Evidence for Generalized Cognitive Search Processes at Multiple Levels in a Hierarchical Problem Solving Task

People may use similar search processes for a variety of cognitive tasks. The theoretical basis for these generalized cognitive search processes rests on molecular and psychophysical evidence for shared processes in cognitive search across domains—e.g., visual search, problem solving, spatial search, and decision making. To investigate the extent of generalized cognitive search processes in a single task, we studied how subjects ’ experiences in 2-D spatial search influenced their search strategies in a subsequent lexical problem-solving task (sequential SCRABBLE) involving hierarchical levels of decision making. These levels included when to leave a letter set (patch) and what strategies to use when looking for subsequent words within a letter set. When the spatial resource discovery required search (i.e., resources were not visible until subjects moved the icon over them), subjects took longer to leave letter sets if they had previously experienced spatially-correlated (versus uncorrelated) resource distributions, replicating a previous finding. However, when resources were visible, requiring simply harvesting rather than search, lexical patch leaving times were unaffected, suggesting that generalized cognitive search processes were primed via hypothesis-driven exploration in the spatial search phase