Children solve problems: impact of an intervention programme on the problem-solving abilities of socially deprived children

Abstract

A sample consisting of 60 subjects from socially deprived environment were matched for age, gender, problem-solving ability and prolonged social deprivation score. This sample was further divided into an Experimental and a Control group, each consisting of 30 subjects. Pretesting of these subjects was done by administering three problem-solving tasks. A 16-week intervention programme was administered to the Experimental group to study its impact on the problem solving abilities of children whereas, the Control group was not exposed to any treatment. The techniques used were generation of alternatives; brainstorming and hypothetical problem-solving through creative expression. Post-test results on problem-solving tasks revealed significant gains in the problem solving scores of the Experimental group as compared to the Control group, which were attributed to the techniques used to improve problem solving skills, efforts to reduce cognitive lag, improved cognitive styles and use of appropriate strategies thereby enhancing successful problem solving experiences and increasing the motivation to solve problems. A problem is a task which an individual can understand but for which he does not have an immediate solution. According to Newell (1977), a problem-solving task is characterized by its state space, which consists of all possible courses of action that can be undertaken in trying to solve the problem. The elements of this space consist of states of knowledge about the problem. Both the initial situation and desired situation are represented as elements of this space. A problem space also has associated with it a set of operators, which when applied to an element of the space, produce new elements. These operators are the means by which new information about the problem can be obtained from the old. Thus, problem solving is always a matter of search, of starting from some initial position (state of knowledge) and exploring until a position is attained that includes the solution, the desired state of knowledge. Rubin & Krasnor (1992) have put forth an information processing model of social problem solving and they suggest that most social behaviour reflects automaticity in thinking and problem solving involves selecting the goal, the task environment, selecting strategies and the final outcome.at UNIV TORONTO on June 5, 2016 chd.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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