Joachim Funke

Universität Heidelberg · Institute of Psychology

Computer-simulated scenarios have been part of psychological research on problem solving for more than 40 years. The shift in emphasis from simple toy problems to complex, more real-life oriented problems has been accompanied by discussions about the best ways to assess the process of solving complex problems. Psychometric issues such as reliable a...

Implicit learning can be defined as learning without intention or awareness. We discuss conceptually and investigate empirically how individual differences in implicit learning can be measured with artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks. We address whether participants should be instructed to rate the grammaticality or the novelty of letter string...

In the last 20 years, a stream of research emerged under the label of „complex problem solving“ (CPS). This research was intended to describe the way people deal with complex, dynamic, and intransparent situations. Complex computer-simulated scenarios were as stimulus material in psychological experiments. This line of research lead to subtle insig...

Complex problem solving (CPS) emerged in the last 30 years in Europe as a new part of the psychology of thinking and problem solving. This paper introduces into the field and provides a personal view. Also, related concepts like macrocognition or operative intelligence will be explained in this context. Two examples for the assessment of CPS, Tailo...

With the advent of computers in the experimental labs, dynamic systems have become a new tool for research on problem solving and decision making. A short review on this research is given and the main features of these systems (connectivity and dynamics) are illustrated. To allow systematic approaches to the influential variables in this area, two...

Zusammenfassung Der Text diskutiert die Bedeutung von Theorie und Empirie in der Psychologie. Es wird betont, dass Empirie (Erfahrung und Datensammlung) für die Psychologie von zentraler Bedeutung ist, aber dass sie auch Theorien benötigt, um die Daten sinnvoll zu interpretieren. Der Text beleuchtet die Unterschiede zwischen Empirismus und Rational...

Smart mobility aids invoke conflicting impressions of enhanced mobility and being restricted and dependent. This ambivalence between perceived gain and loss of personal control might affect the acceptance of these devices. In a preregistered study (N = 194), we investigated people’s expectations on how using a flexible exosuit and a rigid exoskelet...

Anthologie Krieg, Konflikt & Solidarität

Die gegenwärtige Politik hat den Klimawandel bisher überwiegend analytisch betrachtet, als ein räumlich und zeitlich entferntes Risiko, das einen möglichen Verlust für die Gesellschaft darstellt. Eine bessere Strategie vor dem Hintergrund psychologischer Forschung sollte daher Klimawandel (a) als ein persönlich erfahrbares, lokales und präsentes Ri...

Introduction The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to int...

Betrachtet man die Menschheitsgeschichte durch die Brille der Humanpsychologie, so geht es bei jeder Weiterentwicklung um das Erkennen und Herstellen von Sinn. Der Mensch besitzt von Natur aus die Begabung und den Wunsch, sich selbst und seine Lebenssituation zu verstehen und ständig zu verbessern, um so seinem Leben Sinn zu verleihen. Doch worin b...

Facing problems, challenges or difficult situations has always been part of human life. However, driven by rapidly advancing industrialization and globalization, modern societies face complex and dynamic problems at an unprecedented speed and scale. Global climate change, the worldwide Corona pandemic or the unexpected war in Ukraine are just three...

According to Sternberg (Transformational giftedness. In T. L. Cross & P. Olszewski-Kubilius (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for giftedness and talent development (pp. 203–234). Prufrock Press, 2020; Transformational vs. transactional deployment of intelligence. Journal of Intelligence, 9(15). https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9010015, 2021), trans...

The current study introduces the Multi-Motive Grid Mobility (MMG-M) in an age-stratified sample (N = 206) that aims to disentangle six motive components – hope of success, hope of affiliation, hope of power, fear of failure, fear of rejection, and fear of power – in mobility-related and mobility-unrelated scenarios. Similar to the classical Multi-M...

In diesem Beitrag wird das Gebiet der Umweltpsychologie vorgestellt, das nach einer langen Geschichte einer „umweltlosen“ Psychologie in den 1960er-Jahren in vielen Ländern akademisch etabliert wurde. Besondere Betonung finden derzeit Ansätze der Umweltpsychologie zur Analyse und Bewältigung globaler Umweltprobleme als Probleme menschlichen Handeln...

This chapter presents a small sample of psychological research on the topic of “human intelligence.” Intelligence is a central construct in modern psychology for describing differences in cognitive performance. Somewhat broader conceptualizations view human adaptation to the environment and shaping the environment to our advantage as central to int...

