Chrysikou Evangelia G, Motyka Katharine, Nigro Cristina, Yang Song-I, Thompson-Schill Sharon L
University of Kansas; University of Pennsylvania.
University of Pennsylvania.
Psychol Aesthet Creat Arts. 2016 Nov;10(4):425-435. doi: 10.1037/aca0000050. Epub 2016 Feb 11.
Pictorial examples during creative thinking tasks can lead participants to fixate on these examples and reproduce their elements even when yielding suboptimal creative products. Semantic memory research may illuminate the cognitive processes underlying this effect. Here, we examined whether pictures and words differentially influence access to semantic knowledge for object concepts depending on whether the task is close- or open-ended. Participants viewed either names or pictures of everyday objects, or a combination of the two, and generated common, secondary, or ad hoc uses for them. Stimulus modality effects were assessed quantitatively through reaction times and qualitatively through a novel coding system, which classifies creative output on a continuum from top-down-driven to bottom-up-driven responses. Both analyses revealed differences across tasks. Importantly, for ad hoc uses, participants exposed to pictures generated more top-down-driven responses than those exposed to object names. These findings have implications for accounts of functional fixedness in creative thinking, as well as theories of semantic memory for object concepts.
在创造性思维任务中，图片示例可能会导致参与者专注于这些示例并重现其元素，即使产生的是次优的创造性产物。语义记忆研究可能会阐明这种效应背后的认知过程。在此，我们研究了图片和文字是否会根据任务是封闭式还是开放式而对物体概念的语义知识获取产生不同影响。参与者观看日常物体的名称、图片或两者的组合，并为它们生成常见、次要或临时用途。通过反应时间对刺激模态效应进行定量评估，并通过一种新颖的编码系统进行定性评估，该系统将创造性输出从自上而下驱动到自下而上驱动的反应进行连续分类。两项分析均揭示了不同任务之间的差异。重要的是，对于临时用途，接触图片的参与者比接触物体名称的参与者产生了更多自上而下驱动的反应。这些发现对创造性思维中的功能固着理论以及物体概念的语义记忆理论具有启示意义。
