Department of Psychology, Educational, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Nat Hum Behav. 2019 Feb;3(2):136-142. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0509-y. Epub 2019 Feb 4.
Humans are nature's most intelligent and prolific users of external props and aids (such as written texts, slide-rules and software packages). Here we introduce a method for investigating how people make active use of their task environment during problem-solving and apply this approach to the non-verbal Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test for fluid intelligence. We designed a click-and-drag version of the Raven test in which participants could create different external spatial configurations while solving the puzzles. In our first study, we observed that the click-and-drag test was better than the conventional static test at predicting academic achievement of university students. This pattern of results was partially replicated in a novel sample. Importantly, environment-altering actions were clustered in between periods of apparent inactivity, suggesting that problem-solvers were delicately balancing the execution of internal and external cognitive operations. We observed a systematic relationship between this critical phasic temporal signature and improved test performance. Our approach is widely applicable and offers an opportunity to quantitatively assess a powerful, although understudied, feature of human intelligence: our ability to use external objects, props and aids to solve complex problems.
人类是自然界中最聪明、最多产的外部道具和辅助工具（如书面文本、计算尺和软件包）使用者。在这里，我们介绍了一种研究人们在解决问题过程中如何主动利用任务环境的方法，并将该方法应用于非言语性瑞文高级渐进矩阵测试（用于测试流体智力）。我们设计了一种点击和拖动版本的瑞文测试，参与者可以在解决谜题时创建不同的外部空间配置。在我们的第一项研究中，我们发现点击和拖动测试比传统的静态测试更能预测大学生的学业成绩。这一结果模式在一个新的样本中得到了部分复制。重要的是，环境改变行为在明显的不活跃期间聚集在一起，这表明解决问题的人正在巧妙地平衡内部和外部认知操作的执行。我们观察到这种关键的阶段性时间特征与提高测试表现之间存在系统关系。我们的方法具有广泛的适用性，为定量评估人类智力的一个强大但研究不足的特征提供了机会：我们使用外部物体、道具和辅助工具来解决复杂问题的能力。
