Multiple versions of the Chinese Remote Associates Test have been developed. Thus far, all CRATs have employed verbal stimuli; other forms of stimuli have not yet been used. In this context, the present study compiled a Chinese Visual Remote Associates Test that conforms to the Chinese language and culture based on a picture naming database. The developed CVRAT has two versions, CVRAT-A and CVRAT-B, each comprising 20 test questions. A typical CVRAT question consists of three stimuli pictures, requiring (...) respondents to propose a target word that is semantically associated with all the pictures. When compiling the CVRAT, this study first selected target words, sifted through stimuli words and corresponding pictures, and analyzed pilot test questions. After compilation, their reliability and validity were examined. The results showed that the CVRAT had moderate internal consistency reliability, good criterion-related validity for the Chinese Word Remote Associates Test, Chinese Radical Remote Associates Test, Chinese Compound Remote Associates Test, insight problem-solving, as well as acceptable discriminant validity for fluency, flexibility, and originality of a divergent thinking test. In other words, CVRAT can effectively measure remote associative capability and provides a figural creativity test that facilitates the understanding of different kinds of remote associations. (shrink)

Searching through semantic memory may involve the use of several retrieval cues. In a verbal fluency task, the set of available cues is limited and every candidate word is a target. Individuals exhibit clustering behavior as predicted by optimal foraging theory. In another semantic search task, the remote associates task, three cues are presented and a single target word has to be found. Whereas the task has been widely studied as a task of creativity or insight problem solving, in (...) this article, the RAT is treated as a semantic retrieval task and assessed from the perspective of information foraging theory. Experiments are presented that address the superadditive combination of cues and the anti-clustering behavior in the recall sequence. A new type of search behavior in the RAT is put forward that involves maximizing the difference in activation between target and distractors. This type of search is advantageous when the target is weak and cue patches are contaminated with strong competitors. (shrink)

Creative association is inherent and essential to creativity and insight. Here we utilised a Chinese compound Remote Associates Task (cRAT) to identify the potential impact of word order (i.e., solution position hereinafter) and word frequency on creative association across two behavioural experiments. Experiment 1 identified the effects of (a) word order and word frequency on cRAT-induced association without considering the specific strategies used during solving such problems and (b) their interaction not only on performance in solving the (...) cRAT, including solution time and accuracy, but also on difficulty rating. Following a coarse-to-fine approach, Experiment 2 examined the effect of both factors on creative association determined according to each participant’s trial-by-trial reports regarding insight solution strategies. Main effects of word order and word frequency, and a two-way interaction, were found on the accuracy and self-rated difficulty. These findings shed light on creative association, multiply-constrained problem solving and constructing compounds. (shrink)

Understanding time investment while solving problems is central to metacognitive research. By the Diminishing Criterion Model (DCM), time regulation is guided by two stopping rules: a confidence criterion that drops as time is invested in each problem and the maximum time to be invested. This combination generates curved confidence–time associations. We compared the belief that intelligence is malleable, a growth mindset, to the belief that intelligence is fixed, and to neutral control groups. We hypothesized that a growth mindset leads (...) people to selectively invest time in problems carrying the hope of improvement. This extra time makes the curved DCM pattern curvier. In two experiments, participants primed with growth, fixed, or control mindsets solved analogies (Experiment 1) and compound remote associates (Experiment 2). As expected, in both experiments a growth mindset exhibited a curvier confidence–time pattern, while the fixed mindset and control groups replicated previous confidence–time associations. Most additional time was invested in problems with intermediate difficulty levels, suggesting strategic time allocation. The study offers useful measures for delving into factors that affect thinking time allocation. (shrink)