The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport, and depends on a range of cognitive factors. How common these key performance factors are across application domains remains unclear. The current study sought to integrate existing knowledge in the pe...

The forum brings together different positions and discussions on the topic of decision-making. The contributors come from the fields of education, psychology, economics, political science, philosophy and sociology. My own contributions attempt to grasp the problem from a historical perspective and with recourse to the Münster concept of "cultures o...

Im vorliegenden sechsten Band der Heidelberger Jahrbücher Online (HDJBO), den die „Gesellschaft der Freunde Universität Heidelberg e.V.“ unter Federführung der drei Editoren Rainer M. Holm-Hadulla, Joachim Funke und Michael Wink herausgibt, haben sich die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes diesmal mit dem Konzept der Intelligenz als fächerübergreife...

In contrast to the successful previous year, 2020 turned out to be difficult, not only for the earth’s population due to COVID-19 but also for JDDM with an unusually small sixth volume. Looking back at these two very different years back-to-back led us to some reflection: As the COVID-19 pandemic forcefully illustrates, dynamic decision-making (DDM...

What are consequential world problems? As “grand societal challenges”, one might define them as problems that affect a large number of people, perhaps even the entire planet, including problems such as climate change, distributive justice, world peace, world nutrition, clean air and clean water, access to education, and many more. The “Sustainable...

The avoidance of a decision is a phenomenon that has been studied in various forms and psychological disciplines. Nevertheless, previous studies often lacked the integration of situational as well as personal factors in predicting decision avoidance. Additionally, studies about conditions that affect different forms of decision avoidance are still...

https://www.psychologie.uni-heidelberg.de/ae/allg/mitarb/jf/Wendt%20Funke%202020%20Psychologie%20u%CC%88ber%20Geschichte.pdf & https://www.pabst-publishers.com/shop-checkout/detailansicht.html?tt_products%5BbackPID%5D=21&tt_products%5Bsword%5D=psychologie&tt_products%5Bproduct%5D=1770&cHash=458decc4194f90eee8751054bc87980f

While research on complex problem solving (CPS) has reached a stage where certain standards have been achieved, the future development is quite ambiguous. Therefore, we were interested in the views of representative authors about the attainments and the future development of that field. We asked the authors to share their point of view with respect...

Die PISA-Studien sind inzwischen vermutlich den meisten ein Begriff: Das Programme for International Student Assessment (dafür steht die Abkürzung), das von der OECD durchgeführt wird, erfasst in dreijährlichem Abstand, was die Fünfzehnjährigen können. An der jüngsten PISA-Studie 2018, die derzeit noch ausgewertet wird, nahmen Schülerinnen und Schü...

How people understand the fundamental dynamics of stock and flow (SF) is an important basic theoretical question with many practical applications. Such dynamics can be found, for example, in monitoring one's own private bank account (income versus expenditures), the state of a birthday party (guests coming versus leaving), or in the context of clim...

The Journal of Dynamic Decision Making launched its fourth volume by the end of 2018. In previous editorials we reflected on the definition of Dynamic Decision Making, on the journals’s content and on related research topics. Today, we want to take the opportunity of writing our fourth editorial to reflect on the citations, reads, and downloads of...

Der Countdown läuft – in zwei Wochen ist schon der erste Advent. Schüler fangen an, die Tage bis zu den Weihnachtsferien zu zählen. Warum eigentlich gilt Unterricht immer noch als langweilig? Müssten wir nicht längst viel weiter sein nach lauter Pisa-Studien und Hirnforschung? Campus-Reporter Nils Birschmann hat darüber mit einem Intelligenzforsche...

Complex problem solving (CPS) and related topics such as dynamic decision-making (DDM) and complex dynamic control (CDC) represent multifaceted psychological phenomena. In a broad sense, CPS encompasses learning, decision-making, and acting in complex and dynamic situations. Moreover, solutions to problems that people face in such situations are of...

Im Unterschied zu Pflanzen können Menschen und Tiere ihren Standort problemlos verändern. Darin liegen Chancen und Risiken zugleich. In diesem Beitrag sollen psychologische Aspekte, die mit dem Thema „Mobilität“ verbunden sind, näher beleuchtet werden. Dazu wird der Begriff Mobilität als Standortwechsel im weitesten Sinne interpretiert: sowohl phys...

