0003-066X/86/$00.75
V01. 41, No. 10, 1078-1089
 in short-term memory had not been "stretched" or in-
creased. The reason for the student's dramatic improve-
ment was that he had learned to use his extensive knowl-
edge of running (e.g., names and dates of races, ages of
runners, running times) to chunk three or four numbers
together to form single functional units. These chunks
could then be grouped into higher order units for later
recall. This general strategy was impossible when letter
strings were used as stimuli, hence the student's short-
term memory for this information was no better than
average.
We noted earlier that one way to characterize the
effects of the student's long hours of practice is to assume
that it strengthened some general "mental muscle" or
"mental faculty." An alternate theory stresses the devel-
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opment and utilization of an appropriate knowledge base.
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These theories have important implications for teaching.
If a student practiced remembering number strings yet
made little progress, a mere emphasis on trying to exert
some "mental discipline" in order to "build mental mus-
cle" would probably be less than useful. It would be more
effective to help the student acquire knowledge that could
provide a basis for encoding numerical information, and
to help him or her automatize the ability to encode nu-
merical information from the perspective of that domain
(e.g., Schneider & Fisk, 1982; Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977).
Of course, the results of the Ericsson et al. (1980) study
do not suggest that attempts to be disciplined are un-
important for the development of problem-solving abil-
ities. The argument is simply that exhortations to try
harder are not enough.
The Role of Specific Knowledge
The preceding study by Ericsson et al. (1980) is one of a
large number of studies that illustrate the role of specific
knowledge for problem solving. A number of researchers
have provided insights into the role of knowledge by
comparing experts with less experienced individuals. In
a classic study by deGroot (1965), an attempt was made
to understand why chess masters were better at chess than
were skilled yet less accomplished players. One of de-
Groot's initial hypotheses was that masters could think
of more possible moves than could novices; deGroot also
believed that masters could think further ahead than oth-
ers and hence could calculate the strengths and weaknesses
of various moves. He explored these hypotheses by pre-
senting masters and less experienced players with ex-
amples from chess games and asking them to choose the
next move. He also asked the participants to think aloud
as they attempted to make their choices. Contrary to ini-
Experiments reported in this article were supported in part by Contract
MDA903-84-C-0218 from the Army Research Institute, by Grant
G0083C0052 from the U.S. Department of Education, and by a grant
from the IBM Corporation. We are indebted to Beverly Conner, Lynda
Berry, Linda Karwedsky, and Jackie Welch for their outstandin~ editorial
help.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John
Bransford, Department of Psychology, Vanderhilt University, Nashville,
TN 37203.
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
tial expectations, the masters did not think of a greater
number of moves than did the less experienced players,
nor did the masters think further ahead (i.e., choose a
move and then consider its implications for the next 10
or so moves). Instead, the masters' initial choices of moves
simply seemed to be qualitatively superior to those of the
less experienced players.
These results suggested a second hypothesis to
deGroot. Because of their experiences, chess masters may
have developed a knowledge base that allows them to per-
ceive the significance of various game positions and hence
to generate qualitatively superior moves. As one test of
this knowledge-base hypothesis, deGroot presented mas-
ters and less experienced players with a view of a chess
game for only five seconds and then asked them to re-
produce the game (using new pieces and a new board) as
accurately as they could. Results indicated the chess mas-
ters were excellent at this short-term memory task,
whereas less experienced players had considerable diffi-
culty. Subsequent studies (Chase & Simon, 1973) dem-
onstrated that the masters' superior performance was not
due to a superior short-term memory capacity. When
supplied with chess pieces on a board that were placed
at random, the chess masters were no better than others
at remembering which piece went where; thus, their
knowledge base did not help them encode randomly
placed pieces. When the chess configurations were mean-
ingful, however, the experts were better able to perceive
relevant patterns than were the less experienced players,
hence their abilities to remember were enhanced.
Studies comparing experts and less experienced in-
dividuals have also been made in areas such as engineer-
ing, computer programming, social science, reading
comprehension, physics, medical diagnosis, and mathe-
matics (e.g., R. Anderson, 1977, 1984; Bhaskar & Simon,
1977; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; deKleer & Brown,
1981; Greeno, 1980; Larkin, McDermott, Simon, & Si-
mon, 1980; Lesgold, Feltovich, Glaser, & Wang, 1981;
Linn, 1985; Mayer, 1983, 1985; Resnick, 1982; Riley,
Greeno, & Heller, 1983; Trabasso Stein, & Johnson, 1981;
Voss, Greene, Post, & Penner, 1983). In each of these
studies, effective problem solving has been shown to de-
pend strongly on the nature and organization of the
knowledge available to individuals (see J. Anderson, 1983;
Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977; Schank & Abelson, 1977,
for theories of knowledge representation).
