The Emergence of Abstract Representations in Dyad Problem Solving

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Three experiments examined whether group cognitions generate a product that is not easily ascribed to the cognitions that similar individuals have working alone. In each study, secondary-school students solved novel problems working either as individuals or in two-person groups called dyads. An examination of their problem-solving representations demonstrated that the dyads constructed abstractions well above the rate one would expect given a "most competent member" model of group performance applied to the empirical rate of individual abstractions. In the first experiment, dyads induced a numerical parity rule for determining the motions of linked gears four times more often than individuals, who instead tended to rely exclusively on modeling the gears' physical behaviors. In a second experiment requiring the construction of visualizations on the topic of biological transmissions, dyads made abstract visualizations (e.g., directed graphs) significantly more often than individuals. In a third experiment r...

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: