Perceptual or Analytical Processing? Evidence from Children's and Adult's Performance on the Euclidean Traveling Salesperson Problem

Iris van Rooij
Alissa Schactman
Helena Kadlec
Ulrike Stege

Abstract

The Euclidean Traveling Salesperson Problem (E-TSP) is a useful task to study how humans optimize when faced with computational intractability. It has been found that humans are capable of finding high-quality solutions for E TSP in a relatively short time and with seemingly little cognitive effort. This observation has led to two general proposals: The high quality of performance on E-TSP reflects (a) the output of automatic and innate perceptual processes or (b) a fundamentally intelligent approach to the task by humans. An experiment was performed to compare performance of three age groups (7- year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults). Our findings provide corroborating evidence that high-level performance on E-TSP is attainable with perceptual processing alone. At the same time, the exceptionally high performance of adult participants suggests that they additionally exploit their cognitive-analytic skills to improve upon what their visual systems provide.

Recommended Citation

van Rooij, Iris; Schactman, Alissa; Kadlec, Helena; and Stege, Ulrike (2006) "Perceptual or Analytical Processing? Evidence from Children's and Adult's Performance on the Euclidean Traveling Salesperson Problem," The Journal of Problem Solving: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 6.
Available at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jps/vol1/iss1/6