Attribute centrality and imaginative thought

Abstract

Participants' representations of the concept human were examined to differentiate three types of associations between concepts and their component attributes: the capacity of concepts to cue attributes (attribute accessibility), the capacity of attributes to cue concepts (instance accessibility), and the extent to which attributes are thought of as central to concepts (attribute centrality), The findings provide information about the concept human itself and, more generally, about the functionally distinct roles those different attribute-concept associations play in guiding imaginative thought. College students listed attributes that differentiate humans from other animals, rated the centrality of those attributes, and listed animals that possess those attributes. Other students drew and described extraterrestrials that possessed some of the attributes that were found to vary across those listing and rating tasks, Rated centrality was the most important determinant of an attribute's impact on imaginative generation. When the imagined extraterrestrials were supposed to possess attributes that had been rated as central to humans (intelligence, emotional complexity, or opposable thumbs), participants projected more aspects of human form onto them than when the creatures were supposed to possess less central attributes or when attributes were unspecified.Man is distinguished from other animals by his imaginative gifts ... We are nature's unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex.-Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent ofMan, 1973

Making Virtue of Necessity: The Role of Team Climate for Innovation in Resource-Constrained Innovation Projects

“…The underlying theory suggests that when facing a problem, the default approach of people is to implement the first solution that comes to mind (Ward, 1994). The first solution coming to mind is typically based on analogies to a previous solution and therefore fits comfortably with the new problem (Ward, 1994;Ward and Dodds, 2000).…”

The Effects of Domain Knowledge and Instructional Manipulation on Creative Idea Generation

“…Similar to the findings of Scott, Lonergan, and Mumford (2005), which stated that conceptual combination in creative thought might proceed using alternative approaches (analogical or case-based approach) according to the nature of the knowledge being applied, the present study demonstrates the strategies used in creative idea generation might be regulated by domain knowledge. However, such results would not refute the path-of-least-resistance model (Ward, 1994;Ward, 1995;Ward, Dodds, Saunders, & Sifonis, 2000), which suggests that people's predominant tendency, when they develop new ideas in a domain, is to retrieve fairly specific, basic level exemplars from that domain as a beginning point. Once again, the present study confirms this notion.…”

“…Following the research line mentioned above, the present study investigated the role of domain knowledge in creative idea generation. Previous studies revealed that when people generate new ideas for a domain, their predominant tendencies are to retrieve fairly specific, basic level exemplars from that domain, select one or more of those instances as a starting point, and project many of the stored properties of the instances into the novel ideas (Ward, 1994;Ward, 1995;Ward, Dodds, Saunders, & Sifonis, 2000). Meanwhile, a minority of people tested depend on more abstract information (e.g., features of category membership) and generate more original ideas than those relying on specific instances (Ward, Patterson, Sifonis, Dodds, & Saunders, 2002).…”

Modeling semantic knowledge structures for creative problem solving: Studies on expressing concepts, categories, associations, goals and context

“…The path-of-least-resistance model suggests that new ideas are developed starting from the basic instances for the problem context, and projecting their features to the new solutions (Ward, 1995;Ward et al, 2000).…”