Zech Alexandra, Bühner Markus, Kröner Stephan, Heene Moritz, Hilbert Sven
Institut für Notfallmedizin und Medizinmanagement, Klinikum der Universität München, LMU München, 80336 Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, 80802 Munich, Germany.
J Intell. 2017 May 18;5(2):22. doi: 10.3390/jintelligence5020022.
Findings of studies on the unique effects of reasoning and working memory regarding complex problem solving are inconsistent. To find out if these inconsistencies are due to a lack of symmetry between the studies, we reconsidered the findings of three published studies on this issue, which resulted in conflicting conclusions regarding the inter-relations between reasoning, working memory, and complex problem solving. This was achieved by analysing so far unpublished problem solving data from the study of Bühner, Krumm, Ziegler, and Plücken (2006) (= 124). One of the three published studies indicated unique effects of working memory and reasoning on complex problem solving using aggregated scores, a second study found no unique contribution of working memory using only figural scores, and a third study reported a unique influence only for reasoning using only numerical scores. Our data featured an evaluation of differences across content facets and levels of aggregation of the working memory scores. Path models showed that the results of the first study could not be replicated using content aggregated scores; the results of the second study could be replicated if only figural scores were used, and the results of the third study could be obtained by using only numerical scores. For verbal content, none of the published results could be replicated. This leads to the assumption that not only symmetry is an issue when correlating non-symmetrical data, but that content also has to be taken into account when comparing different studies on the same topic.
关于推理和工作记忆在复杂问题解决方面的独特作用的研究结果并不一致。为了弄清楚这些不一致是否是由于研究之间缺乏对称性,我们重新审视了关于这个问题的三项已发表研究的结果,这些研究在推理、工作记忆和复杂问题解决之间的相互关系上得出了相互矛盾的结论。这是通过分析布赫纳、克鲁姆、齐格勒和普吕肯(2006年)研究中迄今未发表的问题解决数据(=124)来实现的。三项已发表研究中的一项使用汇总分数表明工作记忆和推理对复杂问题解决有独特作用,第二项研究仅使用图形分数未发现工作记忆有独特贡献,第三项研究仅使用数字分数报告仅推理有独特影响。我们的数据对工作记忆分数的内容方面和汇总水平的差异进行了评估。路径模型表明,第一项研究的结果使用内容汇总分数无法复制;第二项研究的结果如果仅使用图形分数可以复制,第三项研究的结果通过仅使用数字分数可以得到。对于言语内容,已发表的结果均无法复制。这导致一种假设,即不仅在关联非对称数据时对称性是一个问题,而且在比较同一主题的不同研究时也必须考虑内容。