Insight and search in Katona’s five-square problem

Insights are often productive outcomes of human thinking. We provide a cognitive model that explains insight problem solving by the interplay of problem space search and representational change, whereby the problem space is constrained or relaxed based on the problem representation. By introducing different experimental conditions that either constrained the initial search space or helped solvers to initiate a representational change, we investigated the interplay of problem space search and representational change in Katona’s five-square problem. Testing 168 participants, we demonstrated that independent hints relating to the initial search space and to representational change had little effect on solution rates. However, providing both hints caused a significant increase in solution rates. Our results show the interplay between problem space search and representational change in insight problem solving: The initial problem space can be so large that people fail to encounter impasse, but even when representational change is achieved the resulting problem space can still provide a major obstacle to finding the solution

The dynamics of search, impasse, and representational change provide a coherent explanation of difficulty in the nine-dot problem

The nine-dot problem is often used to demonstrate and explain mental impasse, creativity, and out of the box thinking. The present study investigated the interplay of a restricted initial search space, the likelihood of invoking a representational change, and the subsequent constraining of an unrestricted search space. In three experimental conditions, participants worked on different versions of the nine-dot problem that hinted at removing particular sources of difficulty from the standard problem. The hints were incremental such that the first suggested a possible route for a solution attempt; the second additionally indicated the dot at which lines meet on the solution path; and the final condition also provided non-dot locations that appear in the solution path. The results showed that in the experimental conditions, representational change is encountered more quickly and problems are solved more often than for the control group. We propose a cognitive model that focuses on general problem solving heuristics and representational change to explain problem difficulty

Heuristics and representational change in two-move matchstick tasks

Insight problems are problems where the problem solver struggles to find a solution until * aha! * the solution suddenly appears. Two contemporary theories suggest that insight problems are difficult either because problem solvers begin with an incorrect representation of the problem, or that problem solvers apply inappropriate heuristics to the problem. The relative contributions of representational change and inappropriate heuristics on the process of insight problem solving was studied with a task that required the problem solver to move two matchsticks in order to transform an incorrect arithmetic statement into a correct one. Problem solvers (N = 120) worked on two different types of two-move matchstick arithmetic problems that both varied with respect to the effectiveness of heuristics and to the degree of a necessary representational change of the problem representation. A strong influence of representational change on solution rates was found whereas the influence of heuristics had minimal effects on solution rates. That is, the difficulty of insight problems within the two-move matchstick arithmetic domain is governed by the degree of representational change required. A model is presented that details representational change as the necessary condition for ensuring that appropriate heuristics can be applied on the proper problem representation

Relevant for us? We-prioritization in cognitive processing

Humans are social by nature. We ask whether this social nature operates as a lens through which individuals process the world even in the absence of immediate interactions or explicit goals to collaborate. Is information that is potentially relevant to a group one belongs to (“We”) processed with priority over information potentially relevant to a group one does not belong to (“They”)? We conducted three experiments using a modified version of Sui, He, and Humphreys’ (2012) shape–label matching task. Participants were assigned to groups either via a common preference between assigned team members (Experiment 1) or arbitrarily (Experiment 2). In a third experiment, only personal pronouns were used. Overall, a processing benefit for we-related information (we-prioritization) occurred regardless of the type of group induction. A final experiment demonstrated that we-prioritization did not extend to other individual members of a short-term transitory group. We suggest that the results reflect an intrinsic predisposition to process information “relevant for us” with priority, which might feed into optimizing collaborative processes

It goes with the territory: Ownership across spatial boundaries.

Previous studies have shown that people are faster to process objects that they own as compared with objects that other people own. Yet object ownership is embedded within a social environment that has distinct and sometimes competing rules for interaction. Here we ask whether ownership of space can act as a filter through which we process what belongs to us. Can a sense of territory modulate the well-established benefits in information processing that owned objects enjoy? In 4 experiments participants categorized their own or another person’s objects that appeared in territories assigned either to themselves or to another. We consistently found that faster processing of self-owned than other-owned objects only emerged for objects appearing in the self-territory, with no such advantage in other territories. We propose that knowing whom spaces belong to may serve to define the space in which affordances resulting from ownership lead to facilitated processing

Epithelial polarity: The ins and outs of the fly epidermis

AbstractEpithelial cells must polarize and establish apical and basolateral membrane domains during development. Recent experiments have shed light on how apical–basal polarity is generated during cellularization in Drosophila, when around 6000 epithelial cells are created synchronously from a syncytium

Teaching Writing: Genre Lessons for Teaching Writing in the Homeschool High School Classroom and Beyond

Most high schoolers in America operate with basic writing skills at best (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). Students who are educated at home, or homeschoolers, may be only marginally better in their writing skills, if at all. A review of materials available to home educators for the instruction of their homeschool students revealed that available writing curricula does not do a good job covering more than a few basic writing forms, such as research and narrative. This creative project aimed to create writing instruction materials that could be used by home educators to teach their high school students how to write well. In order to create versatile materials that educators can personalize and individualize for their students; genre pedagogy approaches were used. Genre pedagogy considers all texts based on the situation in which they were written, including the purpose of the piece, the audience it was written for, and the context it was written in. Teaching students to be mindful of a text’s genre and situation prepares them to analyze and write in any genre form. As such, the materials created for this creative project informs educators on the basic principles of genre pedagogy, provides a step-by-step process for creating a writing unit based on genre pedagogies, and offers three writing units that familiarize students with the writing situation as well as the process of analyzing a text’s genre. The resulting materials are flexible and will aid home educators in their instruction of writing. Finally, conclusions were drawn about the need for more robust writing curricula, particularly for home educators and recommendations were made for further research where the literature review showed a distinct lack of materials

Induced-hypercholesterolemia as a probable cause of alterations in pulse pressure in wistar kyoto rats

Background: The involvement of hypercholesterolemia in cardiovascular disorders has been widely researched but the impact on the specific cardiovascular (CV) indices following remodeling and cardiac malfunction remain to be fully elucidated. The aim this research is intended to further the understanding of cardiovascular function under hypercholesterolemic condition in mammals and serve as a guide to pharmaceutical formulation and medical interventions. Methods: The telemetry technique was used to investigate the cardiovascular dysfunctions in induced hypercholesterolemia in Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats. Methods for this investigation include: inducing hypercholesterolemic condition in Wistar Kyoto rats through diet; measuring the blood cholesterol levels of the experimental animals; measuring cardiovascular indices in conscious rats to establish vascular dysfunction and/or cardiac malfunction. Results: Our study showed that pulse pressure decreases in experimental WKY rats with increasing cholesterol content in the diet. It also shows that diet related pulse pressure decrease occurs in both low and high animal activities. The pulse pressure was reduced at both low and high animal activities in the 2% cholesterol diet (N=6) when compared to control (N=4) and 1% cholesterol diet (N=7). All results presented were statistically significant at a P value < 0.05. Our study has shown that pulse pressure (PP) declined significantly in the 2% cholesterol loaded diet, but not in the 1% diet. We also observed that in overall, the 1% diet group maintained close to normal cardiovascular indices compared to the control and 2%. Conclusion: Our results show that a high cholesterol diet may have negatively impacted the cardiac function more than the vascular function.Keywords: hypercholesterolemia, remodeling, vascular, pharmaceutical, dysfunctions, cardiovascular, telemetry, WKY rat