Computer-Based “Mental Set” Tasks: An Alternative Approach to Studying Design Fixation

The term “design fixation” refers to a phenomenon where designers unknowingly limit the space within which they search for solutions. In an attempt to study this phenomenon experimentally, researchers typically set participants open-ended design problems, prime them with an example solution, and measure their performance through a variety of subjective metrics. This approach gives rise to various problems, including limited data capture and highly subjective evaluation of design behavior. To address these problems, we studied design fixation with a computer-based task inspired by psychological paradigms used to study “mental set” (also known as the “Einstellung effect”). The task consisted of a gamelike activity requiring participants to design a bridge within a specified budget. The use of a digital environment facilitated continuous data capture during the design activities. The constrained task (and direct quantitative measures) permitted a more objective analysis of design performance, including the occurrence of fixation. The results showed that participants who developed a mental set during the task failed to find alternative, more efficient solutions in trials admitting multiple solutions, compared to the participants who did not fall victim to this mental block. In addition, during the process of designing, the occurrence of mental set resulted in participants adopting a less efficient design behavior and reporting a different subjective experience of the task. The method used and the results obtained show an exciting alternative for studying design fixation experimentally and promote a wider exploration of the variety of design activities in which fixation might occur.This work was supported by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K008196/1) and the CAPES Foundation Ministry of Education of Brazil (BEX 11468/13-0)

Idea representation and elaboration in design inspiration and fixation experiments

Design fixation experiments often report that participants exposed to an example solution generate fewer ideas than those who were not. This reduced ‘idea fluency’ is generally explained as participants’ creativity being constrained by the example they have seen. However, the inclusion of an example also introduces other factors that might affect idea fluency in the experiments. We here offer an additional explanation for these results: participants not exposed to the example tend to generate ideas with little elaboration, while the level of detail in the example encourages a similar level of elaboration among stimulated participants. Because idea elaboration is time consuming, non-stimulated participants record more ideas overall. We investigated this hypothesis by reanalyzing data from three different studies; in two of them we found that non-stimulated participants generated more ideas and more ideas containing only text, whilst stimulated participants generated ideas that were more elaborated. Based on the creativity literature, we provide several explanations for the differences in results found across studies. Our findings and explanations have implications for the interpretation of creativity experiments reported to date and for the design of future studies.The CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil (BEX11468/13-0); The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K008196/1

Spontaneous and deliberate future thinking: A dual process account

© 2019 Springer Nature.This is the final published version of an article published in Psychological Research, licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-bution 4.0 International License. Available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01262-7.In this article, we address an apparent paradox in the literature on mental time travel and mind-wandering: How is it possible that future thinking is both constructive, yet often experienced as occurring spontaneously? We identify and describe two ‘routes’ whereby episodic future thoughts are brought to consciousness, with each of the ‘routes’ being associated with separable cognitive processes and functions. Voluntary future thinking relies on controlled, deliberate and slow cognitive processing. The other, termed involuntary or spontaneous future thinking, relies on automatic processes that allows ‘fully-fledged’ episodic future thoughts to freely come to mind, often triggered by internal or external cues. To unravel the paradox, we propose that the majority of spontaneous future thoughts are ‘pre-made’ (i.e., each spontaneous future thought is a re-iteration of a previously constructed future event), and therefore based on simple, well-understood, memory processes. We also propose that the pre-made hypothesis explains why spontaneous future thoughts occur rapidly, are similar to involuntary memories, and predominantly about upcoming tasks and goals. We also raise the possibility that spontaneous future thinking is the default mode of imagining the future. This dual process approach complements and extends standard theoretical approaches that emphasise constructive simulation, and outlines novel opportunities for researchers examining voluntary and spontaneous forms of future thinking.Peer reviewe

Effects of episodic future thinking and self-projection on children’s prospective memory performance

The present study is the first to investigate the benefits of episodic future thinking (EFT) at encoding on prospective memory (PM) in preschool (age: M = 66.34 months, SD = 3.28)and primary school children (age: M = 88.36 months, SD = 3.12). A second aim was to examine if self-projection influences the possible effects of EFT instructions. PM was assessed using a standard PM paradigm in children with a picture-naming task as the ongoing activity in which the PM task was embedded. Further, two first- and two second-order ToM tasks were administered as indicator of children’s self-projection abilities. Forty-one preschoolers and 39 school-aged children were recruited. Half of the participants in each age group were instructed to use EFT as a strategy to encode the PM task, while the others received standard PM instructions. Results revealed a significant age effect, with school-aged children significantly outperforming preschoolers and a significant effect of encoding condition with overall better performance when receiving EFT instructions compared to the standard encoding condition. Even though the interaction between age group and encoding condition was not significant, planned comparisons revealed first evidence that compared to the younger age group, older children’s PM benefited more from EFT instructions during intention encoding. Moreover, results showed that although self-projection had a significant impact on PM performance, it did not influence the effects of EFT instructions. Overall, results indicate that children can use EFT encoding strategies to improve their PM performance once EFT abilities are sufficiently developed. Further, they provide first evidence that in addition to executive functions, which have already been shown to influence the development of PM across childhood, self-projection seems to be another key mechanism underlying this development

