School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, 330022, China.
School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China.
Neuroimage. 2019 Feb 1;186:192-199. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.063. Epub 2018 Oct 26.
A mental set generally refers to the human brain's tendency to persist with a familiar solution and stubbornly ignore alternatives. However, if a familiar solution is unable to solve a problem similar to a previous problem, does it continue to hinder alternative solutions, and if so, how and why? To answer these questions, a Chinese character decomposition task was adopted in this study. Participants were asked to perform a practice problem that could be solved by a familiar loose chunk decomposition (LCD) solution followed by a test problem that was similar to the practice problem but could only be solved by an unfamiliar tight chunk decomposition (TCD) solution or were asked to repeatedly perform 3-5 practice problems followed by a test problem; the former is the base-set condition, and the latter is the enhanced-set condition. The results showed that the test problem recruited more activation of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), middle occipital cortex (MOG), superior parietal lobule (SPL) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) than the practice problem in the latter operation and verification stage, but almost equal activation of the dACC occurred in the early exploration stage. This likely implied that people did not think that the familiar but currently invalid LCD solution could not be used to solve the test problem; thus, it continuously competed for attention with the unfamiliar TCD solution, which required more executive control to suppress. Moreover, compared with the base-set condition, the test problem in the enhanced-set condition recruited greater activations of the IFG, SPL and dACC in the latter verification stage but less activations of regions in the left IFG and MOG in the early exploration stage. These results revealed that people less actively explored and had to work harder to operate the unfamiliar TCD solution, particularly to resolve competition from the familiar but currently invalid LCD solution. In conclusion, people lost the ability to identify errors in the familiar but currently invalid solution, which in turn decreased the exploration efforts and increased the processing demands associated with alternative solutions in the form of attentional bias and competition. This finding broadly explains the dilemma of creative problem solving.
一种思维定势通常指的是人类大脑坚持使用熟悉的解决方案，而固执地忽略其他选择的倾向。然而，如果一个熟悉的解决方案无法解决与之前问题相似的问题，它是否会继续阻碍其他解决方案的出现，如果是，如何以及为什么会这样？为了回答这些问题，本研究采用了汉字分解任务。要求参与者先完成一个可以用熟悉的松散块分解（LCD）解决方案解决的练习问题，然后再完成一个与练习问题相似但只能用不熟悉的紧密块分解（TCD）解决方案解决的测试问题；或者要求参与者反复完成 3-5 个练习问题，然后再完成一个测试问题；前者是基础集条件，后者是增强集条件。结果表明，在后操作和验证阶段，测试问题比练习问题更多地激活了额下回（IFG）、中枕叶（MOG）、顶上小叶（SPL）和背侧前扣带皮层（dACC），但在早期探索阶段，dACC 的激活几乎相等。这可能意味着人们并不认为熟悉但目前无效的 LCD 解决方案不能用于解决测试问题；因此，它会不断与需要更多执行控制来抑制的不熟悉 TCD 解决方案竞争注意力。而且，与基础集条件相比，在增强集条件下，测试问题在后验证阶段比在基础集条件下更多地激活了 IFG、SPL 和 dACC，但在早期探索阶段更少地激活了左 IFG 和 MOG 的区域。这些结果表明，人们不太积极地探索，必须更加努力地操作不熟悉的 TCD 解决方案，特别是要解决来自熟悉但目前无效的 LCD 解决方案的竞争。总之，人们失去了识别熟悉但目前无效解决方案中的错误的能力，这反过来又减少了与替代解决方案相关的探索努力，并增加了与注意力偏向和竞争相关的处理需求。这一发现广泛解释了创造性问题解决的困境。
