Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: Visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams

Abstract

This study investigated links between lower-level visual attention processes and higher-level problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants' attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants' verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. The study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues can improve problem solving performance on a variety of insight physics problems, including transfer problems not sharing the surface features of the training problems, but instead sharing the underlying solution path. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers' attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem. Instead, the cueing effects were caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, these short duration visual cues when administered repeatedly over multiple training problems resulted in participants becoming more efficient at extracting the relevant information on the transfer problem, showing that such cues can improve the automaticity with which solvers extract relevant information from a problem. Both of these results converge on the conclusion that lower order visual processes driven by attentional cues can influence higher-order cognitive processes associated with problem solving.