Understanding Developmental and
Intraindividual Differences
An emphasis on the role of knowledge has had important
implications for theories of development and of individual
differences. Earlier theories of development such as
Piagetian stage theories (e.g., Piaget, 1970) assumed that
development consists of the addition of capacities to the
child's repetoire. Newer views of development also ac-
knowledge that children become more effective at orga-
nizing information, solving problems, and so forth (e.g.,
A. Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983).
However, theorists who are exploring these newer views
1079
 hypothesize that many of these abilities emerge simply
from the acquisition of new knowledge. This is different
from the assumption that general "logical capacities" have
been added to the child's repertoire of skills.
Consider first some of the developmental research
on strategies and memory. In the memory literature, it
is frequently argued that individuals at different devel-
opmental levels have different capacities for short-term
retention and utilize different strategies for rehearsing in-
formation, organizing it, and so forth (e.g., see A. Brown
et al., 1983). Several studies suggest that the knowledge
available to the learner plays an important role in memory
performance and in the strategies that are used. For ex-
ample, Chi (1978) demonstrated that 10-year-old chess
enthusiasts who received a test of short-term memory for
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number strings performed at a level that was considerably
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below college students. However, when asked to remember
the positions of chess pieces on a chess board, the per-
formance of the children exceeded the performance of
the college students (the latter were not experienced at
playing chess). Similarly, Lindberg (1980) found that
children show more evidence of clustering in a recall task
than do college students when the information is especially
meaningful to the children. These data suggest that pro-
cesses such as clustering are often a relatively automatic
consequence of previously acquired knowledge.
The availability of relevant knowledge has also been
shown to affect children's abilities to conserve number
and volume, to make inferences and take nonegocentric
perspectives, and to select task-appropriate strategies. For
example, Price-Williams, Gordon, and Ramirez (1969)
and Adjei (1977) studied the conservation of clay by chil-
dren of pottery-making parents. These children were ad-
vanced in this task, possibly because their familiarity with
the medium reduced attentional demands; they therefore
had enough attentional resources to notice simultaneous
changes in length, width, and thickness. Gelman's (1969)
classic work on number conservation provides additional
information about children's abilities to decentrate and
coordinate information. These abilities are evident for
small numbers of items. When the number of items be-
come too large, the information-processing requirements
seem to overwhelm children's abilities to perform number
conservation tasks.
Other researchers have explored the conditions under
which children can make transitive inferences and take
multiple perspectives. Bryant and Trabasso ( 1971) dem-
onstrated that young children could perform transitive
inference problems when the relational terms used in the
problems were well learned. Similarly, Rieser and Heiman
(1982) found that one- to three-year olds are not destined
to be slavishly egocentric or bound by rote learning when
given tasks involving spatial knowledge. In addition,
Donaldson (1978) reported studies indicating that young
children can take the perspective of other, hypothetical
observers when the spatial layout is kept simple and
meaningful. Finally, Siegler and Shrager (1984) provided
an elegant analysis of how differences in the representation
of knowledge affect children's decisions to use different
1080
strategies such as counting on their fingers or attempting
to retrieve information directly from memory, and Carey
(1985; this issue, pp. 1123-1130) provides important in-
sights into ways in which children's developing knowledge
of science information affects their performance on a va-
riety of tasks.
Overall, the "new look" in developmental theory is
providing important information about relationships be-
tween specific knowledge and activities such as inferene-
ing, organizing, conserving, decentrating, and so forth.
These advances suggest that thinking abilities are not
simply added on top of existing domain-specific com-
petencies. Instead, competencies in a domain and the
ability to think about that domain seem to develop hand
in hand.
Access and the Representation of Knowledge
It is important to note that theorists who emphasize the
role of knowledge in problem solving go considerably
beyond the idea that relevant knowledge either is or is
not available. Knowledge theorists argue that an impor-
tant prerequisite for problem solving is that knowledge
must be activated when needed. The fact that people have
acquired knowledge that is relevant to a particular situ-
ation provides no guarantee that access will occur (e.g.,
Bransford & Johnson, 1972, Experiment 2; Dooling &
Lachman, 1971). Many years ago, Alfred North White-
head (1929) warned about the dangers of inert knowl-
edge-knowledge that is accessed only in a restricted set
of contexts even though it is applicable to a wide variety
of domains. He also argued that traditional educational
practice tended to produce knowledge that remained inert
(see also Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1985; A. Brown, 1985;
A. Brown & Campione, 1981).
An implication of Whitehead's position is that some
ways of imparting information result in knowledge rep-
resentations that are not especially accessible. As an il-
lustration, consider the following question that was posed
to college freshmen (Bransford, Sherwood, Kinzer, &
Hasselbring, 1985): "Try to remember what you learned
about the concept of logarithms. Can you think of any
way that they might make problem solving simpler than
it would be if they did not exist?"
The college students who were asked this question
were able to remember something about logarithms.
