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Biomedical subjects

T B Ward

Publications and source records attributed to T B Ward.

17 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Creative cognition, conceptual combination, and the creative writing of Stephen R. Donaldson.

This article explores the reported use of conceptual combination in Stephen R. Donaldson's development of the idea for his award-winning fantasy series. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Donaldson's (1991) own account is used to illustrate the general principles of a creative cognition approach to understanding creativity as well as the more specific role of the basic process of conceptual combination. The links between Donaldson's and others' anecdotal accounts of creativity and laboratory investigations are assessed. The article concludes with an argument for a "convergence" approach in which information from anecdotal accounts and laboratory studies is combined to provide a more complete picture of creative functioning than either approach alone can offer.

Cognition↗
PubMed2000

Category structure and created memories.

Cued recall of categorized lists was used to examine effects of category structure on the creation of false memories. In three experiments, category members that had not been presented on studied categorized lists were nonetheless recalled by participants. Delaying the category cued recall test (Experiment 1) and priming category members that had been omitted from target lists (Experiment 3) increased the frequency of false recall. All three experiments showed that nonpresented category members that were higher in output dominance were more frequent intrusions. The typicality of category members, however, did not uniquely contribute to the predictability of false recall (or accurate recall) once the contribution of output dominance was taken into account, suggesting that item accessibility (related to output dominance) may be more instrumental than item distinctiveness (related to typicality) in causing certain types of false recall. The results show that created memories in category cued recall are strongly biased by prior category knowledge and can be predicted by the graded structure of categories, particularly in terms of the output dominance of category instances.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Attribute centrality and imaginative thought.

Participants' representations of the concept human were examined to differentiate three types of associations between concepts and their component attributes: the capacity of concepts to cue attributes (attribute accessibility), the capacity of attributes to cue concepts (instance accessibility), and the extent to which attributes are thought of as central to concepts (attribute centrality). The findings provide information about the concept human itself and, more generally, about the functionally distinct roles those different attribute-concept associations play in guiding imaginative thought. College students listed attributes that differentiate humans from other animals, rated the centrality of those attributes, and listed animals that possess those attributes. Other students drew and described extraterrestrials that possessed some of the attributes that were found to vary across those listing and rating tasks. Rated centrality was the most important determinant of an attribute's impact on imaginative generation. When the imagined extraterrestrials were supposed to possess attributes that had been rated as central to humans (intelligence, emotional complexity, or opposable thumbs), participants projected more aspects of human form onto them than when the creatures were supposed to possess less central attributes or when attributes were unspecified.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

The inadvertent use of prior knowledge in a generative cognitive task.

In four experiments with 332 participants, participants were asked to generate novel nonwords for English categories. When participants were shown examples embedded with regular orthographic structures, participants' nonwords tended to conform orthographically to the examples, despite instructions to avoid using features of the examples. The effect was found with immediate testing (Experiments 1) and delayed testing (Experiment 2). The effect was also found with arbitrary features (Experiments 1-4), as well as with naturally occurring orthographic regularities (Experiment 4). Participants had difficulty avoiding the use of this prior knowledge, despite being able to list the features they were asked to avoid (Experiment 3). The results are discussed in terms of the inadvertent use of prior knowledge in generative cognitive tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Constraining effects of examples in a creative generation task.

In three experiments we tested the conformity hypothesis--that subjects' ideas would conform to examples they had been shown--by using a creative generation paradigm in which subjects imagined and sketched new exemplars of experimenter-defined categories. Designs made by subjects who had first seen three examples of ideas were compared with those of control subjects, who received no examples. In all three experiments, the designs of subjects who had seen the examples were more likely to contain features of the examples. This conformity effect did not significantly decrease in Experiment 2, when a 23-min task was interpolated between viewing the examples and generating related ideas. The hypothesis that the observed conformity effects may have been caused by subjects' assumptions that they should try to generate ideas similar to the examples was refuted in Experiment 3; explicitly instructing subjects to create ideas that were very different from the examples did not decrease conformity to the examples, and instructing them to conform to the examples significantly increased conformity. The results show that recent experience can lead to unintentional conformity, constraining the generation of creative ideas.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Children and adults learn family-resemblance categories analytically.

3 experiments examined the modes of processing used by children and adults in learning family-resemblance categories. The materials were cartoon faces (Experiments 1 and 2) and bugs (Experiment 3) divided into categories that possessed no single defining attributes, but rather several characteristic attributes that were each partially predictive of category membership. The categories were structured so that a holistic mode of processing in which the individual did not selectively weight any given attributes could have led to success. Nevertheless, preschoolers (Experiments 2 and 3), first and third graders (Experiment 1), and adult college students (all experiments) all exhibited primarily analytic modes of learning that consisted of single- and dual-attribute approaches. Although the proportion of analytic learners among the preschoolers was lower than among the adults in Experiment 3, in no case were holistic modes of learning evident. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for young children's apparent relative success in learning natural categories. It is suggested that children's success in learning real-world categories may be based, in part, on an interaction between a basically analytic processing style and natural category structures that provide many partially informative attributes.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Further comments on the attribute availability hypothesis of children's category learning.

