Effects of meaningfulness and organization on problem solving and computability judgments

When subjects were required to calculate answers for computable problems and answer questions, an interaction was found corresponding to that obtained by Kieras and Greeno (1975) from judgments of computability. With nonsense formulas, much longer times were required to identify noncomputable problems than to compute answers, with a much smaller difference when formulas consisted of meaningful concepts. The better performance on noncomputable problems and questions with meaningful formulas corroborates an interpretation that those items test the connection of algorithms with general conceptual knowledge. Finally, it was found that for relatively complex problems, solution times and time to judge computability were longer if nonsense formulas were learned in separate sets than if they were learned in a single set; however, no such effect was found with meaningful formulas. It was concluded that learning conditions influenced the integration of cognitive structure in the case of nonsense formulas, while subjects were able to adjust organization of the meaningful formulas.