Using a Fork as a Hairbrush: Investigating Dual Routes to Release from Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness involves difficulty with conceptualizing creative object uses. When it obstructs problem‐solving, individuals must reframe their approach. We examined how different training techniques—chunk decomposition (i.e., considering an object’s basic parts and physical properties) and constraint relaxation (i.e., considering an object’s different functions)—might rely upon different routes to creative reframing. Additionally, we investigated how different forms of cognitive load interact with these dual routes. Participants learned one of three techniques. Chunk decomposition participants created object breakdown diagrams; constraint relaxation participants created object functions lists; and free association (control) participants wrote a word that they associated with each of several concrete nouns. After training, participants attempted to solve five functional fixedness problems. E1 investigated how increasing germane cognitive load via either direct or indirect prompting affected training transfer. Experiment 2 investigated how reducing extraneous cognitive load by providing no transfer instructions and using an eye‐closure strategy. Across both experiments, results supported differences in accuracy and response latency by training. However, chunk decomposition and constraint relaxation did not follow the same pattern, suggesting different mechanisms of the effect. We discuss possible applications to increase innovation in real‐world domains such as education, business, and engineering.     

The Blicket Within: Preschoolers' Inferences About Insides and Causes

Four experiments examined children's inferences about the relation between objects' internal parts and their causal properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds recognized that objects with different internal parts had different causal properties, and those causal properties transferred if the internal part moved to another object. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds made inferences from an object's internal parts to its causal properties without being given verbal labels for objects or being shown that insides and causal properties covaried. Experiment 3 found that 4-year-olds chose an object with the same internal part over one with the same external property when asked which object had the same causal property as the target (which had both the internal part and external property). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that 4-year-olds made similar inferences from causal properties to internal parts, but 3-year-olds relied more on objects' external perceptual appearance. These results suggest that by the age of 4, children have developed an understanding of a relation between an artifact's internal parts and its causal properties.     

AESTHETICS,CREATIVITY, AND MYSTICISM: AN INVESTIGATION OF THREE MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

This essay explores the universal nature of aesthetic, creative, and mystical experience, tracing some essential interrelations among the three. Enlarging upon the work of anthropologist Jacques Maquet, I speculate that “sensory fixedness” is both necessary and sufficient to achieve aesthetic experience, and that the unification of mind engendered by sensory fixedness is the essential source of aesthetic power. Therefore, the role of the aesthetic object (construed broadly) is either as an arbitrary sensory focusing mechanism, or as the physical embodiment of a gestalt facilitating fixedness; the first category is merely attractive, while the second contains all that is truly great in art (visual and auditory). I suggest further that as both creative inspiration and mystical experience result from fixedness, both are related to aesthetic experience. However, while aesthetic experience is rooted in sensation, mystical and creative experience, though often prepared by sensory fixedness, may transcend the sensory domain altogether toward more abstract forms of mental fixedness.     

The impact of monetary stimuli on object-based attention

Previous research has implied that monetary reward to target location (a reward for spatial properties) can affect object-based attention, but no study has directly investigated the influence of monetary objects (a reward for object properties) on object-based attention. Thus, it is unclear whether and how monetary objects can affect object-based attention. To experimentally investigate this problem, this study adapted the well-established two-rectangle paradigm. In Experiment 1, either two 100-yuan notes or two 1-yuan notes were presented to participants. We found an object-based effect with faster responses to targets at an uncued position on the cued object compared to those at an equidistant position on the uncued object; the effect was similar in 100-yuan and 1-yuan note trials. In Experiment 2, two notes (one 100-yuan and one 1-yuan) were simultaneously presented to participants, and cue location (100-yuan, 1-yuan) was manipulated. We found a greater object-based effect when the cue appeared on the 100-yuan note than on the 1-yuan note. These results suggest that the rewarding property of objects can affect object-based attention by means of altering object salience.     

