Covert shifts of attention function as an implicit aid to insight

Previous research shows that directed actions can unconsciously influence higher-order cognitive processing, helping learners to retain knowledge and guiding problem solvers to useful insights (e.g. Cook, S. W., Mitchell, Z., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Gesturing makes learning last. Cognition, 106, 1047-1058; Thomas, L. E., & Lleras, A. (2007). Moving eyes and moving thought: on the spatial compatibility between eye movements and cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 14, 663-668). We examined whether overt physical movement is necessary for these embodied effects on cognition, or whether covert shifts of attention are sufficient to influence cognition. We asked participants to try to solve Duncker’s radiation problem while occasionally directing them, via an unrelated digit-tracking task, to shift their attention (while keeping their eyes fixed) in a pattern related to the problem’s solution, to move their eyes in this pattern, or to keep their eyes and their attention fixed in the center of the display. Although they reported being unaware of any relationship between the digit-tracking task and the radiation problem, participants in both the eye-movement and attention-shift groups were more likely to solve the problem than were participants who maintained fixation. Our results show that by shifting attention in a pattern compatible with a problem’s solution, we can aid participants’ insight even in the absence of overt physical movements.     

Skeptical theism and moral obligation

Skeptical theism claims that the probability of a perfect God’s existence isn’t at all reduced by our failure to see how such a God could allow the horrific suffering that occurs in our world. Given our finite grasp of the realm of value, skeptical theists argue, it shouldn’t surprise us that we fail to see the reasons that justify God in allowing such suffering, and thus our failure to see those reasons is no evidence against God’s existence or perfection. Critics object that skeptical theism implies a degree of moral skepticism that even skeptical theists will find objectionable and that it undermines moral obligations that even skeptical theists will want to preserve. I discuss a version of the first objection and defend a version of the second.     

How Are Traits Related to Problem Behavior in Preschoolers? Similarities and Contrasts Between Temperament and Personality

The lack of empirical research relating temperament models and personality hinders conceptual integration and holds back research linking childhood traits to problem behavior or maladjustment. This study evaluates, within a sample of 443 preschoolers, the relationships between children’s maladaptation and traits measured by three temperament models (Thomas and Chess, Buss and Plomin, and Rothbart), and a Five-Factor based personality model. Adequate reliabilities and expected factor structures are demonstrated for most scales. A joint principal component analysis combining 28 temperament and 18 personality scales indicates a six-factor model, distinguishing Sociability, Activity, Conscientiousness, Disagreeableness, Emotionality, and Sensitivity. Regression analyses reveal that although single temperament and personality scales explain from 23% to 37% of problem behavior variance, the six components explain from 41% to 49% and provide a clearer differentiation among CBCL-problem scales. This age-specific taxonomy refines and corroborates conclusions based on narrative reviews and furnishes a more balanced view of trait–maladjustment relationships.

Specialization effect and its influence on memory and problem solving in expert chess players

Expert chess players, specialized in different openings, recalled positions and solved problems within and outside their area of specialization. While their general expertise was at a similar level, players performed better with stimuli from their area of specialization. The effect of specialization on both recall and problem solving was strong enough to override general expertise—players remembering positions and solving problems from their area of specialization performed at around the level of players 1 standard deviation (SD) above them in general skill. Their problem-solving strategy also changed depending on whether the problem was within their area of specialization. When it was, they searched more in depth and less in breadth; with problems outside their area of specialization, the reverse. The knowledge that comes from familiarity with a problem area is more important than general purpose strategies in determining how an expert will tackle it. These results demonstrate the link in experts between problem solving and memory of specific experiences and indicate that the search for context-independent general purpose problem-solving strategies to teach to future experts is unlikely to be successful.     

Are Newcomb problems really decisions?