Whose ideas are most fixating, your own or other people's? The effect of idea agency on subsequent design behaviour

During idea generation, designers might inadvertently restrict their exploration of the solution space by adhering either to their own initial ideas or to those developed by others. To investigate which of these sources of ideas is more fixating, we conducted an experimental study with Engineering students engaged in a series of ten computer-based structural design tasks. Participants were divided into two conditions, either developing their own solutions to the first five tasks or watching someone else do so. In the subsequent five tasks, those in the first condition more often adhered to the design approaches suited to the initial five tasks. This resulted in fewer design variations, greater costs and different subjective experiences of the tasks

Research data supporting "Whose ideas are most fixating, your own or other people’s? The effect of idea agency on subsequent design behaviour".

This excel file contains: i) the numerical data resulting from the scoring of the videos recorded during each experimental session, ii) the participants’ comments collected through the ‘think aloud’ method, and iii) the participants’ responses to the post-experimental questions. The videos and the audio-recordings are not available for ethical reasons. The file includes several spreadsheets, whose naming corresponds to the various set of results reported in the publication (Whose ideas are most fixating, your own or other people’s? Sunk cost effects and psychological ownership in design ideation). In each spreadsheet, the column headings are self-explanatory, provided you also have the corresponding publication given above as a reference. The data was collected from January to May 2017 from 40 engineering students at the University of Cambridge, UK. Participants were tested individually and received £10 for your participation. They were initially told that the study aimed at investigating how people played computer games. The real aim of the study was revealed to the participants at the end of each experimental session, during the debriefing phase. Demographic data was collected from the participants and are reported in the first spreadsheet of the file. The study was approved by the local Ethical Committee and the participants signed a Consent Form before starting with the experiment.This research was supported by UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

How to guard against fixation? Demonstrating individual vulnerability is more effective than warning about general risk

Abstract: Creative behaviour can be inhibited by fixation and so reducing fixation is a focus of much creativity research. One of the most common methods of tackling fixation is to warn people of fixation risks and instruct them to avoid constrained problem framing and solution search. However, such treatments are often ineffective. One possible explanation for this is that people typically believe that they (as individuals) are less vulnerable to a specified risk than other people are (in general). If we really want to motivate people to guard against a risk we need to demonstrate that they, as individuals, are vulnerable to those risks. To study the effect of demonstrating individual vulnerability to fixation, we conducted an online experimental study using number and word tasks that both included a fixation ‘trap’. The first task was used to provide a 'demonstrated vulnerability' treatment (revealing participants’ own fixated behaviour) to the experimental group. This group outperformed those who received a comparable ‘asserted vulnerability’ treatment (a warning about general fixation effects) and also those in a control group. Researchers and practitioners developing creativity training and tools aimed at reducing fixation effects should consider the benefits of demonstrating individual vulnerability to fixation rather than, or in combination with, issuing warnings that people in general are vulnerable to fixation

Does episodic future thinking improve prospective remembering?

Extant findings suggest interesting avenues for the investigation of the potential relationship between EFT and PM. However, as they stand, they are inconclusive as to the causal role that EFT may play in aiding prospective remembering. In one Experiment, we showed that accuracy in a prospective memory (PM) task performed on the second day was significantly higher when participants, on the first day, had mentally simulated the sequence of events expected to occur on the second day, including the PM task, than when they had performed control tasks. These data extend previous findings on the functional benefit of future simulations in different domains by revealing a substantial facilitation effect of future-oriented thoughts on PM performance when the mentally simulated future task matched the actually executed task. © 2013 Elsevier Inc

Research data supporting "Whose ideas are most fixating, your own or other people’s? The effect of idea agency on subsequent design behaviour".

This excel file contains: i) the numerical data resulting from the scoring of the videos recorded during each experimental session, ii) the participants’ comments collected through the ‘think aloud’ method, and iii) the participants’ responses to the post-experimental questions. The videos and the audio-recordings are not available for ethical reasons. The file includes several spreadsheets, whose naming corresponds to the various set of results reported in the publication (Whose ideas are most fixating, your own or other people’s? Sunk cost effects and psychological ownership in design ideation). In each spreadsheet, the column headings are self-explanatory, provided you also have the corresponding publication given above as a reference. The data was collected from January to May 2017 from 40 engineering students at the University of Cambridge, UK. Participants were tested individually and received £10 for your participation. They were initially told that the study aimed at investigating how people played computer games. The real aim of the study was revealed to the participants at the end of each experimental session, during the debriefing phase. Demographic data was collected from the participants and are reported in the first spreadsheet of the file. The study was approved by the local Ethical Committee and the participants signed a Consent Form before starting with the experiment