Suppression in object-based attention

This study examines suppression in object-based attention in three experiments using an object-based attention task similar to Egly, R., Driver, J., & Rafal, R. D. (1994. Shifting visual attention between objects and locations: Evidence from normal and parietal lesion subjects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(2), 161–177. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.123.2.161) with the addition of a distractor. In Experiment 1 participants identified a target object at one of four ends of two rectangles. The target location was validly cued on 72% of trials. The remaining 28% were located on the same or a different object. Sixty-eight percent of trials also included a distractor on one of the two objects. Experiment 1 failed to show suppression when a distractor was present, but did demonstrate the spread of attention across the attended object when no distractor was present. Experiment 2 added a mask to the paradigm to make the task more difficult and engage suppression. When suppression was engaged in the task, data showed suppression on the unattended (different) object, but not on the attended (same) object. Experiment 3 replicated findings from Experiment 1 and 2 using a within participants design. Findings are discussed in relation to the role of suppression in visual selective attention.     

Transfer of calibration in dynamic touch: What do perceivers learn when they learn about length of a wielded object?

Successfully performing everyday behaviours requires that perceptions and actions are properly calibrated to environmental properties. In three experiments, the authors tested whether calibration was specific to perception of a particular property of a wielded object from a particular grasp position on that object. The experiments investigate whether transfer of recalibration occurs across changes in grasp position (Experiment 1), object property (Experiment 2), and grasp position and object property (Experiment 3). The results suggest that a complete transfer of recalibration occurred in each case. Such results are consistent with recent research on dynamic touch and suggest that rather than recalibrating participants to one particular property of the wielded objects, feedback about a particular property served to recalibrate participants to the properties of the rod set as a whole.     

Failures of retrieval and comparison constrain change detection in natural scenes

In a change detection paradigm, a target object in a natural scene either rotated in depth, was replaced by another object token, or remained the same. Change detection performance was reliably higher when a target postcue allowed participants to restrict retrieval and comparison processes to the target object (Experiment 1). Change detection performance remained excellent when the target object was not attended at change (Experiment 2) and when a concurrent verbal working memory load minimized the possibility of verbal encoding (Experiment 3). Together, these data demonstrate that visual representations accumulate in memory from attended objects as the eyes and attention are oriented within a scene and that change blindness derives, at least in part, from retrieval and comparison failure.     

Transfer of calibration in dynamic touch: what do perceivers learn when they learn about length of a wielded object?

Successfully performing everyday behaviours requires that perceptions and actions are properly calibrated to environmental properties. In three experiments, the authors tested whether calibration was specific to perception of a particular property of a wielded object from a particular grasp position on that object. The experiments investigate whether transfer of recalibration occurs across changes in grasp position (Experiment 1), object property (Experiment 2), and grasp position and object property (Experiment 3). The results suggest that a complete transfer of recalibration occurred in each case. Such results are consistent with recent research on dynamic touch and suggest that rather than recalibrating participants to one particular property of the wielded objects, feedback about a particular property served to recalibrate participants to the properties of the rod set as a whole.     

Spatial problem solving and functional relations

Three experiments investigated the role of object knowledge on participants' ability to solve a spatial arrangement problem. The task was to rearrange six real-world three-dimensional objects so that their relative locations agreed with a given set of rules. The aim of the experiments was to tease out the relative extent to which object association, orientation, and object-specific functional relations affect performance on arrangement tasks. When the problem was presented vertically (objects arranged in piles), participants solved functional canonical versions of the problem significantly quicker than functional non-canonical versions both between (Experiments 1a and 2), and within subjects (Experiment 3). When the arrangement problem was presented horizontally (objects arranged flat in two rows), no significant differences in solution times were found between conditions (Experiments 1b and 2). Overall the results provide evidence for the importance of object-specific functional relations as a predictor of the solution time of spatial arrangement problems, although some differences were noted between single and multiple presentation of problems when specific rules within problems were rotated. The importance of functional information in memory as a constraint on the building of mental models and problem spaces is discussed.     