Metacognitive research is dominated by meta-memory studies; meta-reasoning research is nascent. Accessibility – the number of associations for a stimulus – is a reliable heuristic cue for Feeling of Knowing when answering knowledge questions. We used a similar cue, subjective accessibility, for exposing commonalities and differences between meta-reasoning and meta-memory. In Experiment 1, participants faced solvable Compound Remote Associate problems mixed with unsolvable random word triads. We collected initial Judgement of Solvability, final JOS and confidence. Experiment (...) 2 focused on confidence, controlling for potential interactions among judgements. In Experiment 3, the participants memorised the same triads and rated Ease of Learning and Judgement of Learning. sAccessibility was associated with all judgements. Notably, it reliably predicted memory judgements and confidence in the provided solutions. However, it was unreliable for judging solvability. The findings highlight the importance of studying meta-reasoning for exposing the biasing factors in reasoning processes and for getting a broad perspective on metacognitive processes. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff’s case for irreducible cognitive phenomenology hinges on seeming to see the truth of a mathematical proposition (Chudnoff 2015). In the following, I develop an augmented version of Chudnoff’s case, not based on seeming to see, or intuition, but based on being in a state with presentational phenomenology of high-level content. In contrast to other cases for cognitive phenomenology, those based on Strawson’s case (Strawson 2011), I argue that the case presented here is able to withstand counterarguments, which attempt (...) to reduce cognitive phenomenology to sensory phenomenology. To support my argument, I present findings from Bowden and Jung-Beeman’s experiments with the Aha! Experience (Bowden & Jung-Beeman 2004), and argue that the Aha! Experience is a species of the experience of understanding presented here. I interpret the results of these experiments to provide further evidence for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

Insight has been investigated under the assumption that participants solve insight problems with insight processes and/or experiences. A recent trend has involved presenting participants with the solution and analysing the resultant experience as if insight has taken place. We examined self-reports of the aha experience, a defining aspect of insight, before and after feedback, along with additional affective components of insight (e.g., pleasure, surprise, impasse). Classic insight problems, compound remote associates, and non-insight problems were randomly (...) interleaved and presented to participants. Solution feedback increased ratings of aha experience in both insight and non-insight problems, with this result being driven by responses to solutions that were initially incorrectly generated. Ratings of aha for correctly generated solutions decreased after the correct solution was presented. These findings have implications for insight research paradigms as well as informing teaching methods. (shrink)

Initial Judgment of Solvability (iJOS) is a metacognitive judgment that reflects solvers’ first impression as to whether a problem is solvable. We hypothesized that iJOS is inferred by combining prior expectations about the entire task with heuristic cues derived from each problem’s elements. In two experiments participants first provided quick iJOSs for all problems, then attempted to solve them. We manipulated expectations by changing the proportion of solvable problems conveyed to participants, 33%, 50%, or 66%, while the true (...) proportion was the 50% for all. In Experiment 1 we used the non-verbal Raven’s matrices and examined nameability as the element-based heuristic cue. Unsolvable matrices were generated by switching locations of elements in original Raven’s matrices. In Experiment 2 we used the verbal Compound Remote Associate (CRA) problems and examined word’s frequency in the language as the element-based heuristic cue. Unsolvable CRAs were random word triads from the same word pool. The results were consistent in suggesting that quick iJOS integrates prior expectations and experience-based heuristic cues. Notably, iJOS was predictive for the subsequent solving attempt only for Raven’s matrices. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a novel interpretation of Shepherd’s notion of selfhood. In distinction to Deborah Boyle’s interpretation, I contend that Shepherd differentiates between the mind and the self. The latter, for Shepherd, is an effect arising from causal interactions between mind and body – specifically those interactions that give rise to our present stream of consciousness, our memories, and that can unite these two. Thus, the body plays a constitutive role in the formation of the self. The (...) upshot of this interpretation is that it can dissolve the problem of individuating mind that Boyle identifies. Briefly, the problem consists in Shepherd seemingly individuating minds in terms of their associated bodies and bodies in terms of the minds they are united with. My interpretation, however, allows to see that Shepherd neither wants nor needs to individuate the mind in isolation of the body and to read the passages, in which the problem seems to arise, as being about what makes living beings individual – with mind and body both playing a crucial role in this context. (shrink)