However, most viewed them only as exercises in math
class rather than as useful inventions that simplify prob-
lem solving. These students had not been helped to un-
derstand the kinds of problems for which logarithms are
useful. Similarly, many students seem to learn to calculate
the answers to physics problems yet fail to apply their
formal physics knowledge when encountering everyday
phenomena. They need to learn more about the condi-
tions under which their formal knowledge applies (e.g.,
di Sessa, 1982).
Studies of Access
A number of investigators have begun to conduct con-
trolled studies of relationships between access and the
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
 nature and organization of knowledge. For example,
studies conducted by Asch (1969), Gick and Holyoak
(1980), Simon and Hayes (1976, 1977), Perfetto, Brans-
ford, and Franks (1983), Reed, Ernst, and Banerji (1974),
and Weisberg, DiCamillo, and Phillips (1978) provide ev-
idence that relevant knowledge often remains inert even
though it is potentially useful. Simon and Hayes (1976,
1977) noted that students who learned how to solve the
Tower of Hanoi problem did not spontaneously realize
that it is structurally isomorphic to the "tea ceremony"
problem. Similarly, Gick and Holyoak (1980) showed
that, unless students were explicitly prompted to do so,
they did not spontaneously use information that they had
just learned about the solution to the Fortress problem
to solve an analogous problem (Dunker's 1945, X-irra-
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diation problem) that they faced.
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In the Perfetto et al. (1983) studies, an attempt was
made to provide students with cues that were very closely
related to problems to be solved later. The problems to
be solved were "insight" problems such as the following:
Uriah Fuller, the famous Israeli superpsychic, can tell you the
score of any baseball game before the game starts. What is his
secret?
A man livingin a smalltown in the U.S. married twentydifferent
women in the same town. All are still living and he has never
divorced one of them. Yet, he has broken no law. Can you ex-
plain?
Most college students have difficulty answering these
questions unless provided with hints or clues. Prior to
solving the problems, some students were given clue in-
formation that was obviously relevant to each problem's
solution. Thus, these students first received statements
such as "Before it starts the score of any game is 0 to 0";
"A minister marries several people each week." The stu-
dents were then presented with the problems and explic-
itly prompted to use the due information (which was
now stored in memory) to solve them. Their problem-
solving performance was excellent. Other students were
first presented with the clues and then given the problems,
but they were not explicitly prompted to use the clues
for problem solution. Their problem-solving performance
was very poor; in fact, it was no better than that of baseline
students who never received any clues.
The Perfetto et al. (1983) results represent an espe-
cially strong demonstration of access failure (i.e., of inert
knowledge) because the clues were constructed to be ob-
viously relevant to problem solutions. Indeed, the authors
noted that before conducting the experiment, they ex-
pected even the uninformed students to spontaneously
access the correct answers because of the obvious rela-
tionship between the problems and the clues.
A number of researchers have also found that
knowledge of general strategies may remain inert unless
people are explicitly prompted to use them. For example,
children may be taught to (a) organize lists of pictures
and words into common categories, (b) rehearse the cat-
egory names during learning, and (c) use the names as
retrieval cues at time of test. Data indicate that when the
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
children are explicitly encouraged to use such strategies,
their memory performance improves. However, when
later provided with new lists and asked to learn them, the
children frequently fail to spontaneously use their clus-
tering strategies unless they are explicitly prompted to do
so. Their knowledge of relevant strategies remains inert
(A. Brown et al., 1983; A. Brown, Campione, & Day,
1981).
Facilitating Access
In order to explore relationships between knowledge or-
ganization and access, researchers have manipulated the
nature of the information that is presented during learn-
ing. In the studies described above, the information was
generally presented as descriptions of facts to be learned.
Under these conditions, students failed to access the rel-
evant information unless explicitly prompted to do so.
Theorists such as John Dewey (1963) and Norman Han-
son (1970) argued that students need to understand how
new information can function as tools that make it easier
to solve subsequent problems. Similarly, modern theories
that emphasize organized knowledge structures focus on
the importance of acquiring "conditionalized knowl-
edge"--knowledge that includes information about the
conditions and constraints of its use (e.g., J. Anderson,
1981, 1982, 1983; Glaser, 1984, 1985; Simon, 1980;
Sternberg & Caruso, 1985).
A series of studies by Gick and Holyoak (1983)
demonstrates that access is facilitated when previous ex-
periences provide a basis for inducing relevant schemata.
Similarly, experiments conducted by Adams et al. (1985)
illustrate how access is facilitated by learning activities
that help students experience problems and then expe-
rience the usefulness of information for solving those
problems. Analogous studies have been conducted with
materials that are less puzzlelike and more similar to those
found in the classroom (Sherwood, Kinzer, Bransford, &
Franks, 1985).
