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Despite progress in understanding the sources of difficulty in solving insight problems, how new ideas are discovered, implemented, and learned is poorly understood. We report an experiment testing a theory of how individuals use failed attempts to discover new ideas. We compared performance on the nine-dot problem with a variant requiring solution using three lines rather than four. Results supported predictions that the three-line variant is easier than the four-line, and that transfer of solution knowledge from the three- to the four-line version is facilitative, but not vice-versa. Additionally, varying the spacing between dots facilitated discovery and transfer of solutions in both variants. Our theory specifies a priority order for seeking new ideas that offers a partial solution to the frame problem. Individuals first seek ideas from the problem statement and attempts they make. Only when these sources fail do they resort to searching memory or the external task environment.

This conceptual paper examines the possibilities for restorying the self through drama conventions using narrative poetry as a stimulus. Using the poem "The Terrorist, He's Watching" by Wislawa Szymborska to engage with drama conventions, we illustrate how educators might support young and marginalised people to participate in the process of restorying. In doing so, we argue for the importance of using poetry and drama to create meta-narratives of discourse which empower participants to restory themselves into the dominant forms of narrative through creative exploration. Szymborska's poem has been chosen as a stimulus due to the poet's use of multiple perspectives and roles, in different times and places, which enable people to reshape and reimagine their identity and explore dominant narratives about terrorism. The authors intend to follow this conceptual piece with an empirical study.

Two main classes of theory have been proposed to account forinsight problem-solving performance; those that invoke theovercoming of constraints arising from prior knowledge as thesource of insight, and those that propose strategic search formoves that make progress towards a hypothesized goal state.An experiment using matchstick algebra problems assessed thecontributions of each source. Results indicate that, while priorknowledge creates the conditions under which matchstickalgebra problems are more or less difficult to solve, search formoves that make the most apparent progress towards ahypothesized goal provides the key to eventual solution.

Simple Summary: The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a monotreme, a rare kind of mammal that lays eggs and suckles its young. It is amphibious, lives in freshwater, and is found only in Australia, where it is closely protected. During prior conservation studies, several pathogens had been discovered in the platypus, including leptospires, which are a kind of bacterium that can cause severe disease in animals and people. We evaluated the available data concerning this infection in platypuses, tested blood samples in the Platypus Serum Bank, and combined the results with historical records. We found evidence of leptospirosis in 50% of platypuses from 14 river basins in southeastern Australia. Leptospiral infection did not stop females from breeding and juvenile platypuses were recruited to the population each year. The high seroprevalence, evidence of ongoing exposure to leptospires, lack of disease, mild kidney pathology, and visible leptospires in the kidney tubules suggest that the platypus may be a reservoir host for leptospires rather than an accidental host that suffers from the disease. Cattle on adjacent farms also had leptospirosis, but the evidence was not convincing that cattle caused the infection in platypuses. A landscape-wide study is recommended to determine the actual infection pathway. The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is an amphibious, egg-laying mammal of high conservation value that is found only in Australia. The zoonotic bacterium Leptospira interrogans serovar Hardjo was discovered in platypuses in prior studies, but little is known about its epidemiology. Samples in the Platypus Serum Bank were tested in 2023 and the results were combined with historical records. Antibodies against L. interrogans serovar Hardjo were found in 50% of 464 serum samples from 411 platypuses collected from 14 river basins in southeastern Australia between 1981 and 2012; prevalence remained high over three decades in the Shoalhaven River population. Seroprevalence increased with age, suggesting environmental exposure. Individual platypuses had persistent titres, some for six years. Seropositive females lactated, juveniles were recruited into the population, and there were no reports of clinical leptospirosis. Three necropsied platypuses were seropositive and had mild nephritis with leptospires in the renal tubules. The high seroprevalence, persistent titres, lack of disease, mild renal lesions, and renal colonisation suggest the platypus may be a maintenance host. Sympatric cattle had L. interrogans serovar Hardjo titres, but the spatial association with seropositive platypuses was statistically weak. Other mammalian wildlife species and sheep also have L. interrogans serovar Hardjo titres; therefore, a complex ecological network must be considered. A landscape-wide study is recommended to properly assess transmission pathways and confirm who is infecting whom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is broad agreement among executives on the importance of innovation and creativity in organizations. The paper aimed to provide information on the effectiveness of a new cognitive style inventory, the Productive-Reproductive Thinking Inventory (P-R), in identifying people with creative problem-solving potential. Participants completed the P-R Inventory, Kirton's Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI), the Assimilator-Explorer Inventory, self-rating of insight problem-solving, and a battery of insight problem-solving tasks under controlled conditions. The P-R scale was a significant predictor of problem-solving performance and insight self-ratings and correlated significantly with KAI and AE scores. In addition, the results supported distinguishing two types of reproductive thinking which are differentially associated with insight performance. The distinction was supported by confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models. Using controlled conditions may limit the generality of the findings and further research should be carried out in applied settings. The P-R inventory is short and easily administered and may provide HR professionals with a useful screening tool for assessing creative problem-solving potential. The measure differs from the KAI in several ways that may offer advantages for creativity researchers in that it is non-proprietary, based on well-established psychological constructs, and is more particularly applicable to insight problem-solving.