A mechanistic study of consciousness need not be confined to human complexity. Other animals also display key behaviors and responses that have long been intimately tied to the measure of consciousness in humans. Among them are some very well-defined and measurable endpoints: selective attention, sleep and general anesthesia. That these three variables associated with changes in consciousness might exist even in a fruit-fly does not necessarily imply that a fly is “conscious”, but it does suggest that some of the (...) class='Hi'>problems central to the field of consciousness studies could be investigated in a model organism such as Drosophila melanogaster. Demonstrating suppression of unattended stimuli, which is central to attention studies in humans, is now possible in Drosophila by measuring neural correlates of visual selection. By combining such studies with an eventual understanding of suppression in other arousal states in the fly, such as sleep and general anesthesia, we might be unraveling mechanisms relevant to consciousness as well. BioEssays 27:321–330, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The insight phenomenon is thought to comprise two components: cognitive and affective. The exact nature of the Aha! experience remains unclear; however, several explanations have been put forward. Based on the processing fluency account, the source of the Aha! experience is a sudden increase in processing fluency, associated with emerging of a solution. We hypothesized that in a situation which the Aha! experience accompanies the solution in, the problem would be judged as less difficult, regardless of the objective difficulty. We (...) also planned to confirm previously discovered associations between the Aha! experience and accuracy, confidence, and pleasure. To test the proposed hypothesis, during the preliminary stage of the study, we developed a set of 100 remote associate problems in Russian and asked 125 participants to solve problems and indicate the Aha! moment, confidence, difficulty, and likability of each problem. As expected, the Aha! experience often accompanied correct solutions and correlated with confidence judgments. We also found a positive correlation between the Aha! experience and problem likability. As for the main hypothesis, we confirmed that the Aha! experience after the presentation of the solution was associated with a decrease in subjective difficulty. When participants could not solve a problem but experienced the Aha! moment after the solution was presented to them, the problem was perceived as easier than one without the Aha! experience. We didn’t find the same effect for the Aha! after solution generation. Thus, our study partially supports the processing fluency account and demonstrates the association between the Aha! experience and metacognitive judgments about the accuracy and difficulty of problems. (shrink)

As we have seen in the transition form Part I to Part II of this book, the inductive riskiness of doxastic methods applied in testimonial uptake or prescribed as exemplary of religious faith, helpfully operationalizes the broader social scientific, philosophical, moral, and theological interest that people may have with problems of religious luck. Accordingly, we will now speak less about luck, but more about the manner in which highly risky cognitive strategies are correlated with psychological studies of bias studies (...) and human cognitive ecology. Chapter Four is concerned with connections between psychological study of biases and heuristics, and the comparative study of fundamentalism. The first section looks at work by psychologists and philosophers on our bias blind spot. Later sections ask, ‘In what ways might biases and heuristics play a special role in aiding our understanding of, and response to, fundamentalist orientation?’. The judgments we make in ignorance of our own biases Montaigne calls our importunate presumptions, and he suggests a host of practical factors that make them appealing. Montaigne, as I discuss in the first section, associates many of our errors with one or another kind of presumption, often about our similarity or differences from others, or from God. Our obvious psychographic diversity, and the polemical ground dynamics involved in our ‘culture wars’ are compounded on the agential side by the invisibility of our biases to ourselves. A number of person and social biases are described that plausibly affect all of our beliefs in domains of controversial views, religious views included. The second section continues to study of how etiological symmetry (similar patterns of belief-uptake) gives rise to religious contrariety (diverse narratives and theologies) in testimonial faith traditions, and what the implications of this are for philosophy of religion, generally, and for an improved comparative study of fundamentalism, in particular. Utilizing the work of philosophers such as Rachel Fraser and psychologists such as Emily Pronin and her co-authors, I offer a four-step genealogical account for how etiological symmetry so easily gives rise to religious contrariety. This account begins with the narrative nature of testimony in the Abrahamic family of religions, and how narrative content confounds our “source monitoring.” My genealogy also introduces what I term biased-closure inferences (BCI) as one of the key enablers of religious exclusivism and absolutism. These are the seemingly ‘logical’ but actually very self-serving inferences people often make, inferences from their own belief being true, to any belief contrary to it being false. Those who claim unique truth, epistemic access, and/or virtue and religious value for the home religion are no exception to the broad pertinence of bias studies across domains of controversial view. The proximate causes of belief are all that we can study, and in these there may be significant etiological symmetries. Yet those groups themselves, especially to the extent that they are exclusivist, are tunnel-visioned on claims of doctrinal uniqueness: on content differences of a theological sort. Comparative philosophy is met with the puzzlement that symmetric or essentially similar doxastic strategies should give rise not just to cognitive diversity, but to what we can call polarized or polemical contrariety, contrariety of a kind where each view adamantly rejects all others. Arguably, the more that theologies offer explanations of a counter-inductive sort, or profess counter-inductive thinking as exemplary of faith, the better evidential ground there for inferring that bias involved in the acquisition or maintenance of beliefs. This provides more substance to the question of when censure, and etiological challenges to faith-based beliefs are philosophically well-motivated. (shrink)