Researchers have also explored how access is affected
by the content of the problems considered during learn-
ing. For example, Vye and Bransford (cf. Bransford, in
press) presented information about human attention to
two different groups of college students. Those in one
group learned about experimental techniques for studying
attention (e.g., the use of dichotic listening tasks); those
in the second group were encouraged to think about lapses
of attention and the need to control attention (e.g., when
studying for a test, listening to a lecture, or talking on the
phone while conversing with someone in the room).
Following acquisition, all students were asked to re-
call what they had learned about attention, and all did
quite well. However, the interesting data were collected
two days after the initial experiment. Students were asked
to estimate how often they had thought about the concept
of attention once they had left the experiment and to
state the conditions under which these thoughts occurred.
Students in the group who had explored the problem of
designing and interpreting experiments for studying at-
tention rarely reported thinking about the concept once
1081
 they left the experiment. In contrast, those who had been
prompted to think about lapses of attention reported that
they thought about the concept of attention quite fre-
quentlymusually in the context of studying or sitting in
lectures. These data suggest that it may be possible to
keep ideas alive by paying more attention to the types of
social situations that people naturally encounter once they
leave the classroom.
Taken as a whole, studies of access suggest that stu-
dents need to understand how concepts and procedures
can function as tools for solving relevant problems. This
type of learning should result in knowledge representa-
tions that are organized with respect to the "triggering
conditions" specifying their applicability (Simon, 1980).
Under these conditions, access to relevant information
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seems to be much more likely to occur.
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Studies of Differences in Approaches to
Learning and Problem Solving
So far we have emphasized the importance of specific
knowledge for thinking and problem solving. An em-
phasis on knowledge raises questions about learning (e.g.,
J. Anderson, 198 I; Belmont, Bntterfield, & Borkowski,
1978; Bransford, Stein, Shelton, & Owings, 1980; A.
Brown et al., 1983; Campione, Brown, & Bryant, 1985;
Dansereau, 1985; Glaser, 1984; Jones, Amiran, & Katims,
1985; NeweU, 1980; Nickerson, Salter, Shepard, &
Herrnstein, 1984; Norman, 1980; Novak & Gowen 1984;
Sternberg, 1984; Turnure, 1985; Turnure, Buium, &
Thrulow, 1976; Vye, Burns, Delclos, & Bransford, in
press; Weinstein & Underwood, 1985). How did people
who currently are experts acquire knowledge in the first
place, and why do some people seem to be better able to
acquire relevant knowledge than others? These questions
have led to studies of how people make use of their po-
tentially available knowledge to learn new information.
For example, students who learn in ways that ensure an
understanding of the significance or functions of infor-
mation should be more likely to develop organizations of
knowledge that facilitate access when relevant problems
arise. Furthermore, if these students find that insufficient
information is presented they are able to recognize the
problem and "debug" their current attempts to learn.
The task of acquiring new information can be viewed
as an instance of problem solving. A number of theorists
argue that there are a variety of components to the prob-
lem-solving process (e.g., B. Anderson, 1980; de Bono,
1985; Hayes, 1981; Maier, 1930, 1931; Mayer, 1977;
Newell & Simon, 1972; Sternberg, 1977, 1981; Whimbey
& Lochhead, 1980; Wickelgren, 1974). For present pur-
poses we emphasize five components: Identify, Define,
Explore, Act, and Look and Learn. These form what
Bransford and Stein (I 984) called the IDEALapproach to
problem solving.
As an illustration of a problem-solving approach to
learning, imagine an effective learner who is reading a
text and who encounters the statement "The notes were
sour because the seam split." Unlike a less effective learner
1082
who may simply be going through the motions of reading
while actually daydreaming, the effective learner will re-
alize that a problem exists (i.e., he or she will identify the
existence of a problem). Furthermore, the effective learner
views the act of identifying problems as good rather
than bad.
After the problem has been identified it must be
defined more precisely. For example, a reader may assume
that the "notes" sentence is incomprehensible because of
a lack of information. The reader may also assume that
his or her attention lapsed earlier and hence he or she
missed crucial information in the text, This definition of
the problem (or hypothesis) will lead to the exploration
of possible solutions--an obvious one in this instance
being to go back and reread the previous text. The student
must therefore act on this idea by actually rereading and
must then look at the effects of his or her activities; that
is, he or she must evaluate whether these activities helped
solve the problem of understanding what the "notes"
sentence means.
Assume that the act of rereading does not solve the
student's comprehension problem. To the extent that the
student realizes this, he or she has again identified a prob-
lem but will now probably define it in a different way
(e.g., perhaps the author left out important information).
The point is that the effective learner will therefore reenter
the IDEAL cycle and remain in that cycle (each time de-
fining the problem somewhat differently) until the prob-
lem is solved.
