Interactivity fosters Bayesian reasoning without instruction

Successful statistical reasoning emerges from a dynamic system including: a cognitive agent, material artifacts with their actions possibilities, and the thoughts and actions that are realized while reasoning takes place. Five experiments provide evidence that enabling the physical manipulation of the problem information (through the use of playing cards) substantially improves statistical reasoning, without training or instruction, not only with natural frequency statements (Experiment 1) but also with single-event probability statements (Experiment 2). Improved statistical reasoning was not simply a matter of making all sets and subsets explicit in the pack of cards (Experiment 3), it was not merely due to the discrete and countable layout resulting from the cards manipulation, and it was not mediated by participants' level of engagement with the task (Experiment 5). The positive effect of an increased manipulability of the problem information on participants' reasoning performance was generalizable both over problems whose numeric properties did not map perfectly onto the cards and over different types of cards (Experiment 4). A systematic analysis of participants' behaviors revealed that manipulating cards improved performance when reasoners spent more time actively changing the presentation layout "in the world" as opposed to when they spent more time passively pointing at cards, seemingly attempting to solve the problem "in their head." Although they often go unnoticed, the action possibilities of the material artifacts available and the actions that are realized on those artifacts are constitutive of successful statistical reasoning, even in adults who have ostensibly reached cognitive maturity

Linguistic Representation of Problem Solving Processes in Unaided Object Assembly

This thesis investigates the linguistic representation of problem solving processes in data recorded during unaided object assembly. It combines traditional approaches of analyzing verbal protocols with the recent approach of Cognitive Discourse Analysis

Systemic insight : the interplay between interactivity, incubation and transfer in insight problem solving

Classical perspectives on problem solving are embedded in computational models of insight problem solving, such as the information-processing model (e.g., Newell & Simon, 1972). Problem-solving activity is viewed as a product of information-processing in which people see or hear problem information, think about the solution, then produce the solution: see or hear, think, then act. More recently, Ohlsson (2011) suggested people solve problems by mentally restructuring the problem information. Hence, insight comes about as a consequence of restructuring (Weisberg, 2014). As such, the origin of insight is commonly understood as a mental experience. However, the traditional frameworks explaining the insight experience commonly overlook the influence of reasoners’ immediate environment. Systemic cognition frameworks such as the Extended Mind Thesis (Clark & Chalmers, 1998), Distributed Cognition (Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh, 2000) and the Systemic Thinking Model (Vallée-Tourangeau, Abadie, & Vallée-Tourangeau, 2015; Vallée-Tourangeau & Vallée-Tourangeau, 2017) assume information-processing is augmented when spread across mental and physical resources. When presented with a physical representation of a task, making changes to that physical representation, even arbitrary ones, may offer cues to new strategies, enabling better planning and efficiency in progressing towards a goal. Accordingly, the opportunity to interact and coordinate with the immediate environment enhances insight performance. This thesis sought to explore insight performance from a systemic cognition perspective. The research program investigated how the level of interactivity influenced solution rate in the Cheap Necklace Problem (de Bono, 1967; Silveira, 1971). Across four experiments, participants attempted to solve the problem either in a low interactivity condition, using only pen-and-paper and relying heavily on mental restructuring, or in a high interactivity condition, with a physical model of the problem with constituent elements they could manipulate while attempting to find a solution. The results across the experiments confirmed that increasing the level of interactivity resulted in enhanced insight performance. Incubation and transfer are often upheld as key determinants for insight performance. Thus, in addition to exploring the impact of interactivity, the experiments investigated how interactivity may interact with incubation and transfer to promote insight. To measure incubation effects, participants in the first two experiments reattempted the same problem after a two-week break. There was evidence of an incubation effect as performance substantially improved on the subsequent attempt. To explore transfer, a new Cheap Necklace Problem variant was introduced, which participants in the final two experiments attempted following the original version of the problem. Transfer was evident as participants were able to successfully transfer their solution to solve the new variant. Moreover, overall performance improved on the subsequent problem. Across the four experiments, the level of interactivity offered on the second problem attempt was important: When the problem presentation changed (low interactivity to high interactivity or high interactivity to low interactivity) performance only improved when working in a highly interactive task environment second. Thus, insight through interactivity fosters stronger performance on both the initial and subsequent task. This thesis further explored how interactivity prompts insight in a dynamic agent-environment by recording and analysing participants’ actions. One important finding from these behavioural analyses was the fact that those who spent the largest proportion of their time reconfiguring the task environment, thus making the most of the malleability of the artefacts available, were also most likely to reach insight

Thinking through actions with things : a systemic perspective on analytic problem solving and mental arithmetic

