Steven M. Smith

Texas A&M University | TAMU

Why do creative ideas and solutions to unresolved problems benefit from taking a break? The idea of unconscious work as an explanation is so appealing that even after reading this paper, which states clearly that unconscious work is a fantasy based on no clear theory and no clear empirical evidence, some readers will claim that we are saying the op...

The forgetting fixation theory aims to assist the creative problem solving process by eliminating mental fixation, which results from past experience. The present work discusses the theoretical background of forgetting in studies of memory and creative cognition in relation to the forgetting fixation theory. We review research on the causes of and...

Two experiments examined blocking and entrenchment using a word fragment completion task. After incidental priming tasks in which varying numbers of red herring stimuli (i.e., wrong answers to subsequent problems) were seen, word fragment completion was tested for items orthographically similar to primed words. Both experiments showed a memory bloc...

How can creative problem solving be enhanced? The paper identifies and examines modulatory approaches from the cognitive and neuroscientific literature that have been made to make creative problem solving better. We review neuromodulatory approaches of both global and local effects. Through a 2-process model of creative problem solving that involve...

Two experiments tested the context-dependent fixation hypothesis of incubation effects, that initially fixated problems can be resolved when problem-solvers are in new contexts not associated with fixated ideas. Both experiments associated misleading clues with initial problem-solving contexts, causing a fixation effect, and retested problems eithe...

General Audience Summary When students predict their performance on an exam, they are consistently overconfident. Further, lower-performing students are more overconfident in their predictions. Many therefore hypothesize that overconfidence may lead students to perform poorly, suggesting that overconfident students stop studying for their exams pre...

Two experiments tested the red herring retrieval hypothesis, which states that fixation in creative problem solving is worse when memory for red herrings (i.e., inappropriate or incorrect solutions) is strengthened. In Experiment 1, when associations between Remote Associates Test (RAT) problem words (e.g., COTTAGE, SWISS, CAKE) and related red her...

It has often been shown that intentional recollection is influenced by context manipulations, such as context reinstatement (e.g., Smith, 2013; Smith & Vela, 2001), but whether or not automatic retrieval (e.g., Jacoby, 1991) is likewise context dependent remains an open question. Here, we present two experiments that examined effects of context man...

Three experiments tested whether brand-name products placed in a short story would be more often selected when two identical products with different brand names were presented in either a picture or text format in forced choice purchase intention and placement recognition tests. In Experiments 1a and 1b, there was no significant influence of produc...

Our experiment examined two questions: (1) Does reinstating a studied context affect recognition of an associated word, and (2) Does reinstating a studied word affect recognition of an associated context? After encoding 75 words, each of which was shown superimposed over a different 5-sec video of an environment (e.g., a playground, a traffic scene...

Paired associates (Tagalog-English word pairs) were studied and practiced with pairs superimposed over pictorial contexts, and tested with no context cues. On every retrieval practice (RP) incidental or conceptually supportive contexts were repeatedly shown with the same pair (constant context condition), or else new contexts were shown on every RP...

We extend the Twitter interface to stimulate exploratory browsing of social media and develop a creative cognition method to establish its efficacy. Exploratory browsing is a creative process in which users seek and traverse diverse and novel information as they investigate a conceptual space. The TweetBubble browser extension extends Twitter to en...

Four experiments tested the forgetting fixation hypothesis of incubation effects, comparing continuous vs. alternating generation of exemplars from three different types of categories. In two experiments, participants who listed as many members as possible from two different categories produced more responses, and more novel responses, when they al...

Evaluating creativity support environments is challenging. Some approaches address people’s experiences of creativity. The present method measures creativity, across conditions, in the products that people make. This research introduces information-based ideation (IBI), a paradigm for investigating open-ended tasks and activities in which users dev...

Four experiments examined the decontextualization of memories, the stage of learning in which memories can be recalled in the absence of episodic memory cues. Face-name pairs were studied with video-recorded environmental contexts in the background, and after 5 practice trials, recall of names associated with faces was tested in the absence of the...

Fixation (blocks to memories or ideas) can be alleviated not only by encouraging productive work towards a solution, but, as the present experiments show, by reducing counterproductive work. Two experiments examined relief from fixation in a word-fragment completion task. Blockers, orthographically similar negative primes (e.g., ANALOGY), blocked s...

The theory of the archetypes and the hypothesis of the collective unconscious are two of the central characteristics of analytical psychology. These provoke, however, varying reactions among academic psychologists. Empirical studies which test these hypotheses are rare. Rosen, Smith, Huston and Gonzales proposed a cognitive psychological experiment...

