A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF MEMORY AND PROBLEM SOLVING IN HEARING IMPAIRED AND NORMAL CHILDREN : PERFORMANCE ON THE SIX ARROW PROBLEM

Abstract

Problem solving requires a person not only to retain information, but also operate on it and transfer it to long term memory (LTM) for the later stages of problem solving. This paper discusses the hypothesis that if more information can be transmitted then there is a better chance of solving the problem. Since there were no research studies based on this hypothesis for hearing impaired children and normal children, we carried out two experiments. In one, Wickelgren's "6 arrow problem" was used to analyze the process of problem solving. Another task was used to assess the ability to process verbal information. The ability of individual subjects to transfer information was measured by immediate free (serial) recall. It is well known that primary and recency effects emerge in immediate free (serial) recall tasks, and that the primary effect is composed of output from LTM. There were 27 normal subjects and 5 hearing impaired children as subjects. In this paper the recall of serial position, especially primary position, was tried as an index of the ability of the individual to transfer information. We examined whether good performance in the memory task correlated with good performance in the problem solving task. The results of the experiment on normal subjects were analyzed by G-P analysis. The subjects divided into two groups, those good at recall and those poor at recall at primary position (serial input position 1-3). Those who showed a good performance at primary position were significantly better at problem solving than the other subjects. Subjects who hearing impaired performed better in the problem solving task when recall was good for the primary and middle items of a series.