Richard Jeffrey long held that decision theory should be formulated without recourse to explicitly causal notions. Newcomb problems stand out as putative counterexamples to this ‘evidential’ decision theory. Jeffrey initially sought to defuse Newcomb problems via recourse to the doctrine of ratificationism, but later came to see this as problematic. We will see that Jeffrey’s worries about ratificationism were not compelling, but that valid ratificationist arguments implicitly presuppose causal decision theory. In later work, Jeffrey argued that Newcomb problems are not decisions at all because agents who face them possess so much evidence about correlations between their actions and states of the world that they are unable to regard their deliberate choices as causes of outcomes, and so cannot see themselves as making free choices. Jeffrey’s reasoning goes wrong because it fails to recognize that an agent’s beliefs about her immediately available acts are so closely tied to the immediate causes of these actions that she can create evidence that outweighs any antecedent correlations between acts and states. Once we recognize that deliberating agents are free to believe what they want about their own actions, it will be clear that Newcomb problems are indeed counterexamples to evidential decision theory.     

Modeling Family Dynamics in Children with Fragile X Syndrome

Few studies have examined the impact of children with genetic disorders and their unaffected siblings on family functioning. In this study, the reciprocal causal links between problem behaviors and maternal distress were investigated in 150 families containing a child with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and an unaffected sibling. Both children's behavior problems appeared to have strong, direct effects on maternal distress, but maternal distress did not appear to have any reciprocal causal effects on either child's behavior problems. Surprisingly, there were no significant differences in the effects of the two children's behavior problems on maternal distress. These data suggest that the problem behaviors of children with FXS, as well as their unaffected siblings, can have a substantial and additive impact on maternal depression and anxiety. Future research efforts should employ longitudinal research designs to confirm these findings.     

Problem Solvers Adjust Cognitive Offloading Based on Performance Goals

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.¹ Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal‐related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals—maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively—and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal‐related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal‐unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload.     

When the Solution Is on the Doorstep: Better Solving Performance,but Diminished Aha! Experience for Chess Experts on the Mutilated Checkerboard Problem

Insight problems are difficult because the initially activated knowledge hinders successful solving. The crucial information needed for a solution is often so far removed that gaining access to it through restructuring leads to the subjective experience of “Aha!”. Although this assumption is shared by most insight theories, there is little empirical evidence for the connection between the necessity of restructuring an incorrect problem representation and the Aha! experience. Here, we demonstrate a rare case where previous knowledge facilitates the solving of insight problems but reduces the accompanying Aha! experience. Chess players were more successful than non‐chess players at solving the mutilated checkerboard insight problem, which requires retrieval of chess‐related information about the color of the squares. Their success came at a price, since they reported a diminished Aha! experience compared to controls. Chess players’ problem‐solving ability was confined to that particular problem, since they struggled to a similar degree to non‐chess players to solve another insight problem (the eight‐coin problem), which does not require chess‐related information for a solution. Here, chess players and non‐chess players experienced the same degree of insight.     

Visualization,pattern recognition,and forward search: effects of playing speed and sight of the position on grandmaster chess errors

A new approach examined two aspects of chess skill, long a popular topic in cognitive science. A powerful computer‐chess program calculated the number and magnitude of blunders made by the same 23 grandmasters in hundreds of serious games of slow (“classical”) chess, regular “rapid” chess, and rapid “blindfold” chess, in which opponents transmit moves without ever seeing the actual position. Rapid chess led to substantially more and larger blunders than classical chess. Perhaps more surprisingly, the frequency and magnitude of blunders did not differ in rapid versus blindfold play, despite the additional memory and visualization load imposed by the latter. We discuss the involvement of various cognitive processes in human problem‐solving and expertise, especially with respect to chess. Prior opposing views about the basis of general chess skill have emphasized the dominance of either (a) swift pattern recognition or (b) analyzing ahead, but both seem important and the controversy appears currently unresolvable and perhaps fruitless.     

广告设计的思维过程及其影响因素

让１０个具有不同知识背景和工作经验的被试独立完成一个假设的广告设计任务,要求在设计过程中大声报告他们所想到的内容。根据被试的口语报告,分析广告设计思维的基本过程,并探讨设计者的工作经验和知识背景对设计思维过程的影响。实验结果表明：（１）广告设计活动可以看成是一种问题解决行为,设计要求规定了问题的初始状态和目标状态,设计就是经过一系列认知操作产生出符合设计要求的设计结果;（２）实际工作中的广告设计过程包括问题理解、整体策划以及方案构思等阶段,这种阶段性同样存在于个体的设计思维过程中;（３）由于工作经验和知识背景不同,不同被试的广告设计思维过程具有明显的差异,这些差异体现在使用规则、理解问题以及整体策划等方面。