Vallee-Tourangeau, Frederic, Euden, Gemma and Hearn, Vanessa (2011) Einstellung defused: interactivity and mental set. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(10), pp. 1889-1895. ISSN (print) 1747-0218
Full text not available from this archive.Abstract
Mental set is observed when a familiar problem-solving strategy is applied to new problems that can be solved in simpler, more efficient ways. It is most famously illustrated in the water jar problems (Luchins, 1942 ). In these volume measurement problems, participants learn a rule to obtain an exact volume of liquid involving a complex combination of liquid transfer. Participants persevere in using this rule for new problems that can be solved with a much simpler rule. In two experiments presented here, participants completed the water jar task either in interactive conditions with actual water jars at a sink or in noninteractive conditions, with the problems presented on paper, as in the original Luchins procedure. Interactivity significantly reduced the degree of perseverance. In addition, participants' visuospatial skills significantly predicted the rate of perseverance (and the latencies to solution) in interactive but not in noninteractive conditions. These results underscore the importance of designing problem-solving experiments that engineer distributed cognitive systems in which participants coordinate internal and external resources in thinking.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | problem solving, mental set, interactivity, individual differences, distributed cognition, mechanism |
| Research Area: | Sociology |
| Faculty, School or Research Centre: | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > School of Social Science (until November 2012) |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | Automatic Import Agent |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Aug 2011 08:40 |
| Last Modified: | 14 Mar 2012 14:31 |
| URI: | http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/20024 |
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