It would simplify matters if it were possible to iden-
tify the "stage" of problem solving that accounted for the
difficulties experienced by less effective learners. However,
it seems doubtful that learning difficulties can be asso-
ciated with only one or even two or three stages. Research
suggests that less effective learners frequently experience
difficulties with each of the components noted above.
Consider first the process of problem identification
or problem finding. This is an especially important aspect
of problem solving (e.g., Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi,
1976). If people do not realize the existence of a problem
one cannot expect them to look for a solution. Several
researchers report that less mature learners are less likely
to notice problems. For example, they frequently fail to
notice when texts contain incomplete or inconsistent in-
formation (e.g., Baker, 1979, 1982; Baker & Brown, 1984;
Capelli & Markman, 1982; Markman, 1979, 1985). Less
successful learners are also less likely to notice whether
passages are easy or difficult to learn; hence they fail to
vary their study time as a function of the difficulty of the
task (e.g., Bransford et al., 1982; Owings, Peterson,
Bransford, Morris, & Stein, 1980). At a global level, less
successful learners are frequently unaware that they have
failed to comprehend or master information. They fail
to experience a "sense of disequilibrium" (cf. Feuerstein,
Rand, Hoffman, & Miller, 1980) and hence do nothing
to attempt to correct the current state of affairs.
People can agree that a problem exists (problem
identification) yet disagree about how it should be defined
and represented. Problem definition is extremely impor-
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
 tant because it influences the types of solutions that will
be considered (e.g., Maier, 1930, 1931; Newell & Simon,
1972). Results of several studies suggest that less successful
students frequently have difficulty defining the source of
learning problems. For example, they may have difficulty
determining whether a monetary lack: of comprehension
stems from problems at the word, sentence, or paragraph
level (Collins & Smith, 1980). Similarly, studies with ac-
ademically less successful fifth graders suggest that they
may know that some things are easier to learn than others,
but they fail to realize that the arbitrariness of semantic
relationships can be responsible for difficulties (e.g., B.
Stein, Bransford, Franks, Owings et al., 1982). Therefore,
the strategies they use often do not fit the nature of the
problem that they need to solve.
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Work in the area of reasoning also suggests that an
important source of individual differences involves at-
tempts to define carefully the nature of reasoning prob-
lems (e.g., see Ennis, in press; Greeno, 1978; Johnson-
Laird, 1985; Paul, in press; PeUegrino, 1985). For ex-
ample, both Sternberg and Pellegrino emphasized that
students who are successful at solving formal analogy
problems frequently take more time to encode the initial
problem information than do less successful problem
solvers. This is important for clarifying the exact nature
of the problem that they are being asked to solve (e.g.,
Pellegrino, 1985; Sternberg, 1977, 1981).
As noted above, problem definition affects the ex-
ploration phase of problem solving because one's defi-
nition of problems involves assumptions that constrain
the search for solutions. For example, effective learners
use different strategies when they are trying to achieve
goals such as memorize versus goals such as "learn with
understanding" (e.g., see Bransford & Stein, 1984; A.
Brown et al., 1983; Thorndyke & Stasz, 1980). Further-
more, learners who are better able to define the reasons
for comprehension and mastery failures are better able
to select the appropriate "repair" strategies to use (Collins
& Smith, 1980).
We noted earlier that the ability to solve learning
problems often requires a number of passes through the
IDEAL cycle. After identifying and defining problems,
people must act on the basis of a strategy and look at the
effects. A number of studies suggest that less successful
learners are less likely than their more successful peers
to revise current hypotheses and strategies. For example,
poorer readers frequently fail to reevaluate their hy-
potheses about how to interpret materials that they are
reading (e.g., Collins & Smith, 198(I). In addition, less
mature learners seem less likely to use tests as sources of
feedback that can guide their choice of strategies and hy-
potheses (e.g., A. Brown et al., 1983; B. Stein, Bransford,
Franks, Vye, & Perfetto, 1982). Because no one can always
accurately predict the kinds of information that will be
necessary in future situations, it seems important for
people to continually test their current ideas and to look
at the degree to which they are appropriate. Failures to
do so could have pervasive effects on their abilities to
learn.
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
The Concept of Metacognition
We noted earlier that researchers who have studied dif-
ferences in approaches to learning have tried to work with
materials that require knowledge that is potentially avail-
able to participants. The goal of the research has been to
assess the degree to which people spontaneously utilize
knowledge previously acquired. Results such as those de-
scribed earlier have led a number of researchers to argue
that people's ability to use what they know--to access
task-relevant informationDis an important hallmark of
intelligence (e.g., A. Brown & Campione, 1981; Butter-
field & Belmont, 1977; Sternberg, 1980, 1984). This con-
cern with the utilization of previously acquired knowledge
has led to an emphasis on the concept of executive or
metacognitive processes (e.g., A. Brown, 1977; A. Brown
& DeLoache, 1978; Flavell, 1979; Flavell & WeUman,
1977; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1985).