Empirical methods used for studying design thinking have included verbal protocols, case studies, and controlled experiments. Studies have looked at the role of design methods, strategies, tools, environment, experience, and group dynamics. Early empirical studies were casual and exploratory with loosely defined objectives and informal analysis met...

A number of cognitive skills relevant to conceptual design have been previously identified: divergent thinking, visual thinking, spatial reasoning, qualitative reasoning, and problem formulation. A battery of standardized test has been developed for each of these skills. This is the second paper in a series of papers on testing individual skill lev...

A technique for restricting visual stimuli to a single visual field was validated in the present study. Vertical strips of opaque tape were applied to close-fitting goggles, obscuring one visual field on each lens. Forty-seven right-handed participants fitted with such goggles were found to be faster and more accurate in processing verbal stimuli p...

Three word lists were presented to subjects in a single room or in three rooms, and a free-recall test on all three lists was given in a new environmental context. Multiple learning environments improved recall and clustering for subjects given instructions to memorize the words, but improvements did not materialize for those told to construct and...

Three experiments examined the prediction that context cues which are similar to study contexts can facilitate episodic recall, even if those cues are never seen before the recall test. Environmental context cueing effects have typically produced such small effect sizes that influences of moderating factors, such as the similarity between encoding...

After an initial period of unsuccessful work at solving a problem, a subject might either continue to work uninterruptedly or put the problem temporarily aside, returning to it later. The elusive laboratory phenomenon called “incubation” refers to superior performance for those subjects who return to the problem after a delay rather than working co...

This study demonstrated that environmental-context(EC)-dependent memory can occur with recognition memory. In Experiment 1, five lists were presented, each in a different room, and recognition memory for all five lists was tested in one of the five rooms. On a yes-no recognition test, recognition was reliably affected by EC. In Experiment 2, two li...

The cognition that gives rise to creative thinking is not a singular process or operation; rather, it consists of many different cognitive structures and processes that can collaborate in a variety of ways to construct different types of creative products. Cognition that is often relevant to creativity includes remote association, conceptual combin...

The present study examined forgetting and recovery of narrative passages varying in emotional intensity, using what we refer to as the "dropout" method. Previous studies of this dropout procedure have used word lists as to-be-remembered material, but the present experiments used brief story vignettes with one-word titles (e.g., "Torture", "Insects"...

Does spreading activation from incidentally encountered hints cause incubation effects? We used Remote Associates Test (RAT) problems to examine effects of incidental clues on impasse resolution. When solution words were seen incidentally 3-sec before initially unsolved problems were retested, more problems were resolved (Experiment 1). When strong...

Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have emerged over the past century as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the s...

A number of cognitive skills relevant to conceptual design were identified previously. They include divergent thinking (DT), visual thinking (VT), spatial reasoning (SR), qualitative reasoning (QR), and problem formulation (PF). A battery of standardized tests is being developed for these design skills. This paper focuses only on the divergent thin...

Earthquakes, lightning, and history‐changing ideas are classic examples of powerful, unpredictable forces of nature. These sorts of phenomena have been difficult to explain and predict, an often frustrating fact as humans try to understand and control the significant influences in our lives. Historically, such phenomena have been attributed to supe...

Three experiments examined whether or not fixation effects occur in brainstorming as a function of receiving ideas from others. Exchanging ideas in a group reduced the number of domains of ideas that were explored by participants. Additionally, ideas given by brainstormers conformed to ideas suggested by other participants. Temporal analyses showed...

Chinese characters originated as a semiotic system independent from spoken language and in the Japanese language they function non‐phonetically with speakers exhibiting right‐hemispheric advantage in their processing. We tested the hypothesis that Chinese characters are archetypal images and therefore part of our collective unconscious memory. Our...

Human cognition is critically important in all creative conceptual design. People are susceptible to design fixation, blocks or impasses caused by a variety of unconscious cognitive processes. Insight that resolves fixation can be triggered by accidentally encountered cues, but designers cannot know in advance which environmental triggers are most...

Design-by-analogy is a powerful tool to generate novel ideas. The present work explores the use of distant-domain analogies. Analogies from distant domains have a greater potential to lead to innovative solutions. This study hypothesizes that distant domain analogies lead to more abstraction resulting in more creative designs. This was evaluated wi...

A number of cognitive skills relevant to conceptual design have been previously identified: Divergent Thinking, Visual Thinking, Spatial Reasoning, Qualitative Reasoning and Problem Formulation. A battery of standardized test has been developed for these skills. We have already reported on the contents and rationale for divergent thinking test, as...