Kemler Nelson raises several important issues regarding children's category learning in her commentary on Ward, Vela, and Hass. The points of agreement in our positions concern the extreme complexity of the phenomenon. The points of disagreement that are addressed in this reply concern Kemler Nelson's assertions that (a) children are, in general, holistic processors, (b) a holistic processing model provides a better account of children's category learning than the attribute availability model, and (c) that Ward et al. have overestimated the extent of analytic processing and underestimated the extent of holistic processing by young children. All of these points are challenged in the present paper.

Attention↗
PubMed1989

Classification behavior and measures of intelligence: dimensional identity versus overall similarity.

Individuals tend to adopt either analytic or holistic modes of categorizing objects. In two studies, we examined the relation between these categorization tendencies and cognitive abilities as measured by standard psychometric instruments. The participants in both studies were pretested with a restricted classification task in which it was possible for them to classify simple stimuli by dimensional identity or overall similarity. Those making a large number of either type of categorization were then tested with subtests of the WAIS-R and with the Raven's progressive matrices. Across both studies, the analytic individuals (many dimensional identity classifications) scored higher than the holistic individuals (many overall similarity classifications) on some but not all of the subtests. The results are consistent with the idea that holistic modes of categorization may be more "primitive" than analytic modes. The findings are discussed in terms of the association between categorization mode and either general or specific cognitive abilities.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

What makes a vibble a vibble? A developmental study of category generalization.

Young children appear to know when a novel label for a novel object is a common noun. The present study was concerned with the properties of a named object that children assume to be true of other members of the category that is specified by such a noun. Preschoolers, second graders, and college students were shown drawings of objects and given nonsense labels for those objects. They then viewed other objects that varied from the labeled ones along 4 particular attributes and were asked to decide if those other objects should also receive the same label. Preschoolers focused mostly on single attributes in making category decisions, and their choices of attributes were evenly distributed among the 4 types. Older individuals primarily exhibited multiple attribute rules. The results are discussed in terms of developmental differences in the modes of processing that are used and in the types of knowledge that are brought to bear on the word learning situation.

Attention↗
PubMed1986

Classifying color materials: children are less holistic than adults.

Much recent research indicates that children respond to materials which are separable for adults as though those materials were integral. The present studies examined differences between 5-year-olds and adults in the processing of integral materials. In Study 1, both children and adults made a majority of similarity classifications for those materials. However, the children were found to make fewer of those integral similarity classifications and more dimensional classifications than adults for materials varying in the integral dimensions of chroma and value. In Study 2, children's similarity judgments were also indicative of greater separability of those dimensions. For both children and adults, similarity ratings given in Study 2 were predictive of classification behavior in Study 1. Age differences in similarity ratings were also predictive of age differences in classification. The overall pattern of results is consistent with the idea that children's perception is neither more nor less holistic than that of adults. Whether children or adults are found to be more holistic depends on the nature of the material presented. With integral materials, young children respond in a manner which appears less holistic than that of adults.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Classifying multidimensional stimuli: stimulus, task, and observer factors.

When observers decide how to classify stimuli, they often employ one of two types of information: identity along one particular dimension or overall similarity. The present studies examined interrelations among the factors which determine the use of these types of information. Participants' classifications of certain types of materials (e.g., size and brightness, length and density) revealed strong individual differences, were related to the individual's response tempo and selective processing ability, and were influenced by task demands. Classifications of other materials (e.g., saturation and brightness) did not reveal individual differences, were not affected by response tempo and selective processing ability, and were unaffected by changes in task demands. The former, but not the latter, types of materials have also been found to be influenced by developmental differences. The results are consistent with the idea that differences in response tempo and selective processing ability underlie observer differences (both individual and developmental) and that certain types of stimuli which are not susceptible to such influences set boundary conditions for observer differences. The results are discussed within an integral-to-separable model of processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Response tempo and separable--integral responding: evidence for an integral-to-separable processing sequence in visual perception.

Three experiments were conducted to examine the relation between response tempo and separable-integral responding. A restricted classification paradigm, in which similarity-based (integral) and dimensionally based (separable) classifications were pitted against one another, was used with the dimensions of length and density (all experiments) and size and brightness (Experiment 3). The subjects were college students (Experiments 1 and 2) and kindergarten, second-, and fifth-grade children (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, rapid responding was associated with fewer dimensional and more similarity responses than was slow responding. This result held when response tempo was simply measured (Experiments 1 and 3) and when it was manipulated by the experimenter (Experiment 2). The results were interpreted to be consistent with models of dimensional processing in which holistic, integral processing precedes analytic dimensional processing.

Child↗
PubMed1980

Separable and integral responding by children and adults to the dimensions of length and density.

The classifying behavior of 5-year-old children and adults was examined in 2 studies of restricted classification using triads of stimuli composed of the dimensions of length and density. Subjects could classify on the basis of dimensional structure, overall similarity, or neither. Adults showed a majority of dimensionally based responses, while children gave a majority of similarity-based responses in experiment 1. This pattern is consistent with the notion of separable perception for adults and integral perception for children. The results of a pretask for experiment 2 in which subjects were required to make dimensional comparisons indicate that children's integral responding is not based on an inability to access dimensional relations. The results are discussed in terms of possible strategic differences underlying separable and integral responding.

Adult↗