Whitney tells her friend Jan that she can wear the extra jacket that she keeps in her car.Whitney hands Jan her keys and heads off to class.Jan heads to Whitney's car with the set of eight keys.She looks at the keys, noting that two are too small to be car keys; and then she looks for any key that might have a symbol associated with a particular car.She finds two keys that have a shape on them like the hood ornament on Whitney's car.So, these will be the only two keys of the eight that she will try.Jan used _____ to solve this "key" problem.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Jan used a heuristic to solve the "key" problem by eliminating the keys that were too small to be car keys and choosing the two keys that had a shape similar to the hood ornament on Whitney's car. A heuristic is a mental shortcut or rule of thumb that allows people to make judgments and solve problems efficiently. The other options do not apply to Jan's problem-solving approach, as she did not have a specific set of steps (algorithm) to follow, she did not rely on a specific preconceived notion about what car keys should look like (functional fixedness), and she did not try every possible key (random search strategy).

Whitney Tells Her Friend Jan That She Can Wear the Extra