The overall objectives of the study are to identify key components of ideation methods and develop effectiveness metrics. This paper presents experimental results conducted on six ideation components (Provocative Stimuli, Suspend Judgment, Flexible Representation, Frame of Reference Shifting, Incubation, and Example Exposure). These experiments wer...

In two experiments, we used an effective new method for experimentally manipulating local and global contexts to examine context-dependent recall. The method included video-recorded scenes of real environments, with target words superimposed over the scenes. In Experiment 1, we used a within-subjects manipulation of video contexts and compared the...

A number of cognitive skills relevant to conceptual design were identified. They include Divergent Thinking, Visual Thinking, Spatial Reasoning, Qualitative Reasoning and Problem Formulation. A battery of standardized tests have been developed for these skills. We have previously reported on the contents and rationale for divergent thinking and vis...

An approach that can be taken for developing tools that are rooted in a scientific understanding of creative cognition is outlined, and described for one such tool, combinFormation. Cognitive processes that give rise to creativity have been identified and studied in experimental settings. Tools can be created that extend and support these cognitive...

Incubation has long been proposed as a mechanism in creative problem solving (Wallas, 1926). A new trial-by-trial method for observing incubation effects was used to compare the forgetting fixation hypothesis with the conscious work hypothesis. Two experiments examined the effects of incubation on initially unsolved Remote Associates Test (RAT) pro...

A number of cognitive skills relevant to design have been identified. Formal methods for evaluating these skills in engineering students are needed. Towards that goal we are developing a battery of standardized tests for the most critical of these skills. These tests are based on research in design thinking, human problem solving, cognitive psychol...

combinFormation is a mixed-initiative creativity support tool for searching, browsing, organizing, and integrating information. Images and text are connected to represent surrogates (enhanced bookmarks), optimizing the use of human cognitive facilities. Composition, an alternative to lists and spatial hypertext, is used to represent a collection of...

Although sometimes the task that motivates searching, browsing, and collecting information resources is finding a particular fact, humans often use information resources in intellectual and creative tasks that can include comparison, understand- ing, and discovery. Information discovery tasks involve not only finding relevant infor- mation but also...

Two experiments demonstrated striking, reversible forgetting effects that occurred even for a list of expletives. The experiments used a procedure based on the classic memory mechanisms of interference and retrieval cuing. Interference reduced recall dramatically, although appropriate cues triggered complete recovery. Distinctive, emotionally charg...

While sometimes the task that motivates searching, browsing, and collecting information resources is finding a particular fact, humans often engage in intellectual and creative tasks, such as comparison, understanding, and discovery. Information discovery tasks involve not only finding relevant information, but also seeing relationships among colle...

The objective of this paper is to present a series of proposed cognitive models for specific components of design ideation. Each model attempts to explain specific cognitive processes occurring during ideation. Every model presented here is constructed with elements (i.e. cognitive processes) and theories available from cognitive psychology, human...

This part presents four chapters on the concept of context. The first chapter develops a definition of what is meant by the term "context" that relates to the history of research that has made the term so common today. The second considers three specific problems-mood congruence, mood dependence and mood mediation-that present different sides to th...

Memory and the Brain was Magda Arnold's final book, the capstone to an influential career that spanned half a century. Many of the proposals and insights put forth in this work foreshadowed significant theoretical developments in both psychology and the neurosciences. With few exceptions, however, modern researchers, theorists and historians have o...

The feuding factions of the memory wars, that is, those concerned with the validity of recovered memories versus those concerned with false memories, are unified by Erdelyi's theory of repression. Evidence shows suppression, inhibition, and retrieval blocking can have profound yet reversible effects on a memory's accessibility, and deserve as promi...

Five experiments investigated predictions—derived from a dual-retrieval process approach to free recall (Brainerd, C. J., Wright, R., Reyna, V. F., & Payne, D. G. (2002). Dual-retrieval processes in free and associative recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 120–152.)—about false memories in a DRM-like paradigm. In all the experiments, the pre...

We develop combinFormation, a mixed-initiative system for representing collections as compositions of image and text surrogates. The system provides a set of direct manipulation facilities for forming, editing, organizing, and distributing collections as compositions. Additionally, to assist users in sifting through the vast expanse of potentially...

We review the clinical and laboratory evidence for recovered and false memories. Available data suggest that, at least under certain circumstances, both false and recovered memories may occur. We suggest that the critical questions are: (a) how common is each type of memory phenomenon, (b) what factors lead to the occurrence of each (including unde...

People need to find, work with, and put together information. A wide range of activities, such as comparison shopping, entertainment, and scholarly research involve collecting information resources. A surrogate represents an information resource and enables the user to obtain it. Typical systems, such as bookmarks, ITunes, and shopping carts, repre...