Anthologie: Perspektiven der Mobilität

In 2005, Quesada, Kintsch, and Gomez titled a paper „Complex problem-solving: A field in search of a definition “. Thirteen years later, it seems that the field has found it in the form of multiple (or minimal) complex systems such as MicroDYN. While MicroDYN certainly has brought the field a boost of attention and serves as a standard of compariso...

Das Leben ist voller Probleme. Und fast nie gibt es nur die eine richtige Lösung. Die meisten Probleme sind komplex: Konflikte in der Familie schlichten, die Organisation eines wichtigen Meetings planen, eine geeignete neue Wohnung suchen. Wie soll man das alles lösen? Dazu kommen heute große gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen (Wissenschaftsrat 20...

In this chapter, we present a view of problem solving as a bundle of skills, knowledge and abilities that are required to deal effectively with complex non-routine situations in different domains. This includes cognitive aspects of problem solving, such as causal reasoning, model building, rule induction, and information integration. These abilitie...

This study examined the relationships between a general measure of environmental attitude (NEP), general environmental knowledge (GEK), and general ecological behavior (GEB) in two university student samples, one from Argentina (N Arg = 85, M age = 24.1, 59 % female) and one from Germany (N Ger = 98, M age = 22.5, 51 % female). Whereas Argentinean...

Aus psychologischer Sicht ist das Thema »Nachhaltigkeit« mit zahlreichen Herausforderun-gen belastet. Dies illustrieren beispielhaft die folgenden Fragen: Wie kommt es, dass wir trotz besseren Wissens nicht unseren Einstellungen entsprechend handeln? Sind wir mit unserem Verstand überhaupt für das Erfassen derartiger Komplexität gerüstet? Denken wi...

We are proud to announce the completion of volume 2017, which comprises a range of interesting findings about dynamic decision making (DDM).

The discussion in Perspectives on Psychological Science about criteria for scholarly merit shows a potential bias of quantitative measurements compared with informed judgments of scholarly merits. This comment argues for a selection procedure that is open for qualitative arguments.

Complex problem solving (CPS) is about reaching one’s goals taking into account a large number of highly interrelated aspects. CPS has a rich history in experimental and psychometric research. The chapter highlights some of the most important findings of this research and shows its relationship to interactive problem solving. More specifically, it...

Interactive problem solving (IPS) is considered an increasingly important skill in professional and everyday life as it mirrors the interaction of a human user with dynamic technical and non-technical devices. Here, IPS is defined as the ability to identify the unknown structure of artefacts in dynamic, mostly technology-rich, environments to reach...

The skills considered most essential in our modern societies are often called 21st-century skills. Problem solving is clearly one of them. Students will be expected to work in novel environments, face problems they have never seen and apply domain-general reasoning skills that are not tied to specific contents. Computerised dynamic problem solving...

Solving non-routine problems is a key competence in a world full of changes, uncertainty and surprise where we strive to achieve so many ambitious goals. But the world is also full of solutions because of the extraordinary competences of humans who search for and find them. We must explore the world around us in a thoughtful way, acquire knowledge...

Problem solving and thinking are important issues in contemporary research. With the advent of educational assessment, problem solving has been identified as a cross-curricular competence that plays an important role in educational and in occupational settings. Our research is connected to previous activities in the field of dynamic problem solving...

The concept “system” is fundamental to many disciplines. It has an especially prominent place in geography education, in which additionally, the spatial perspective is central. Empirically validated competency models dealing specifically with geographic systems—as well as adequate measurement instruments—are still lacking. Therefore, based on the t...

The relation between knowledge and action is a delicate one. Is acting possible without knowledge? Can people act against their knowledge? Action produces knowledge, but at the same time knowledge is required for action. This chapter provides a review of different conceptions concerning the relation between knowledge and action. Three theoretical f...

In this commentary, we critically review the study of Greiff, Stadler, Sonnleitner, Wolff, and Martin, “Sometimes less is more: Comparing the validity of complex problem solving measures” (Intelligence, 2015, 50, 100–113). The main conclusion of Greiff et al. that the “multiple complex systems” (MCS) approach to measuring complex problem-solving ab...

p>In this paper, we bring together research on complex problem solving with that on motivational psychology about goal setting. Complex problems require motivational effort because of their inherent difficulties. Goal Setting Theory has shown with simple tasks that high, specific performance goals lead to better performance outcome than do-your-bes...

