Gauselmann Paula, Tempel Tobias
Ludwigsburg University of Education, Reuteallee 46, 71634, Ludwigsburg, Germany.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Apr;32(2):729-736. doi: 10.3758/s13423-024-02564-7. Epub 2024 Sep 16.
Creative problem-solving can be impeded by mental impasses which are caused by fixation on associated but misguiding ideas. Recently, research has focused on the question of which processes might be involved in overcoming fixation and how it can be prevented from occurring altogether. In the present study, we investigated whether initially encoded fixation words can be forgotten by means of item-method directed forgetting, a procedure in which participants are presented with a series of items that are each followed by a remember cue or forget cue. Here, the series of items partly consisted of words that were misleadingly associated with compound remote associate problems that had to be solved later on. Two groups were compared: For one group, fixation words were followed by forget cues (fixation-F), whereas for the other group, they were followed by a remember cue (fixation-R). Results revealed three major findings: (1) The fixation-R group showed typical detrimental effects of fixation (i.e., impaired problem-solving performance), whereas there was no significant fixation effect in the fixation-F group, and (2) the magnitude of fixation was positively related to memory for fixation words. The present findings add to existing literature about how fixation negatively affects creative problem-solving and how it can be prevented by reducing the activation level of misleading thoughts.
创造性问题解决可能会受到思维僵局的阻碍，这些思维僵局是由对相关但具有误导性的想法的固着所导致的。最近，研究聚焦于哪些过程可能参与克服固着以及如何完全防止其发生的问题。在本研究中，我们调查了最初编码的固着词是否可以通过项目法指向性遗忘来遗忘，这是一种向参与者呈现一系列项目的程序，每个项目之后都有一个记住提示或遗忘提示。在这里，这一系列项目部分由与稍后必须解决的复合远距离联想问题存在误导性关联的词组成。对两组进行了比较：对于一组，固着词之后是遗忘提示（固着-F），而对于另一组，固着词之后是记住提示（固着-R）。结果揭示了三个主要发现：（1）固着-R组显示出典型的固着有害效应（即问题解决表现受损），而固着-F组没有显著的固着效应；（2）固着的程度与对固着词的记忆呈正相关。本研究结果补充了现有关于固着如何对创造性问题解决产生负面影响以及如何通过降低误导性思维的激活水平来防止固着的文献。