The problem of synthesis in biology may have reference to the evolutionary origin of living organisms in past time, a process not directly observable but conceivably reconstructible in broad outline: thus to the biochemist this evolution may appear as the evolution of the special biological compounds, to the psychologist as the evolution of “mind”—or at least of types of behavior. Or the problem may refer to the synthesis of the individual animal or plant, a process of construction which typically starts (...) from a detached portion of a parent organism, such as an egg or seed; this is the problem of individual development or ontogeny and is not essentially different from the general problem of growth. But it is clear that the processes of phyletic evolution and of ontogeny must be considered together, since evolutionary history is in reality the history of a succession of individual organisms, each developing from its germ, i.e. of ontogenies; and the ontogenetic process, so faithfully repeated in each individual as it comes into existence, is itself a product of evolution, having originated in the remote past. The succession of individuals has undergone progressive diversification, culminating in the present condition. We may describe our problem, then, as the problem of the factors underlying the synthesis of a highly special process, that by which the diffusely distributed nonliving materials and energies of nature are brought together in a special kind of unification and transformed into a living organism. (shrink)

That alcohol provides a benefit to creative processes has long been assumed by popular culture, but to date has not been tested. The current experiment tested the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication on a common creative problem solving task, the Remote Associates Test . Individuals were brought to a blood alcohol content of approximately .075, and, after reaching peak intoxication, completed a battery of RAT items. Intoxicated individuals solved more RAT items, in less time, and were more likely to (...) perceive their solutions as the result of a sudden insight. Results are interpreted from an attentional control perspective. (shrink)

Evidence for incubation effects in problem-solving is increasing, but the mechanisms that underlie incubation are unclear. An experiment tested two hypotheses about incubation: Spreading activation and opportunistic assimilation. Participants solved easy or difficult remote associates tasks without incubation period, or with an incubation period filled with high or low cognitive load tasks. A lexical decision task with cue and neutral words was given either before or after a second problem attempt. When solving difficult problems, the low-load incubation group (...) benefitted more from the presence of a cue than the high-load incubation group, and the opposite was found with easy problems. Neither incubation nor an initial problem attempt affected lexical decision times to cue words. The results favour opportunistic assimilation as an explanation of incubation effects. They also suggest a differential role for attentional allocation depending on problem difficulty, easy problems benefitting from focused attent.. (shrink)

Computational drug repositioning has been proven as a promising and efficient strategy for discovering new uses from existing drugs. To achieve this goal, a number of computational methods have been proposed, which are based on different data sources of drugs and diseases. These methods approach the problem using either machine learning- or network-based models with an assumption that similar drugs can be used for similar diseases to identify new indications of drugs. Therefore, similarities between drugs and between diseases are usually (...) used as inputs. In addition, known drug-disease associations are also needed for the methods as prior information. It should be noted that those associations are still not well established due to the fact that many of marketed drugs have been withdrawn and this could affect the outcome of the methods. In this study, we propose a novel method named RLSDR to find new uses of drugs. More specifically, it relies on a semi-supervised learning model, Regularized Least Square, thus it does not require definition of non-drug-disease associations as previously proposed machine learning-based methods. In addition, the similarity between drugs measured by chemical structures of drug compounds and the similarity between diseases which share phenotypes can be represented in a form of either similarity network or similarity matrix as inputs of the method. Moreover, instead of using a gold-standard set of known drug-disease associations, we construct an artificial set of the associations based on known disease-gene and drug-target associations. Experiment results demonstrate that RLSDR achieves better prediction performance on the artificial set of drug-disease associations than that on the gold-standard ones in terms of area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve. In addition, it outperforms two representative network-based methods irrespective of the prior information of drug-disease associations. Novel indications for a number of drugs are also identified and validated by evidences from a different data resource. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Polygenic score (PGS) computations assume an additive model of gene action because associations between phenotypes and alleles at different loci are compounded, ignoring interactions between alleles or loci let alone between genotype and environment. Consequently, PGSs are subject to the same objections that invalidated traditional heritability analyses in the 1970s. Thus, PGSs should not be used in the social sciences.