Which factors influence a human being’s ability to develop new perspectives and be creative? This ability is pivotal for any context in which new cognitions are required, such as innovative endeavors in science and art, or psychotherapeutic settings. In this article, we seek to bring together two research programs investigating the generation of cr...

We are proud to announce the completion of our first volume 2015, which comprises a range of interesting findings about modelling, training, and assessing Dynamic Decision Making (DDM). These contributions to the first volume of the Journal of Dynamic Decision Making exemplify many relevant aspects of DDM as well as multiple perspectives that can b...

This article presents an overview of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 Problem-Solving assessment. The assessment examined the capabilities of 15-year-olds in 40 nations and four large international cities, as well as the Canadian Provinces, to solve a set o...

Wieder steht eine prominente Politikerin im Verdacht, bei ihrer Doktorarbeit abgeschrieben zu haben. Nach Guttenberg, Koch-Mehrin und Schavan steht jetzt die Dissertation von Verteidigungsministerin Ursula von der Leyen auf dem Prüfstand. Wieder war es eine Plagiatssoftware, die den Verdacht erhärtet hat. Der Beitrag erschien in der Sendereihe "Ca...

A new journal is starting with this page, and we – the editors – hope that this launch will be a successful one! Before we start with the normal course of the editorial business, let us explain why we made the decision to start a new journal.

Causal mapping is often recognized as a technique to support strategic decisions and actions in complex problem situations. Such drawing of causal structures is supposed to particularly foster the understanding of the interaction of the various system elements and to further encourage holistic thinking. It builds on the idea that humans make use of...

Aims: We examined the 'positivity effect' on memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia patients. Methods: In 109 subjects (28 controls, 32 with MCI, 27 with mild and 32 with moderate dementia), we investigated free recalls (immediate and delayed) and recognition of 12 pictures. Moreover, the emotional valence of the picture...

Die Kosmetik sowohl in ihrer dekorativen als auch in den invasiv persistierenden Formen ist Kultur-begleitend dokumentiert, also stabil über Jahrtausende. Sie bereichert maßgeblich die Darstellung von Macht, Rang und Funktion in den herrschenden Schichten. In den Zeiten florierender Hochkulturen findet Kosmetik zudem Eingang in weitere Gesellschaft...

We examined the 'positivity effect' on memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia patients. In 109 subjects (28 controls, 32 with MCI, 27 with mild and 32 with moderate dementia), we investigated free recalls (immediate and delayed) and recognition of 12 pictures. Moreover, the emotional valence of the pictures perceived and...

Wer immer nur powert, bringt auf Dauer schlechtere Ergebnisse. Dennoch hat sich in der westlichen Welt eine Arbeitsethik eingeschlichen, die sagt: Wer nichts tut, der taugt nichts. Muße gilt eher als Faulheit. Dabei ist sie für Kreativität unverzichtbar. Über die Bedeutung von Muße und Freiräumen im täglichen Leben sprach der Campus-Reporter Nils B...

This study is about different approaches to assessing Problem Solving Competency (PSC) applied in international large-scale assessments: Analytic Problem Solving (APS) and Interactive Problem Solving (IPS). Based on a university student sample (n = 339) and a high-school student sample (n = 577) we found that both approaches are highly interrelated...

This study explores the development of laypeople's preferences for newly emerging climate engineering technology (CE). It examines whether laypeople perceive CE to be an acceptable back-up strategy (plan B) if current efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions were to fail. This idea is a common justification for CE research in the scientific debate and may...

Background.Stock-flow (SF) problems are ubiquitous in nature, ranging from the accumulation of water in a tub to the accumulation of CO 2 in the atmosphere. However, research on SF failure repeatedly demonstrates that people have severe difficulties understanding even the most basic SF problems. Purpose. This study tested the hypothesis that people...

This paper combines a reinforcement learning (RL) model and EEG data analysis to identify learning situations in a associative learning task with delayed feedback. We investigated neural correlates in occipital alpha and prefrontal theta band power of learning opportunities, identified by the RL model. We show that those parameters can also be used...

This paper presents a study on the role of dynamic motions in the creation and perception processes of action-art paintings. Although there is a lot of interest and some qualitative knowledge around, there are no quantitative models in the scientific computing sense about this process yet. To create such models and implement them on a robotic platf...

Given the coincidence of the demographic change and climate change in the upcoming decades the aging voter gains increasing importance in climate change mitigation and adaptation processes. It is generally assumed that information status and comprehension of complex processes underlying climate change are prerequisites for adopting pro-environmenta...