In solving everyday problems or making sense of situations, people interact with local resources, both material and cultural (Kirsh, 2009a). Through these interactions with the world, thinking emerges from within and beyond the boundaries of the mind. Traditional frameworks specify that problem solving proceeds from initial state to goal state through the transformation of a mental representation of the problem by the retrieval and manipulation of symbols and rules previously stored in memory. Information garnered through bodily actions or from transactions with the world is considered to be a passive input. As a result, classical models of cognitive psychology frequently overlook the impact of the interaction between an individual and the environment on cognition. The experiments reported here were designed to inform a different model of problem solving that included the ubiquitous nature of interactivity in daily life by examining problem solving using artefacts. This research programme began with two experiments using an analytical problem, namely the river-corssing task. These experiments offered a platform to investigate the role of interactivity in shaping and transforming the problem presented. However, the problem space in the river-crossing task is relatively narrow and the research programme proceeded to three further experiments, this time using mental arithmetic tasks where participants were invited to complete long sums. These problems afford a much larger problem space, and a better opportunity to monitor how participants' action shape the physical presentation of the problem. Different task ecologies were used in the five experiments to contrast different levels of interactivity. In a low interactivity condition, solvers relied predominantly on internal mental resource; in a high interactivity condition participants were invited to use artefacts that corresponded to key features of the problen in producing a solution. Results from all experiments confirmed that increasing interactivity improved performance. The outcomes from the river-crossing experiments informed accounts of transferm as it was revealed that attempting the problem initially in a low interactivity condition followed by the high interactivity condition resulted in the most efficient learning experience. The conjecture being that learning of a more deliberative nature was experienced in the low interactivity version of the problem when followed by the opportunity to showcase this learning through the enactment of moves quickly in a second attempt that fostered as high level of interactivity. The mental arithmetic experiments revealed that a high level of interactivity not only produced greater accuarcy and efficiency, but participants were also able to enact different arithmetic knowledge as they reconfigured the problem. In addition, the findings indicated that: maths anxiety for long additions could be mitigatd through increased interaction with artefacts; trajectories for problem solving and the final solutions varied across differing interactive contexts; and the opportunity to manipulate artefacts appeared to diminish individual differences in mathematical skills. The varied task ecologies for the problems in these experiments altered performance and shaped differing trajectories to solution. These results imply, that in order to establish a more complete understanding of cognition in action, problem solving theories should reflect the situated, dynamic interaction between agent and environment and hence, the unfolding nature of problems and their emerging solutions. The findings and methods reported here suggest that a methodology blending traditional quantitative techniques with a more qualitative ideographic cognitive science would make a substantial contribution to problem solving research and theory

On the trail of a thought : a kinenoetic analysis of problem-solving

The research in this thesis describes a microgenetic investigation of thought as it occurs in and through objects and informed by work in distributed cognition and interactivity. The thesis opens with a detailed survey of the arguments in cognitive philosophy around the ontological locus of cognition. I advance the conclusion that many of the open questions will not be solved by empirical methods and suggest a pragmatist approach. Four empirical studies are reported: Three laboratory-based studies which feature traditional problem-solving tasks found often in cognitive psychology and one which examines an artist solving problems which arise over the course of the artistic process. Each of the studies combines quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis of video recorded material to describe thinking in an open cognitive ecosystem. The first study reports performance on a word production task and finds that engagement with external representations is crucial to scaffold performance. The second study uses anagrams to assess the nature of that engagement and concludes a non-agentic model of mere luck is not sufficient. Study three examines performance on an insight problem and suggests that when the problem is not one which is easily scaffolded by material objects, systems form around other types of external scaffold. The final study tracks thought as it unfolds through making of a flower in an artist’s atelier. The findings of all the studies support the notion that cognition emerges in the form of material traces and actions on the world. The thesis introduces and develops two concepts—microserendipity and exaptative action—that offer a new perspective on the nature of problem solving and creativity. These concepts bring in sharp relief environmental chance in creativity when it is enacted; the methodology employed in the empirical work reported here also permits the identification of events when environmental chance is unnoticed. These phenomena operate outside the conscious observation of the problem solver so they cannot be tracked through traditional methods. The work reported here introduces kinenoetic analysis that trace in micro detail the dynamic transactional coupling between thought and objects that chart the origin of new ideas. The knowledge that the participant generates through the movement of objects mirrors the knowledge gained by the experimenter by these movements. The last chapter introduces kinemorphism as part of a qualitative description of the creative trajectory of an artist working with clay: form is unstable and arises out of action. Such a perspective suggests that what is produced cannot be explained by a reductive process that focuses on only one or the other, but rather must take into account the relationship which arises through action. Creativity from this perspective is transactional and relational. In terms of theoretical contributions, I cast doubt on an agent centric view of interactivity which posits an uncomplicated augmentative relationship between things beyond and within the brain and suggests instead a transactional approach to knowledge acquisition. These lead to novel observations on the role of the experiment in research in situated cognition. Reflections on the pluralistic method of kinenoetic analysis are offered and directions for future research are outlined