Which term describes the process of reorganizing existing knowledge to facilitate problem solving?

• A. Restructuring
• B. Generalization
• C. Declarative Knowledge
• D. Transfer

Answer: (A)

Reorganizing what you know to make problem solving easier is restructuring. This idea comes from how people often get stuck because they view a situation in a fixed way. By changing how you represent the problem in your mind—reframing it, reinterpreting tools, or noticing new relationships—you can see solutions that weren’t obvious before. For example, turning a box from a container into a support changes how you can use it to solve a problem. This is different from generalization, which is applying a rule to a new but similar situation; declarative knowledge, which is about factual information you know; and transfer, which is applying knowledge to a different context without necessarily reshaping the problem’s internal representation. So the process described—reorganizing existing knowledge to aid problem solving—is restructuring.