The process of creative problem-solving (CPS) commonly demands that individuals consciously or unconsciously integrate creative ideas from a vast array of diverse information. Using a masked priming paradigm and the Chinese remote associates test (RAT), this study provides innovative behavioral evidence for the integration of multiple unconscious…

A great deal of prior research has examined the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and attention control. The current study explored the role of arousal in individual differences in WMC and attention control. Participants performed multiple WMC and attention control tasks. During the attention control tasks participants were…

Determining adults' and children's strategies in mental arithmetic constitutes a central issue in the domain of numerical cognition. However, despite the considerable amount of research on this topic, the conclusions in the literature are not always coherent. Therefore, there is a need to carry on the investigation, and this is the reason why we…

In a first experiment, adults were asked to solve one-digit additions, subtractions and multiplications. When the sign appeared 150 ms before the operands, addition and subtraction were solved faster than when the sign and the operands appeared simultaneously on screen. This priming effect was not observed for multiplication problems. A second…

Alzheimer's disease (AD) can impair metacognition in addition to more basic cognitive functions like memory. However, while global metacognitive inaccuracies are well documented (i.e., low deficit awareness, or anosognosia), the evidence is mixed regarding the effects of AD on local or task-based metacognitive judgments. Here we investigated local…

Routine human behavior has often been attributed to plans--mental representations of sequences goals and actions--but can also be attributed to more opportunistic interactions of mind and a structured environment. This study asks whether performance on a task traditionally analyzed in terms of plans can be better understood from a "situated" (or…

Adults' geometric analogy solution was investigated as a function of systematic variations in the information structure of items. Latency data from verification of true and false items were recorded. A model incorporating assumptions about the form of item representation, working memory factors, and processing components and strategies was…

High state-anxious subjects solved fewer problems than middle or low state-anxious subjects under no memory-aid conditions, and all anxiety groups performed comparably with memory aids. High state-anxious subjects tended to use less focusing strategy when memory aids were unavailable. (Author/CP)

Two experiments investigated relationships between state anxiety, memory processes, and children's performance on problem-solving tasks. Participants were second and sixth graders in a private elementary school in Redlands, California. In both experiments, subjects responded to three training and eight test problems presented in the introtact…

This study was designed to investigate whether problem solving inefficiency in preschool children is the result of subprocess deficiencies in the children's use of logical rules and to assess the influence of 2 mnemonic components (encoding and rehearsal) on problem solving ability. The study subjects, 108 preschool children, were presented with…

In the first experiment, 16 kindergarten children were tested on vertical/horizontal and oblique discriminations in symmetrical and asymmetrical alignments. When stimuli were asymmetrically aligned, the former discrimination was learned as rapidly as the latter. The second experiment demonstrated that the influence of configurational cues in…