Problem solving research is in need for rethinking main questions. The purpose of this paper is a stocktaking of some of the identified problems, to discuss potential remedies for them, and to look for future perspectives. I see three areas for discussion: (1) What are the phenomena to be explained? (2) What methods should be used? What methodology...

We focus on the thesis that action understanding is a function of the mirror neuron system. According to our opinion, understanding is a process that runs through hermeneutic circles from the “Vorverständnis” (“previous understanding”) to steps of deeper understanding. Our critique relates to the narrow neuroscientific definition of action understa...

Cognitive remediation is a promising pathway for ameliorating cognitive impairment of patients with schizophrenia. Here, we investigate predictors of improvement in problem-solving ability for two different types of cognitive remediation - specific problem-solving training and training of basic cognition. For this purpose we conducted a re-analysis...

In two subsequent experiments, the influence of mood on academic course evaluation is examined. By means of facial feedback, either a positive or a negative mood was induced while students were completing a course evaluation questionnaire during lectures. Results from both studies reveal that a positive mood leads to better ratings of different dim...

This paper presents a bibliography of 263 references related to human problem solving, arranged by subject matter. The references were taken from PsycInfo and Academic Premier database. Journal papers, book chapters, and dissertations are included. The topics include human development, education, neuroscience, and research in applied settings. It i...

In the current study, we developed a computer-based, objective, realistic and complex in-basket simulation (InBox HD) and assessed 108 university students in order to prove that problem solving competency (a) depends on both knowledge acquisition and knowledge application skills (measured by the MicroDYN-test for problem solving skills, Greiff, 201...

Was kann Plagiatsoftware leisten und welche Tücken hat sie? Antworten auf diese und noch mehr Fragen gibt Prof. Dr. Joachim Funke, Professor am Institut für Psychologie und Mitglied der Kommission zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis und zum Umgang mit Fehlverhalten in der Wissenschaft der Universität Heidelberg. Der Beitrag über Plagiats...

Complex Problem Solving (CPS) skills are essential to successfully deal with environments that change dynamically and involve a large number of interconnected and partially unknown causal influences. The increasing importance of such skills in the 21st century requires appropriate assessment and intervention methods, which in turn rely on adequate...

Problem solving has received broad public interest as an important competency in modern societies. In educational large-scale assessments paper-pencil based analytical problem solving was included first (e.g., Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA 2003). With growing interest in more complex situations, the focus has shifted to inter...

Innovative assessments of cross-curricular competencies such as complex problem solving (CPS) have currently received considerable attention in large-scale educational studies. This study investigated the nature of CPS by applying a state-of-the-art approach to assess CPS in high school. We analyzed whether two processes derived from cognitive psyc...

Unter Problemlösen versteht man den Prozess der Ausführung einer, häufig komplexen, Folge von Handlungen zur Erreichung bestimmter Ziele, die nicht durch den Einsatz von Routineverfahren erreicht werden können (Funke 2003; Newell/Simon 1972). Bei menschlichen Problemlösern können sol- che Handlungen konkret in der Welt oder mental ausgeführt werden...

The ascription of desires or beliefs to other people is a milestone of human sociality. It allows us to understand, explain, and predict human behaviour. During the last years, research on children’s knowledge about the mental world, better known as theory of mind research, has become a central topic in developmental psychology and the role of cult...

This study investigates the internal structure and construct validity of Complex Problem Solving (CPS), which is measured by a Multiple-Item-Approach. It is tested, if (a) three facets of CPS – rule identification (adequateness of strategies), rule knowledge (generated knowledge) and rule application (ability to control a system) – can be empirical...

Computer-based problem solving scenarios or "microworlds" are contemporary assessment instru-ments frequently used to assess students' complex problem solving behavior – a key aspect of today's educational curricula and assessment frameworks. Surprisingly, almost nothing is known about their (1) acceptance or (2) psychometric characteristics in stu...

Im Zentrum des Beitrags steht die Bedeutung und Prognosekraft dynamischer Problemlösekompetenz (DPK) für das Kriterium der technischen Problemlöseleistung. Als weitere Prädiktoren wurden in der Untersuchung fluide Intelligenz und technisches Fachwissen berücksichtigt. Die Integration fluider Intelligenz ermöglichte auch eine Untersuchung der Frage,...