We are exploring new roles for interactive systems in supporting creative processes and aiding in idea formation. combinFormation is an interactive system that uses the information resources of the internet to promote creative thinking. Image and text representations are collected and manipulated in a composition space, which invokes complementary...

The overall objective of the study is to gain an insight into design ideation. Towards that goal we are empirically evaluating the effectiveness of design ideation methods. Key components of ideation methods have been identified and effectiveness metrics have been developed. This paper presents experimental results conducted on six ideation compone...

Are tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states better resolved by persistent retrieval efforts, or does an incubation period, i.e., a time away from memory attempts, facilitate resolution? General knowledge questions were given to participants twice, with the retest given either immediately after the participant's first attempt to answer the question, or after...

Navigational surrogates are representations that stand for information resources within search engine result sets, e?commerce sites, and digital libraries. They also form the basis of personal collections of media, such as web pages. Our hypothesis is that the formats of individual surrogates and collections play an important role in how people use...

This paper continues the movement from technology centered to human centered approaches in the study of tasks that involve finding, understanding, and using information, and tools that support these tasks. The iterative role of information as a stimulus to cognition is considered. The information discovery framework consists of a flowchart of conne...

In two experiments, predictions of the fuzzy-trace theory of memory were tested. Perceptual information may play a role in retrieval and recognition processes for verbatim, but not for gist, memory. Perceptual modality effects were assessed in the present study by presenting three-sentence stories (e.g., The bird is in the cage. The cage is over th...

Abstract ,The first ideas to be considered during creative idea generation can have profoundly constraining effects on the scope of the ideas that are subsequently generated. Even if initial ideasare intended to serve as helpful examples, or they are given simply to get the creative process going, the constraints of initial ideas may,be inescapable...

We describe an experimental paradigm designed to elicit both recovered and false memories in the laboratory. All participants saw, on a video screen, three critical categorized lists of words mixed in randomly with eighteen filler categorized lists. Those in the blocking condition then had several paper-and-pencil tasks that involved only the 18 no...

Although various Idea Generation (IG) methods exist for conceptual design, the ideation process is still hardly understood. There is a need for a Design Ideation Model that explains the variables and processes occurring during IG. Cognitive Science provides models and theories, but these are usually derived from simple tasks or problems. On the oth...

False recall is found for semantically related words that are not presented on both categorized and associatively structured study lists. Four experiments provide evidence that the associative list method produces false memories because of semantic processes involved in studying list words (the Kirkpatrick hypothesis), but that false memories produ...

Three experiments tested the prediction that incubation effects are caused by interactions between activation and environmental clues. Participants worked on 20 experimental problems and then were informed that they would have a second chance to work on the problems. Half were told they might see clues before returning to the problems and were inst...

To address questions about human memory's dependence on the coincidental environmental contexts in which events occur, we review studies of incidental environmental context-dependent memory in humans and report a meta-analysis. Our theoretical approach to the issue stems from Glenberg's (1997) contention that introspective thought (e.g., rememberin...

In 4 category cued recall experiments, participants falsely recalled nonlist common members, a semantic confusion error. Errors were more likely if critical nonlist words were presented on an incidental task, causing source memory failures called episodic confusion errors. Participants could better identify the source of falsely recalled words if t...

Metacomprehension accuracy for texts was greater after, rather than before, answering test questions about the texts—a postdiction superiority effect. Although postdiction superiority was found across successive sets of test questions and across successive texts, there was no improvement in metacomprehension accuracy after participants had taken mo...

The article focuses on cognitive modeling for games and animation In this article the author focuses on need of creativity approach in thinking among organizational people while adopting new technological change and basic requirements to improve those creative skills. He describes that the adoption of new technology often disrupts an organizational...

Cued recall of categorized lists was used to examine effects of category structure on the creation of false memories. In three experiments, category members that had not been presented on studied categorized lists were nonetheless recalled by participants. Delaying the category cued recall test (Experiment 1) and priming category members that had b...

The tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT) is the phenomenological experience that a word is on the verge of being recalled. Most research has been directed at TOT etiology and at retrieval processes occurring during a TOT. In this study, TOT phenomenology was examined. In Experiment 1, strong TOTs were more likely than weak TOTs to be followed by correct r...

In this chapter we highlight the generativity of ordinary human cognition, elaborate on the creative cognition approach, and give representative examples of research that further the goals of creative cognition. We conclude with some observations about how creative cognition can help to resolve some long-lasting controversies concerning creativity....

