In Experiment 1, an unrecognized hint raised the solution rate of the radiation problem by 50 %, suggesting that subliminal priming helped to solve an insight problem. Footnote 2 In the next experiment, designed to examine the facilitation effect in a different problem, we examine this issue directly. Perhaps it simply looked more plausible than the other images. This suggests that correct identifiers did not have the hint image available to awareness but, instead, were biased to choose it for some other reason. But if they saw it, correct responders in the recognition task should show a higher solution rate than incorrect responders. We did verify in pilot experiments that most people failed to recognize the hint. In the recognition task, 55 % (48/88) selected the correct hint image (2 out of 88 did not answer) significantly more than chance (i.e., 25 %), p < 10 −8, but the majority (69 % = 33/48) of them reported that it was a “guess,” while the others reported “half-sure.” This means either that some of participants saw the hint with some degree of awareness or that they were biased to select the hint image. Of the remaining 185 participants, 56 % (49/88) solved the problem in the hint condition, whereas only 37 % (36/97) succeeded in the no-hint condition, χ 2(1, N = 185) = 6.41, p =. Data from all these participants were excluded from analysis. Of the 206 participants, 10 reported that they had seen the radiation problem before, 9 in the hint condition correctly identified the hint image with certainty, and 2 in the no-hint condition reported that they mistakenly had a glance at the hint movie. Finally, they were asked whether they have seen the radiation problem before and chose an answer among the options “yes,” “no,” and “I am not sure, but I might have seen it before.” Results and discussion They were given a total of 9 min to complete the problem, including the initial 2-min trial period, the 1-min exposure or calculation period, and the second 6-min trial period. While participants in the hint condition watched the hint movie (described as “an irrelevant short movie”) on the screen, participants in the no-hint condition tackled the dummy calculation task (e.g., 23 + 18 = ) to try to solve as many problems as possible while not looking at the screen. Two minutes after participants started to solve the problem, they were asked to engage in an “irrelevant” task for 1 min. The experiment was administered in Japanese to groups in two different classrooms. 2), and their task was to choose the one that they thought had been shown with a confidence rating- “ sure,” “ half-sure,” and “ guess”. In the recognition task, participants were presented four figures (see Fig. The radiation problem was then presented in a booklet along with diagrams ( available online). The movie was projected on a screen at the front of the room by a liquid crystal display projector. 1 see the online materials for more detail). The hint stimulus was presented as part of a 56-s movie, composed from one hint image (exposed 33 ms × 60 times), two mask images, three filler images, and one fixation image (Fig. They were randomly assigned to either a hint or a no-hint condition. Method Participants and designĪ total of 206 undergraduate students (89 female and 117 male age: 19–24 years, M = 20.1, SD = 1.1) from Ritsumeikan University and Ryukoku University were tested. Half of participants were given an unrecognized hint during the attempt to solve the problem. In the first experiment, we examined whether subliminal priming can affect human insight problem solving using the radiation problem. Schunn and Dunbar ( 1996) also showed that people can transfer their knowledge analogically to help solve even a complex problem without awareness that they are doing so. On the other hand, Maier ( 1931) observed that people can make use of a hint incidentally given to them to solve the two-string (pendulum) problem even if they were not aware of the hint. Lockhart, Lamon, and Gick ( 1988) claimed that conceptual processing of the prime triggers an awareness of the relevance of the information and is required for transfer. Presenting a story that was structurally analogous to the solution (i.e., to converge multiple low-intensity rays) did not enhance participants’ success unless it was explicitly presented as a hint. They used Duncker’s ( 1945) radiation problem, which requires devising a method to destroy an inoperable tumor in a patient’s stomach by a kind of ray without causing any serious damage to surrounding healthy tissue. Gick and Holyoak ( 1980) long ago demonstrated the importance of awareness in accessing relevant information.
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