An important methodological tool for exploring the
role of metacognition has been the training study (A.
Brown et al., 1983). Researchers have provided individ-
uals with different types of learning opportunities and
assessed the effects on mastery tasks and transfer tasks.
In a discussion of this literature, A. Brown, Campione,
and Day (1981) noted that different types of teaching
environments have strong effects on transfer. Many of the
training studies that have resulted in failures of transfer
involved what A. Brown and her colleagues called blind
training. Individuals were taught to use strategies but were
not helped to understand why they were useful and when
they might be used.
A. Brown and her colleagues differentiated blind
training from informed training and from informed
training plus self-control. In informed training, students
are helped to understand when and why to use various
strategies. The informed plus self-control training adds
the opportunity to practice strategies and monitor their
effects (see A. Brown & Campione, this issue).
Experiments conducted by other investigators also
provide evidence that an emphasis on executive or meta-
cognitive processes can result in improvements in think-
ing and problem solving. Data from several studies illus-
trate how such training can increase learning (e.g., Paris,
Cross, & Lipson, in press; Paris & Jacobs, in press; Wong
1980, 1982; Wong & Sawatsky, 1984). Similarly, work by
Lodico, Ghatala, Levin, Pressley, and Bell (in press) il-
lustrates how executive training can help children learn
to select and evaluate new strategies. Furthermore, work
in the areas of writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1985;
Flower & Hayes, I980) and mathematical problem solving
(Schoenfeld, 1982, 1983, 1985)provides evidence for the
importance of a metacognitive or executive approach to
teaching. An exciting implication of these studies is that
it may be possible to help people improve their abilities
to think and learn in a wide variety of domains. Re-
searchers have also studied the types of early social en-
vironments that facilitate the development of the types
of skills that enable children to learn in formal educational
settings. Heath's (1983) work is particularly relevant here.
1083
 Relationships Between Executive Processes
and Specific Knowledge
Our discussion has emphasized two theoretical perspec-
tives that have implications for teaching thinking and
problem solving. One involves the role of domain-specific
knowledge, the other focuses on the role ofmetacognitive
or control processes. Individual studies frequently reflect
one of these theoretical perspectives to the exclusion of
the other, but that does not mean that they are incom-
patible. Indeed, in most studies, relationships between
training in executive processes and in specific knowledge
are confounded. For example, although research illus-
trating the advantages of"informed" training on transfer
emphasizes the effects on metacognitive processes (e.g.,
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
A. Brown et al., 1983), it seems clear that this type of
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
training also affects the nature and organization of the
knowledge acquired by learners. The acts of (a) informing
them about uses of strategies and (b) allowing them to
practice and evaluate the effects, help students "condi-
tionalize" their knowledge. As noted in our earlier dis-
cussion of access and the problem of inert knowledge,
such knowledge organizations increase the probability
that relevant information will be accessed when needed.
By placing more emphasis on the systematic development
of well-organized knowledge in addition to executive
processes, it may be possible to increase considerably the
speed with which people can become able to think effec-
tively in a variety of knowledge-rich domains (see also
N. Stein, in press).
Take the example of deciding whethcr to buy a soft-
top jeep. Recently, one of the authors bought one after
weighing the pleasure of open-air summer rides against
the inconveniences of drafty winter rides and having to
raise the top manually. Three days later, when the radio
was stolen, the oversight of not considering the soft-top
jeep's vulnerability to theft became apparent.
There are several ways to think about the preceding
shortcomings in thinking about the jeep. At one level we
can fault the individual's attempts to systematically search
memory in order to access relevant categories for eval-
uation. Our decision maker may have been too impulsive
and hence prematurely ended his memory search. On the
other hand, something needs to guide one's search of
memory. The research with chess masters discussed earlier
suggests that they search memory selectively rather than
evaluate every possible move. The ability to search selec-
tively should be affected by the organization or represen-
tation of knowledge. For example, the knowledge rep-
resentation of a person who has owned a soft-top jeep
that was broken into will have information such as "easily
accessible to burglars" linked directly to jeep. Because of
this organization of the knowledge base, failures to assess
such information should be much less likely to occur.