Recent work by Frigg et. al. and Mayo-Wilson have called attention to a particular sort of error associated with attempts to model certain complex systems: structural modeling error. The assessment of the degree of SME in a model presupposes agreement between modelers about the best way to individuate natural systems, an agreement which can be more problematic than it appears. This problem, which we dub “the system individuation problem” arises in many of the same contexts as SME, and the two (...) often compound one another. This paper explores the common roots of the two problems in concerns about the precision of predictions generated by scientific models, and discusses how both concerns bear on the study of complex natural systems, particularly the global climate. (shrink)

Empirical evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic shows that women carried the major burden of additional housework in families. In a mixed-methods study, we investigate female and male remote workers’ experiences of working from home during the pandemic. We used the free association technique to uncover remote workers’ representations about WFH. Based on a sample of 283 Austrian remote workers cohabitating with their intimate partners our findings revealed that in line with traditional social roles, men and women in (...) parent roles are likely to experience WFH differently: Mothers’ representations about WFH emphasize perceived incompatibility between the work and non-work sphere whereas fathers’ representations highlight work-family facilitation of WFH. However, gender differences were also prevalent for women and men without children: Women seem to particularly benefit from more concentration at home, whereas men consider WFH as more efficient, practical and leading to less work. Thus, our findings imply that gender affected perceptions of WFH during the pandemic independently from children, but children seemed to increase the existing burden, in particular for women. To conclude, WFH can generally be seen as an enabler to reduce work-life/family conflict for both women and men, but bears different challenges based on the contextual situation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Solving the Jigsaw PuzzlePeggy CadetIn my medical record, there is an enigmatic note. It was written as a consultation request from a pediatric endocrinologist to a plastic surgeon while I was hospitalized at age 13 (in the late 1960s) for mastectomy. The note reads:You have seen this unfortunate teenager with the feminizing testis [older name for androgen insensitivity] syndrome on several occasions in the past in reference to the (...) construction of a penis. Would appreciate your seeing him again to evaluate the problem. He is firmly fixed in the male gender role despite efforts on the part of his father to persuade him of the logic of a change.The surgeon’s response (also in my notes) was:The prospect of creating an acceptable penis in this patient seems to me very remote. There is nothing there except an enlarged clitoris. This could be mobilized and might project a few cm but cannot be made into a male organ of normal dimensions. The hair distribution and the perineum is also feminine which compounds the reconstruction problem.Since the decision has been made to go along with the male gender I suppose that mobilization of the penis–clitoris is reasonable. Urethral reconstruction will be possible only much later....I saw this note for the first time at age 21 but didn’t think it was particularly significant until many years later. At the time I had other, much more pressing concerns, as I had reached the conclusion by then that I had been mis–assigned as a boy and that the only way for me to have a reasonable and happy life would be for me to change to living as a girl. It was not a surprise that my doctors had been completely on the wrong track about my “gender”. I was also not about to bring this up with the endocrinologist, a person who had terrified me as a child and whom I still found a bit intimidating.I do remember the surgeon stopping by and examining me briefly without explaining who he was or why he was there. I had a somewhat longer, but equally uninformative (for me) visit from a child psychiatrist. The note requesting a consultation from the psychiatrist reads:Would you see while he is here recovering from his mastectomy? Since he began to show mammary growth 18 months ago his father has put him under considerable pressure to undergo another change in gender role. has resisted but he is quite depressed. We would appreciate any suggestions you may have.I actually have no recollection at all of anything like pressure from my father to change to living as a girl. What I actually experienced was more like 180 degrees away from that—the expectation that I should try to be more masculine. As I remember, my father was bothered by my having breasts and was the one who initiated the physician contacts that led to mastectomy. (My mother had died when I was five, leaving him to rear me as a single parent.)As my father recollected to me many years later, he had asked the pediatric endocrinologist to explain all of my treatment options and alternatives to me. I can only guess, but possibly the pediatric endocrinologist interpreted this as my father wanting me to change to living as a girl. As a young [End Page E1] adult, I got the impression that this particular doctor tended to mistake asking for information about possible treatments for requesting treatment. The idea of a patient gathering information and making informed decisions may not have figured prominently in his thinking. On the office visit when I was 21 and first mentioned to him that I might want to live as a girl, he told me that gender identity was “an unshakable conviction,” so perhaps his idea was that gender was just not something a person could make an ordinary decision about, weighing the pros and cons.My father knew—but at age 13 I didn’t—that the original decision for me to grow up as a boy had been made in a somewhat haphazard way. I had entered... (shrink)

(2001). Problems and prospects of associative democracy: Cohen and Rogers revisited. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Associative Democracy: The Real Third Way, pp. 31-70.