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Reasoning about verbal analogies requires selective retrieval of relevant relational information. A consequence of this may be that inhibitory processes in memory cause reduced recall of information associated with analogy-irrelevant relations. The current experiments apply the retrieval-induced forgetting framework to investigate the potential role of such inhibitory processes in analogical reasoning. Participants studied verbal analogies in A-B :: C-D form. Then, half of the A-B pairs from the study phase appeared in verbal analogy problems but with a new C term (A-B :: C-?), and half the items did not appear in verbal analogy problems. A final recall test was then administered for all the original analogies. When the new C term in the analogical reasoning phase conveyed a new relation that was inconsistent with the original relation, reduced recall for items appearing in analogies was observed (Experiment 1). However, when the new C term conveyed a relation that was consistent with the original relation, no forgetting effect was observed (Experiment 1). This forgetting effect occurred even when a hint of the original relation was provided at final recall (Experiment 2). These results indicate that reasoning about analogies may involve inhibitory processes that help reduce competition among competing relations.

Research suggests the processes involved in analogical transfer are not unlike those of insightful problem solving. This study tests whether encoding cross-domain analogies leads to more feelings of insight and higher rates of far transfer. On each trial in the present study, subjects induced a conceptual relationship from a set of three verbal analogy pairs (30 trials). Half of the trials had a semantically distant (i.e. expansive) final pair, and half of the trials had a semantically close (i.e. consistent) final pair. Subsequently, subjects attempted to complete a novel far analogy for each of the previously learned relations. Far transfer performance on new analogies was predicted by the semantic vector distance of the originally encoded relation. Subjects also reported significantly stronger aha moments at the moment of transfer for accurate transfer responses compared to inaccurate responses, which suggests that the aha response may provide metacognitive information about solution accuracy.

AbstractRecent attention has turned towards metacognitive processes involved in creativity. One factor known to influence metamemory judgments is accessibility—the amount of and ease with which related information comes to mind. The present research explored how subjective accessibility (sAccessibility) influences both participants’ metacognitive predictions of their creative performance as well as their actual creativity using an alternate uses task (AUT). Participants predicted how creative their ideas would be for AUT objects with low vs. high sAccessibility (as determined by a norming study), prior to generating ideas. High sAccessibility led to higher metacognitive predictions of creativity, but less creative ideas compared to low sAccessibility objects. Additionally, the serial order effect was moderated by sAccessibility such that objects with high sAccessibility started off less creative. This research extends recent empirical and theoretical work on creative metacognition, demonstrating a disconnect in the effects of sAccessibility on metacognitive predictions vs. actual creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests that constraints can facilitate creative thinking rather than hinder it. This research tested how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) affect the creativity of ideas generated under conditions of low and high constraint. Participants generated short sentences with either low or high constraints placed on the choice of initial letters used. Under the high-constraint condition, participants were less likely to successfully produce sentences but the sentences were judged as more creative. There was an interaction between constraint condition and working memory capacity such that WMC and creativity were positively associated in the low constraint condition, but not in the high constraint condition. An examination of strategy reports also indicated that higher WMC participants may have made better use of strategies which were related to higher creativity in the low-constraint condition. This research adds to findings that constraints can be beneficial for creativity, and is consistent with suggestions that WMC enhances efficient search and retrieval from long-term memory and use of strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency to conform to prior examples can be viewed as a form of mental fixation that has negative consequences and limits the scope and quality of designs. Two experiments using the Smith, S. M., Ward, T. B., & Schumacher, J. S. [(1993) "Memory & Cognition," 21, 837-845] toy invention task were conducted to determine whether participants who viewed example toys would subsequently generate toys rated as less novel compared to a control group viewing no examples. Although participants who viewed examples tended to incorporate the example features into their own ideas, the novelty of their ideas was rated as higher than those of the control group. This effect occurred both with no specific instruction regarding the examples (Experiment 1), as well as when specifically instructed to be different from the examples (Experiment 2). These results indicate that examples do not always have a negative impact on creativity, and suggest they may sometimes help lead to more unusual ideas.

In order for a person to comprehend metaphoric expressions, do metaphor-irrelevant aspects of literal information need to be inhibited? Previous research using sentence-verification paradigms has found that literal associates take longer to process after reading metaphorical sentences; however, it is problematic to infer inhibition from this research. Moreover, previous work has not distinguished between familiar and novel metaphor processing. To test more directly for when inhibition may be required during metaphor processing, we performed 3 experiments using a metaphor-induced lexical forgetting paradigm. Participants initially learned word pairs where the cues were potential metaphoric vehicles and the targets were literal associates (e.g., "SHARK--swim"). Then, participants read half the vehicles as part of metaphorical sentences, which they interpreted ("The lawyer for the defense is a shark"). Subsequent forgetting of the literal associates was greater when vehicles had appeared in metaphorical sentences (Experiment 1) and was observed for both familiar and novel metaphors when participants were instructed to interpret the metaphors (Experiment 2) but was observed for only novel metaphors when participants were instructed to simply read the metaphors (Experiment 3). These results suggest that forgetting occurs as a result of inhibitory mechanisms that are engaged to alter activation of irrelevant literal information during metaphor processing, and that these mechanisms are most relevant for the processing demands associated with novel metaphors.

People are often inaccurate in their predictions of performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. We tested whether receptivity to bullshit – the tendency to perceive meaningless statements as profound – would relate to the accuracy of metacognitive judgments on several problem-solving tasks. Individuals who were highly receptive to bullshit were less accurate in their predictions of performance on creative problem-solving tasks, but not on verbal analogy or recall tasks. Further, individuals with high BS receptivity were less able to discriminate between solvable and unsolvable problems when making metacognitive judgments. These findings support the possibility that the tendency to perceive semantic connections where none exist, as indicated by high bullshit receptivity, may lead to inaccurate predictions of performance on tasks that require noticing and utilizing distant semantic connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]