Seven experiments showed that word fragments are not solved as well following prior exposure to orthographically similar primes (e.g., ANALOGY as a prime for A-L- -GY relative to orthographically dissimilar primes (e.g., UNICORN). This blocking effect was influenced by the modality (auditory vs visual) of the primes but not by the depth to which...

Seven experiments showed that word fragments are not solved as well following prior exposure to orthographically similar primes (e.g., ANALOGY as a prime for A_L__GY) relative to orthographically dissimilar primes (e.g., UNICORN). This blocking effect was influenced by the modality (auditory vs. visual) of the primes but not by the depth to which t...

As in most other areas of cognitive psychology, research on concepts and categories has provided a wealth of information about the more receptive aspects of cognition (e.g., how people classify category instances) but has been less systematic in assessing the more generative aspects (e.g., how people use their concepts to develop something new). He...

The sources underlying tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states were examined by manipulating the amount of information provided at encoding. Using imaginary animals (TOTimals) as targets, we presented participants with three encoding conditions; a minimum-information condition (the country and the animal name, such as "Panama-Yelkey"), a medium-information...

Pages: 567 Item #: 4318581 ISBN: 978-1-55798-906-2 Copyright: 1997 Format: Softcover Creativity is a powerful and elusive force. It brings about scientific, technological, and artistic accomplishment, and it allows us to adapt to changes in our lives, to solve problems, and to resolve conflicts. Little wonder, then, that cognitive psychologists hav...

Examined the effects of demand characteristics on the frequency and accuracy of reported feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. In 2 experiments, self-presentational demands were manipulated using instructions that led a total of 80 students to expect either easy-to-answer questions (high-demand condition) or difficult-to-answ...

We examined the manner in which subjects interpret experimenter-provided feeling-of-knowing (FOK) definitions. The original FOK definition proposed by Hart (1965) is a composite of two criteria: (1) A feeling that the sought-after information is known and (2) a feeling that the sought-after information can be correctly identified on a later criteri...

E. Eich (see record 1995-42800-001) found that partcipants' ratings of the similarity of their feelings at input and test sessions predicted the size of the observed place dependent memory effect and that a mood manipulation affected recall more than did a place manipulation. He concluded that mood dependence is the underlying cause of place depen...

Jim Crocker was an engineer with a problem that was truly far out—in space. The Hubble telescope, the shining hope of astronomers, just wasn’t shining properly, having been outfitted and set into orbit with a flawed primary mirror. At a meeting arranged by NASA, Crocker and his team of engineers floated plan after plan for adjusting the optics on t...

The Dallas Cowboys have just intercepted a pass in New York Giant territory. Coverage of the game is about to yield to a commercial break. Time to pull away from the television, and go forage in the refrigerator. But wait. What’s this? In a bizarre twist on reality it’s a television advertisement about people watching television. A group of attract...

The principles of creative cognition clearly come into play when inventors, writers, artists, and scientists perform their creative magic. We can also put the same principles to work in everyday life, even if we hold other kinds of jobs, or labor at home to keep a household running smoothly. Many day-to-day situations clamor for imaginative solutio...

We have considered how people can use their concepts to formulate creative ideas. Now we examine how mental imagery can enhance creativity. We will also examine how imagery techniques can sometimes help us avoid the influence of conventional concepts when generating a new idea.

Those first creative ancestors who picked up sharp rocks and contemplated their usefulness also might have pondered that soft round light that appeared periodically in the night sky. They certainly would not have realized that the source of the light was the sun’s rays reflecting off the celestial satellite that we call the moon. Nor could they eve...

New ideas, whether wondrously creative or merely unusual, are almost always constructed from the building blocks of prior knowledge. Truly creative ideas arise when we wisely preserve and extend what is worthwhile from existing knowledge, and reject only the ideas that constrain our thinking. The old knowledge roots our new ideas in what has worked...

Late one evening in April of 1983, Kary Mullis drove through winding hills to his ranch in northern California. Mullis was a biochemist employed by the Cetus Corporation to synthesize chemicals used in genetic cloning. The road wove to and fro through the hills, and the fragrance of wildflowers wafted in his window as Mullis toyed with notions in h...

Stephen Donaldson, the noted science fiction and fantasy author, had a vexing problem, the sort of problem that most writers dread. He had an idea that he wanted to write about, but could not find a suitable way to convey it. He wanted to probe the abstract concept of “unbelief,” an unwillingness to accept the possibility that fantasy worlds might...

We have seen that people often rely heavily on old ideas when they formulate new ones. In this chapter we will examine how existing knowledge influences the artifacts that humans produce. We will see that innovation is basically a conservative process, but also one that allows a flowering of useful new ideas.