Focused attention improves working memory: implications for flexible-resource and discrete-capacity models

Performance in working memory (WM) tasks depends on the capacity for storing objects and on the allocation of attention to these objects. Here, we explored how capacity models need to be augmented to account for the benefit of focusing attention on the target of recall. Participants encoded six colored disks (Experiment 1) or a set of one to eight colored disks (Experiment 2) and were cued to recall the color of a target on a color wheel. In the no-delay condition, the recall-cue was presented after a 1,000-ms retention interval, and participants could report the retrieved color immediately. In the delay condition, the recall-cue was presented at the same time as in the no-delay condition, but the opportunity to report the color was delayed. During this delay, participants could focus attention exclusively on the target. Responses deviated less from the target’s color in the delay than in the no-delay condition. Mixture modeling assigned this benefit to a reduction in guessing (Experiments 1 and 2) and transposition errors (Experiment 2). We tested several computational models implementing flexible or discrete capacity allocation, aiming to explain both the effect of set size, reflecting the limited capacity of WM, and the effect of delay, reflecting the role of attention to WM representations. Both models fit the data better when a spatially graded source of transposition error is added to its assumptions. The benefits of focusing attention could be explained by allocating to this object a higher proportion of the capacity to represent color.     

Extrafoveal processing of objects in a naming task: Evidence from word probe experiments

In two experiments, we investigated the processing of extrafoveal objects in a double-object naming task. On most trials, participants named two objects; but on some trials, the objects were replaced shortly after trial onset by a written word probe, which participants had to name instead of the objects. In Experiment 1, the word was presented in the same location as the left object either 150 or 350 msec after trial onset and was either phonologically related or unrelated to that object name. Phonological facilitation was observed at the later but not at the earlier SOA. In Experiment 2, the word was either phonologically related or unrelated to the right object and was presented 150 msec after the speaker had begun to inspect that object. In contrast with Experiment 1, phonological facilitation was found at this early SOA, demonstrating that the speakers had begun to process the right object prior to fixation.     

Selective attention to the parts of an object

Recent empirical results suggest that there is a decrement in dividing attention between two objects in a scene compared with focusing attention on a single object. However, objects can be made of individual parts. Is there a decrement for dividing attention across different parts of a single object? We addressed this question in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that attention can exhibit part-based selection—that is, the subjects were more accurate in reporting two attributes from the same part of an object than they were in reporting attributes from different parts of an object. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that part-based attentional decrements occurred simultaneously with object-based attentional decrements. The results from Experiment 2 demonstrated that part-based attention is evident at the same time as objects are processed as coherent wholes. Our results imply that there is an attentional mechanism that can select either objects or their parts.     

Is Complex Visual Information Implicated During Language Comprehension? The Case of Cast Shadows

Previous research showed that sensorimotor information affects the perception of properties associated with implied perceptual context during language comprehension. Three experiments addressed a novel question of whether perceptual context may contribute to a simulation of information about such out-of-sight objects as cast shadows. In Experiment 1, participants read a sentence that implied a particular shadow cast on a target (blinds vs. an open window) and then verified the picture of the object onto which a shadow was cast. Responses were faster when the shadow of blinds cast on the object matched that implied by the sentence. However, the data did not show the same matching effect for pictures with cast shadows from an open window. In Experiments 2 and 3, we found that verification times for pictures with no cast shadows were faster when preceded by an “open window” sentence, thus suggesting that reading the sentence does not elicit a visual simulation of any specific shadow. Experiment 3 showed that the objects superimposed with a cast shadow of the blinds and blinds themselves were verified faster after reading a “blinds” sentence. However, the results of an order analysis showed the temporal stability of the “blinds shadows” effect, but the disappearance of the “blinds” effect in the second half of the data. We conclude that the results are compatible, to a lesser or greater extent, with multiple accounts, and discuss our findings in the context of a mental imagery view, a mental simulation view, and an amodal representation view.     

Recognition of natural scenes from global properties: seeing the forest without representing the trees

Human observers are able to rapidly and accurately categorize natural scenes, but the representation mediating this feat is still unknown. Here we propose a framework of rapid scene categorization that does not segment a scene into objects and instead uses a vocabulary of global, ecological properties that describe spatial and functional aspects of scene space (such as navigability or mean depth). In Experiment 1, we obtained ground truth rankings on global properties for use in Experiments 2-4. To what extent do human observers use global property information when rapidly categorizing natural scenes? In Experiment 2, we found that global property resemblance was a strong predictor of both false alarm rates and reaction times in a rapid scene categorization experiment. To what extent is global property information alone a sufficient predictor of rapid natural scene categorization? In Experiment 3, we found that the performance of a classifier representing only these properties is indistinguishable from human performance in a rapid scene categorization task in terms of both accuracy and false alarms. To what extent is this high predictability unique to a global property representation? In Experiment 4, we compared two models that represent scene object information to human categorization performance and found that these models had lower fidelity at representing the patterns of performance than the global property model. These results provide support for the hypothesis that rapid categorization of natural scenes may not be mediated primarily though objects and parts, but also through global properties of structure and affordance.     

