Survival processing in times of stress

Recent studies have found that processing information according to an evolutionary relevant (i.e., survival) scenario improves its subsequent memorability, potentially as a result of fitness advantages gained in the ancestral past. So far, research has not revealed much about any proximate mechanisms that might underlie this so-called survival processing advantage in memory. Intriguingly, research has shown that the memorability of stressful situations is enhanced via the release of stress hormones acting on brain regions involved in memory. Since survival situations habitually involve some degree of stress, in the present study, we investigated whether stress serves as a proximate mechanism to promote survival processing. Participants rated words for their relevance to either a survival or a neutral (moving) scenario after they had been exposed to a psychosocial stressor or a no-stress control condition. Surprise retention tests immediately following the rating task revealed that survival processing and acute stress independently boosted memory performance. These results therefore suggest that stress does not serve as a proximate mechanism of the survival processing advantage in memory

A study of design fixation, its mitigation and perception in engineering design faculty

The bridge between engineering design and cognitive science research is critical to understand the effectiveness of design methods as implemented by human designers. The study reported in this paper evaluates the effects of design fixation in a group of engineering design faculty, and also provides evidence for approaches to overcome design fixation. Three conditions are compared, a control, a fixation group whom were provided with an example solution, and a defixation group whom were also given materials to mitigate their design fixation. Measures include indicators of design fixation and participant perceptions. The study demonstrates that the engineering design faculty show statistically significant evidence of design fixation, but only partially perceive its effects. This study also indicates that design fixation can be mitigated. The group of participants in this study, due to their background in engineering design research and experience with student design teams, was expected to have more accurate perceptions or awareness of design fixation than the typical participant. Understanding the incongruities between participant perceptions and quantitative design outcomes are particularly of interest to researchers of design methods. For this study, clear evidence exists that designers, even those that study and teach design on a regular basis, do not know when they are being influenced or fixated by misleading or poor information. Copyright © 2010 by ASME

Applying a Theory of Situation Awareness to Idea Generation: Mitigation of Design Fixation

As a solution to ambiguity and complexity within the idea generation stage, several structured idea generation methods have been developed. Though their usefulness in the idea generation phase has been verified in many studies, methods or techniques designed to help people generate ideas often lead to associations that hinder people's free thinking. This phenomenon is called design fixation. Many research studies on design fixation has shown that it severely limits creativity. One of the reasons why design fixation is difficult to overcome is that designers are often unaware of its occurrence during ideation in other words, designers lose situation awareness in the middle of a cognitively demanding ideation task. An ability to maintain situation awareness, and, thereby, detect and address design fixation in a timely manner would greatly help designers effectively perform ideation. Surprisingly, little research has examined the influences of situation awareness on design fixation and ideation outcomes, or, has developed systems for supporting such situation awareness. To bridge the gap, we developed a situation awareness support system which indicates the elapsed time during idea generation and how many times the user, who is generating ideas, has used each stimulus employed to inspire idea generation. The situation awareness support system helps designers easily and rapidly identify occurrences of design fixation. Finally, an experimental method for examining the impacts of the situation awareness support system has been established.N

Creativity and design to articulate difference in the conflicted city: Collective intelligence in Bogota’s grassroots organisations

This paper presents a critical reflection on insights into the ongoing endeavours for community engagement by Ayara and MAL; two urban grassroots organisations in Bogota, Colombia, where a long history of internal conflicts has resulted in diverse human rights violations. The paper presents examples of the grassroots organisations’ unique methods of engagement that promotes building collective intelligence from the bottom-up through creative collaboration and design processes, leading to rebuilding social fabrics that support the common good for the people of Bogota