The Effect of Strategy on Problem Solving: An fMRI Study

fMRI was used to examine the differential effect of two problem-solving strategies. Participants were trained to use both a pictorial/spatial and a symbolic/algebraic strategy to solve word problems. While these two strategies activated similar cortical regions, a number of differences were noted in the level of activation. These differences indicate that the algebraic strategy is more demanding than the spatial strategy, which was particularly true for the anterior insula and the parietal cortices. In addition, an exploratory analysis was performed that examined effects of strategy preference. These results revealed that participants who preferred the algebraic strategy, while having a similar mathematics background, elicited less activation and had higher working memory capacity (as measured by the reading span task) than those participants who preferred the spatial strategy. These data have implications for fMRI, as well as behavioral studies of higher-order cognition—the use of different strategies by participants within one study could alter the final results and, therefore, the conclusions drawn.