This study assessed perspectives of NCAA D-II and D-III Athletics Directors (ADs) regarding the possible implementation of competitive e-Sports on college campuses. It examines if ADs view e-Sports as a legitimate sport in parallel with others that are traditionally offered by athletic departments, and their perspective regarding where on college campuses e-Sports should be housed. Results demonstrated that ADs view e-Sports differently than other sport programs (F = 13.439; p =.001), and this was key in determining where they thought e-Sports programs should be administered (F = 6.696; p =.013). However, some expressed a willingness to consider implementing e-Sports due to the opportunity it could present (F = 2.209; p =.021). These results suggest that an apparent conflict exists between ADs' perceptions of e-Sports and of its potential as a growth opportunity. However, if colleges decide to implement e-Sports as an athletic program, consideration should be given to governance concerns, budgetary concerns, and the health and wellness of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports three experiments designed to explore heuristics used in comparing the lengths of completed Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problem (E-TSP) tours. The experiments used paired comparisons in which participants judged which of two completed tours of the same point set was shorter. The first experiment manipulated two factors, the presence/absence of crossed arcs, and the relative areas of the enclosed polygons. Both factors significantly influenced judgments, with the absence of crossings and smaller areas being associated with shorter tours. The second experiment examined the effects of crossings only, and compared stimulus pairs using all possible combinations of no, one, and more than one crossing. The results showed a significant tendency for tours with one or more crossings to be judged longer than tours with none, while tours with more crossings were not judged to be longer than tours with only one. Apparently the mere presence of a crossing is sufficient to cause a tour to be judged as longer. The third experiment examined the effects of area only, and consisted of two parts. In the first part, participants judged which of two tours that differed in area was shorter. The results supported those of the first experiment, by finding that tours with smaller areas tended to be judged as shorter. In the second part of the experiment, participants judged the relative areas of each pair, to determine whether people can reliably differentiate the areas of such complex polygons. The results confirmed that they can, thereby supporting the feasibility of using differences in area as a heuristic to judge relative lengths. The results were discussed in terms of Carruthers's (2015) proposal of goal modification and the suggestion is made that applying heuristics of the type identified may represent a specific form of goal modification.

Many innovations in organizations result when people discover insightful solutions to problems. Insightful problem-solving was considered by Gestalt psychologists to be associated with productive, as opposed to re-productive, thinking. Productive thinking is characterized by shifts in perspective which allow the problem solver to consider new, sometimes transformational, approaches. Re-productive thinking, on the other hand, involves the application of familiar, routine, procedures. This article reports a study which investigated how self-reported productive and re-productive thinking are related to an individual's ability to solve insight problems. Our measures were tested against the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI), and a battery of spatial insight problems. The results indicated that productive and re-productive thinking and the KAI were successful in predicting performance on spatial insight problems. Furthermore, the measures of productive and re-productive thinking accounted for spatial insight performance independently of scores on the KAI. In addition, the results suggested that re-productive thinking consists of two different components--one based on group conventions and the other on personal experience. Each contributed differently to solving insight problems.

Previous studies have shown that people start traveling sales problem tours significantly more often from boundary than from interior nodes. There are a number of possible reasons for such a tendency: first, it may arise as a direct result of the processes involved in tour construction; second, boundary points may be perceptually more salient than interior points, and selected for that reason; and third, starting from the boundary may make the task easier or be more likely to result in a better tour than starting from the interior. The present research investigated each of these possibilities by analyzing start point frequencies in previously unpublished data and by conducting an experiment. The analysis of start points provided some slight but contradictory support for the hypothesis that start selections result from the process of tour construction, but no evidence for the perceptual salience explanation. The experiment required participants to start tours either from a boundary or from an interior point, to test whether there was an effect on the quality of tour construction. No evidence was found that starting point affected either the length of tours or the time required to produce them. However, there was some indication that starting from a central location may be more likely to result in crossed arcs.

Most models of human performance on the traveling salesperson problem involve clustering of nodes, but few empirical studies have examined effects of clustering in the stimulus array. A recent exception varied degree of clustering and concluded that the more clustered a stimulus array, the easier a TSP is to solve (Dry, Preiss, & Wagemans, 2012). However, a limitation to this conclusion arises because degree of clustering may have been partially confounded with cluster location. An experiment was conducted to test the effects of cluster location while holding degree of clustering constant. Stimuli with a cluster near a boundary were solved more quickly and accurately than stimuli with the same cluster located more centrally. The results support and extend the previous findings of MacGregor, Ormerod, & Chronicle (1999). They also qualify the results of Dry et al. (2012). To the extent that degree of clustering may have been confounded with the location of clusters in their stimuli, it is unclear to what extent each factor may have affected performance.