{"pk":31268,"title":"Complexity Management in a Discovery Task","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Previous psychological research about scientific discovery has often focused on subjects' heuristics for discovering simple concepts with one relevant dimension or a few relevant dimensions with simple two-way interactions. This p^er presents results from an experiment in which subjects had to discover a concept involving complex three-way interactions on a multi-valued output by running experiments in a computerized microworld. Twenty-two C M U undergraduates attempted the task, of which sixteen succeeded, in an average of 85 minutes. The analyses focus on three strategies used to regulate task complexity. First, subjects preferred depth-first to breadth-first search, with successful subjects regulating the number of features varied from experiment to experiment most effectively. Second, subjects systematically regulated the length of their experiments. Third, a new explicit search heuristic (Put Upon Stack Heuristic) used by successful subjects is described.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/94n547fj","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Christian","middle_name":"D.","last_name":"Schunn","name_suffix":"","institution":"Carnegie Mellon University","department":""},{"first_name":"David","middle_name":"","last_name":"Klahr","name_suffix":"","institution":"Carnegie Mellon University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1992-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/31268/galley/22337/download/"}]}