The effect of body and part-based motion on the recognition of unfamiliar objects

We investigated the role of global (body) and local (parts) motion on the recognition of unfamiliar objects. Participants were trained to categorise moving objects and were then tested on their recognition of static images of these targets using a priming paradigm. Each static target shape was primed by a moving object that comprised either the same body and parts motion; same body, different parts motion; different body, same part motion as the learned target or was non-moving. Only the same body but not the same part motion facilitated shape recognition (Experiment 1), even when either motion was diagnostic of object identity (Experiment 2). When parts motion was more related to the object's body motion then it facilitated the recognition of the static target (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that global and local motions are independently accessed during object recognition and have important implications for how objects are represented in memory.     

客体同维度特征的视觉工作记忆存储机制

客体理论认为视觉工作记忆的存储单位是客体, 人类能够把组成物体的所有特征整合成一个单元进行记忆, 不管这些特征是来自不同维度还是同一维度。然而同一维度多个特征可以被整合成客体记忆的结果只被少数研究证实, 大量研究发现同一维度的多个特征不能被整合记忆, 这形成了弱客体理论的基本观点。为了解决两大理论之间的争议, 本研究主要探究同维度特征能否被整合记忆。通过分析以往研究, 我们认为实验范式和物体意义两个因素可能是导致之前大部分研究没有发现维度内特征能够被整合记忆的原因。因此, 实验1采用回忆报告范式替代以往研究经常使用的变化觉察范式, 结果发现, 同一维度的多个特征难以被整合记忆。实验2以记忆无意义物体的特征为基线, 探究在记忆有意义物体的特征时是否可能将多个特征进行整合记忆。结果发现, 对于有意义物体的特征的记忆成绩并没有显著好于记忆无意义物体特征的成绩, 说明即使采用具有较强整合线索的有意义物体作为载体, 同一维度多个特征也难以被整合记忆。两个实验结果进一步支持了弱客体理论。     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

Effect of background information on object identification

Previous research using briefly presented displays has indicated that objects in a coherent scene are easier to identify than are objects in incoherent backgrounds. Of interest is whether the identification of the target object depends on the identification of the scene or the identification of other diagnostic objects in the scene. Experiment 1 indicated objects are more difficult to identify when located in an "episodically" inconsistent background even when the same diagnostic objects are present in both inconsistent and consistent backgrounds. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the degree to which noncued (cohort) objects are consistent with the target object has no effect on the object identification task. Experiment 3 showed consistent episodic background information facilitated object identification and inconsistent episodic background information did not interfere relative to "nonsense" backgrounds roughly equated on visual characteristics. Implications for models of scene perception are discussed.     

The role of comparison in the extension of novel adjectives

Previous reseach has documented that basic-level object categories provide an initial foundation for mapping adjectives to object properties. Children ranging from 21 months to 3 years can successfully extend a novel adjective (e.g., transparent) to other objects sharing a salient property if the objects are all members of the same basic-level category; if the objects are members of different basic-level categories, they fail to extend adjectives systematically (R. S. Klibanoff & S. R. Waxman, 2000a; S. R. Waxman & D. B. Markow, 1998). The present study proposed that the process of comparison is instrumental in children's ability to move beyond this foundation. To promote comparison, 2 target objects were introduced to 3-year-olds. In Experiment 1, the targets had contrastive properties (e.g., 1 transparent and 1 opaque object); in Experiment 2, the targets had consistent properties (e.g., 2 transparent objects). The results of both experiments illustrate that comparison--a general psychological process--operates in conjunction with naming to support the extension of novel adjectives to properties of objects from diverse basic-level categories.