Metacognition and Teaching
Research on both metacognitive, or control, processes
and domain-specific knowledge has important implica-
tions for teaching thinking and problem solving. Consider
1084
first the emphasis on metacognition. Analyses of a num-
ber of existing programs for teaching thinking and prob-
lem solving suggest that they vary with respect to their
emphasis on metacognitive or executive processes (e.g.,
see Chipman, Scgal, & Glaser, 1985; Segal, Chipman, &
Glaser, 1985; Tuma & Reif, 1980). Programs such as In-
strumental Enrichment (Feuerstein ct al., 1980), Philos-
ophy for Children (Lipman, 1985), Analytic Reasoning
(Lochhead, 1985), Intelligence Applied (Sternberg, 1986),
Patterns of Problem Solving (Rubenstr 1975, 1980),
and Guided Design (e.g., Wales & Stager, 1977) place a
heavy emphasis on the importance of helping students
analyze their current problem-solving processes and learn
about themselves as learners. Similarly, researchers in the
area of science education have emphasized the impor-
tance of helping students develop a conceptual and prac-
tical understanding of scientific reasoning and inquiry
skills rather than merely memorize scientific facts (e.g.,
Aarons, 1984a, 1984b; Lawson, 1985; Renner & Lawson,
1973). In contrast, many descriptions of attempts to teach
thinking by programming computers in Logo (e.g., Pap-
ert, 1980, 1985) place little explicit emphasis on the need
to systematically help students reflect on their approaches
to programming and to think about these activities as
instances of more general problem-solving strategies.
Some researchers argue that this lack of explicit focus on
mctacognitive processes may be a major reason why ev-
idence of general effects of Logo programming on think-
ing ability have proved to be so difficult to find (e.g.,
Bransford, Stein, DeMos, & Littlefield, 1986; Dclclos,
Littleficld, & Bransford, 1985; Pea & Kurland, 1984).
An especially promising aspect of metacognitive ap-
proaches to teaching is that they can be used to transform
basic fact- and skill-oriented activities into lessons in-
volving thinking. For example, Hasselbring, Goin, and
Bransford (1985) discussed work with math-delayed fifth
and sixth graders who were working on arcade-like soft-
ware designed to give them practice at basic addition
problems such as 7 + 8. The arcade program awarded
points for speed and accuracy. All the students wanted
to increase their scores. However, most had little idea of
how to "debug" their current approaches to the game.
For example, the vast majority paid little attention to the
fact that they often counted on their fingers and hence
could not significantly increase their speed until they
moved from productive to reproductive strategies
(Grceno, 1978). Furthermore, students knew the answers
to some problems (e.g., 5 + 5) and hence needed to mem-
orize answers to only a subset of the problems. Neverthe-
less, they did not spontaneously attempt to identify the
set of problems that would be most beneficial for them
to practice at home. With specific guidance from the
teacher, the students were prompted to view the arcade
game as a problem-solving situation, and they were helped
to debug their current approaches to the problem of in-
creasing their scores. Without the teaching, it is doubtful
that the students would have taken a "higher order think-
ing" approach to the development of "lower order" skills
(for additional discussion of the role of teaching in the
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
 development of problem-solving abilities, see Collins &
Stevens, 1982; Feuerstein et al., 1980; Vygotsky, 1978;
Wertsch, 1979; Wood, 1980).
Systematic Approaches to Knowledge Acquisition
Programs that emphasize metacognitive or executive
processes do not necessarily attempt to develop well-or-
ganized knowledge structures that can function as tools
for problem solving. For example, Feuerstein et al.'s
(1980) Instrumental Enrichment program is purposely
designed to involve problem situations that do not pre-
suppose a great deal of content knowledge. The use of
these types of problems can be very important, especially
for building confidence among students who have had a
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
number of failure experiences in academic settings (for
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
example, see Covington, 1985; Dweck & Elliott, 1983).
However, Feuerstein et al. also emphasized the need to
"bridge" from the Instrumental Enrichment exercises to
specific areas such as mathematics, reading, and so forth
(for example, see Bransford, Stein, Arbitman-Smith, &
Vye, 1985). Nevertheless, it can often be difficult for
teachers to bridge to other areasmespecially if these are
being taught by different teachers. Because of this, one
can often find evidence for positive effects of Instrumental
Enrichment in the context of everyday tasks such as plan-
ning a field trip yet see much less evidence in the context
of achievement tests--tests that generally presuppose the
availability of rich knowledge domains (for example, Ar-
bitman-Smith, Haywood, & Bransford, 1985).
Programs such as Philosophy for Children (e.g.,
Lipman, 1985) and Guided Design (Wales & Stager, 1977)
provide prototypes for teaching thinking in the context
of domains such as science, art, engineering, and so forth.
There certainly seems to be room for more approaches
such as these. In mathematics, for example, evidence sug-
gests that children often make a variety of systematic er-
rors because they rather blindly learn procedures rather
than understand how the information being presented
simplifies the solution to important, real-world problems
(e.g., J. Brown & Burton, 1978; Clement, 1982; Resnick,
in press; Sleeman, 1983; Soloway, Lochhead, & Clement,
1982). Similarly, students learning science are often asked
to memorize information about density, displacement,
and so forth yet are not helped to understand its value
for interpreting everyday situations and for solving prob-
lems. They therefore acquire facts rather than conceptual
tools (e.g., Bransford, in press; Bransford, Sherwood, &
Sturdevant, in press; di Sessa, 1982; Lochhead & Clement,
1979; Perkins, in press).
