Both attentional control and the ability to make remote associations aid spontaneous analogical transfer

Abstract

Given the widespread belief that analogical processing is an important mechanism for creative problem solving, despite the rarity of spontaneous transfer in laboratory studies, a critical direction for future research is to address which abilities may allow for the spontaneous analogizing between distant (superficially dissimilar) sources and targets. This study explores the role of individual differences in attentional control and the ability to make remote associations and their possible combined effects on spontaneous analogical transfer. Participants attempted to solve Duncker's radiation problem after having been exposed to a distant source as part of an earlier task. Results indicated that both measures of attentional control and the ability to make remote associations uniquely predicted spontaneous transfer between a superficially dissimilar source and target. Further, a critical role was seen for the quality of the representation of the source analog on the likelihood of transfer. The present results affirm that the likelihood of spontaneous transfer depends critically on the quality of the representation for the source, but also suggest that individual differences in the ability to make remote associations may be more conducive to constructing a broader representation of that source than individual differences in attentional control.

Individual differences in relational reasoning

“…The relational processing tasks included an analogical transfer problem (Gick & Holyoak, 1980), translating a statement into an algebraic expression (Martin & Bassok, 2005;Simon & Hayes, 1976), and a picture-mapping task (Markman & Gentner, 1993). These tasks, while heterogeneous in nature, were selected because they all involve some degree of relational reasoning and are used widely in the literature to study relational reasoning (e.g., Cushen & Wiley, 2018;Fisher, Borchert, & Bassok, 2011;Kubricht et al, 2017;Lewis & Mayer, 1987;Tohill & Holyoak, 2000;Vendetti, Wu, & Holyoak, 2014). Two of the selected tasks involve constructing an analogical mapping (the analogical transfer problem and the picture-mapping task), and all tasks involve consideration of relations between entities.…”

Preventing inert knowledge: Category status promotes spontaneous structure-based retrieval of prior knowledge.

“…Although there were no a priori predictions about the relative effectiveness of each study task at acquiring the target principle, any differences in study task performance between the different tasks would raise the concern that spontaneous transfer differences may be attributable to improved acquisition of the target principle instead of improved access. Such differences in study task performance would be problematic because prior work has found a relationship between how well participants can articulate the target principle during training and the likelihood of spontaneous transfer (Cushen & Wiley, 2018; Gick & Holyoak, 1983; Kubricht, Lu, & Holyoak, 2017). A linear regression model that predicted final study task performance with study task as a predictor was used to test for differences in the extent to which each study task encouraged acquisition of the target principle.…”

Determinants of creative thinking: the effect of task characteristics in solving remote associate test problems

“…These findings could also help identify ways to facilitate performance on other problems that call for similar semantic processes as in RAT problem solving. For example, both RAT problems with remote answers and analogical transfer require the realisation of associations between remote concepts (Cushen & Wiley, 2018;Fu et al, 2013;Gick & Holyoak, 1980). RAT problems with close answers but having a large number of irrelevant associates are similar to other problem-solving domains where disregarding irrelevant information is critical, e.g., overcoming mental set and design fixation (Jansson & Smith, 1991;Viswanathan & Linsey, 2011;Wiley, 1998).…”

“…RAT problems have been designed to assess individuals' ability to retrieve remote associates, which is considered to be critical in creative thinking (Mednick, 1962). Positive correlations have been reported between performance on RAT problem-solving and other creative problem-solving tasks, such as associative fluency (Levin, 1978;Mednick et al, 1964), rebus (MacGregor & Cunningham, 2008), verbal insight problem and analogical transfer (Ansburg & Dominowski, 2000;Cushen & Wiley, 2018). RAT problem solving is also viewed as a measure of convergent creative thinking because it involves finding a single correct solution to a problem where there are usually multiple apparent initial pathways (Brophy, 1998;Hommel, 2012;Lee & Therriault, 2013).…”