Theories of access should provide an important
framework for helping students learn to think and solve
problems. For example, it seems clear that instruction
that emphasizes memory for a variety of facts and defi-
nitions (a large number of introductory courses fit this
definition) will s e e m effective if we simply test students
on this information. However, data reviewed in the present
article suggest that this information will generally remain
inert even though it is relevant for various problems.
October 1986 9 American Psychologist
Directions for Future Research
Overall, it seems clear that research on thinking and
problem solving is thriving and is producing information
that has important implications for teaching. The results
of this research also suggest some issues that seem par-
ticularly fruitful to explore.
One set of issues centers around the concept of gain-
ing access to previously acquired knowledge. We noted
earlier that different ways of presenting information had
powerful effects on the degree to which relevant knowl-
edge was accessed when it was needed. Experimental par-
adigms such as those used by Gick and Holyoak (1980,
1983) can provide important information about access.
Work on the architecture of cognition and on the role of
different knowledge representations (e.g., J. Anderson,
1983; Simon, 1980) should provide the basis for well-
articulated theories about conditions under which access
occurs.
An emphasis on access also highlights the role of
perceptual learning and pattern recognition. Simon
(1980) noted this by pointing out the importance of help-
ing problem solvers learn to differentiate problem types
and the relation of different problem types to solutions.
The research illustrating more sophisticated performance
of learners and problem solvers in familiar compared to
unfamiliar domains also supports the idea that perceptual
learning may play an important role in problem solving.
The Gibsons (e.g., Gibson, 1969, 1982; Gibson & Gibson,
1955) emphasized that perceptual learning involves dif-
ferentiating the features and dimensions in situations
where there is variation and learning the significance of
those variations to the problem at hand. Many teaching
activities fail to educate students' attention to the relevant
features that are critical to solving different problems and
problem types, and research is needed to determine how
to educate attention. Teaching often involves telling
learners the relevant information and asking them to
combine it in some way to arrive at a problem situation.
For example, students may be asked to solve word prob-
lems in arithmetic for which they are poor at differen-
tiating parts of the problem situation that are numerically
relevant from those that are irrelevant to its solution (Lit-
tlefield & Rieser, 1985).
Teaching without a systematic emphasis on percep-
tual learning can account for access failures that lead to
poor generalization of learning. For example, clinical
psychology students often learn to diagnose psychological
syndromes by reading case descriptions. However, many
case descriptions suggest situations (e.g., the client is
"anxious" and somewhat "hostile") that represent outputs
of an expert's pattern-recognition process. Therefore,
students who can correctly diagnose clinical syndromes
from verbally stated symptoms in the classroom may fail
to transfer that diagnostic skill to actual interview situ-
ations where the symptoms are not stated so clearly. Re-
cent advances in interactive videotape and videodisc
technology make available rapid access and review of
video (e.g., Bransford, Sherwood, & Hasselbring, 1985).
1085
 This technology can be used to study how perceptual
experiences within specific domains can be arranged to
supplement traditional instruction and facilitate transfer
to new domains.
In addition to research on access and perceptual
learning, we expect to see m o r e work that combines an
emphasis on general metacognitive and domain-specific
knowledge. For example, consider the exciting work o f
Palincsar and Brown (1984) on the use o f reciprocal
teaching to increase reading comprehension. This type
o f instruction might p r o d u c e even more powerful effects
if it were carried out in a semantically rich problem-solv-
ing context that enabled children to see how the infor-
mation in each o f their stories or passages could be used
to solve problems in this context. Similarly, global prob-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
lem-solving contexts might be used to provide more con-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
tinuity to each child's day so that mathematics, reading,
writing, and other subjects are all seen as relevant to the
same contextual d o m a i n (e.g., Bransford, Sherwood, &
Hasselbring, 1985).
Finally, we expect to see more research on the nature
o f cognitive development. We noted earlier that knowl-
edge-base alternatives to stage theories are beginning to
flourish. These new alternatives have i m p o r t a n t impli-
cations for educational practice. For example, they focus
on the need to assess children's initial conceptions o f
c o n c e p t s and principles so that misconceptions can be
corrected (e.g., Carey, 1985), and they provide i m p o r t a n t
information about ways in which tasks might be m a d e
manageable to children at different developmental levels
(e.g., G e l m a n & Baillargeon, 1983). Furthermore, re-
search on both micro- and macrodevelopment should
help us understand the kinds o f "natural learning con-
ditions" that facilitate problem solving. For example,
whereas m a n y courses in thinking are taught in terms o f
piecemeal, workbooklike tasks, it is not clear that these
types o f experiences result in the types o f knowledge rep-
resentations that support understanding, access, and
transfer (e.g., Lipman, 1985; Palincsar & Brown, 1984;
N. Stein, in press). Research on this issue should be espe-
cially helpful to educators who want to help students learn
to think and learn.
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