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Apperception in primed problem solving

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Abstract

Mental representation is a central theoretical concept in modern cognitive psychology. However, its investigation has been predominantly based on inapt perceptualist concepts, which presume that information contents in them, i.e., mental contents, solely arise from stimulus. This is in spite of the evidence that much in human thought does not have any sensory equivalence. Consequently, we make a difference between perception and apperception, as e.g., Kant and Wundt did, and argue in favor of a detailed analysis of this mental process that is responsible for the construction of representations. We present here five primed problem solving experiments. The basic idea was to demonstrate that depending on priming information people represent perceptually identical stimuli very differently, i.e., they ascribe different uses and meanings to objects and they integrate them differently to compose distinct solutions. In this vein, we demonstrate that people regularly rely on information, which is not or cannot be perceived in principle. On the ground of our empirical findings, we resurrect the issue on why the difference between perception and apperception is theoretically adequate and introduce some central concepts for the theoretical analysis of apperception such as “seeing as” and functional binding.

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Notes

  1. Fodor (1987) and a number of other philosophers have also used this term, but disparate to our understanding, in their view mental contents are tokened and atomistic, and, although considered to predict it, not actually exploited to explain concrete human behavior.

  2. This distinction relates to the ones between percepts and concepts (Kant 1781/1956), “pure intuition” versus “the transphenomenal” (Husserl 1930/1976), and phenomenal and non-phenomenal content (Boghossian 1995): but our focus is not to contemplate about of its philosophical nature, but to reveal its psychological significance.

  3. Experiment 1 has shown that, enough time provided, participants will produce a great variety of solutions. And although their investigation is of great importance for problem solving and transfer research, we found it is warranted to look for genuine apperception effects at early stages of problem solving.

  4. Fisher’s exact test of significance was used for 2 × 2-contigency tables.

  5. Exact significances are used for Mann–Whitney tests throughout the analyses.

  6. We judged cross-experimental comparisons as proper because all participants were recruited at once from the same population, and tested under equal, standard conditions, with only 1 week time gaps between experiments.

  7. p value was Bonferroni adjusted (i.e., pcorrected = 25 × p).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, P. O. Box 35, 40014, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Sacha Helfenstein & Pertti Saariluoma

Authors
  1. Sacha Helfenstein
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  2. Pertti Saariluoma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pertti Saariluoma.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Material for Experiment 1

The pictorials of the scaling methods in the four priming conditions

figure a

The pictorials of the material aids in the transfer problem

figure b

Materials for Experiment 2ff

The problem story

Many years ago there lived in China a young man. Wishing to further his education, he went to a wise man in a remote land. “Master”, he said, “if you will allow me to study with you for 1 year, I will give you, in payment, this elephant.” The old man looked from the young man/woman to the strong and beautiful elephant and asked: “How much does the elephant weigh?” “I don’t know, Master”, the boy replied. “Weigh the elephant. Come back tomorrow and we will begin to learn from each other.” So the boy left, running through the town, looking for a scale to weigh the elephant. The largest scale he could find, however, was only scaled to 100 kg. He took it the next morning to the master and insisted: “Master, there is no scale large enough to weigh my elephant.” “It is not the elephant I am measuring, my son. It is the student’s thinking”, the Master explained. The Master asked the boy to come with him to a dock located at the shore of a little lake. “Here you should find everything you need. Look around and tell me later how you will weigh your elephant”. The old man turned and walked-off, leaving the boy to solve the problem.

The pictorials of the material aids and dock scenery of the problem

The material aids

figure c

The dock scenery

figure d

The post-test questionnaire

Part 1: 54 items investigating aspects of participants’ object representation.

Rope

7 items: lengthb, strengthb, conditionb, use purposea, material quantity obstaclea, material quality obstaclea, ignorancea

Logs

6 items: amountb, strengthb, handlingb, material quantity obstaclea, material quality obstaclea, ignorancea

Elephant

5 items: temperamenta, sizeb, temperament obstaclea, size obstaclea, ignorance a

Ladder

7 items: lengthb, strengthb, safetyb, use purposea, material quantity obstaclea, material quality obstaclea, ignorancea

Container

9 items: sizeb, strengthb, weightb, conditionb, use contexta, material quantity obstacle (1)a, material quantity obstacle (2)a, material quality obstaclea, ignorancea

Crane

7 items: sizeb, strengthb, complexityb, conditionb, material quantity obstaclea, material quality obstaclea, ignorancea

Tractor

5 items: sizeb, powerb, complexityb, power obstaclea, ignorancea

Barrels

6 items: amountb, conditionb, body versatilityb, handlingb, material quantity obstaclea, ignorancea

Cat

2 items: temperament obstaclea, ignorancea

  1. aOrdinal scale measure
  2. bNominal scale measure

Part 2: Judgment of the applicability of six graphically displayed solution alternatives

figure e

Materials for Experiment 3

Spatial-visual organization of the material aids in the two experimental conditions

Sinking compression condition

figure f

Hanging balance condition

figure g

Materials for Experiment 4b

Spatial-visual organization of the material aids in the disorientation condition

figure h

Appendix 2

Extracts from the thinking-aloud protocols in Experiment 1

Extract 1: problem solving phase

  • Participant: there is this boat in the story, and so I thought immediately about the boat and the water. But that does not work.

  • Experimenter: can you elaborate on how you were thinking to use the boat and the water to weigh the elephant?

  • P: well, as with Archimedes, we could use the law of water displacement, but we do not really have a way to measure it.

  • E: explain in more detail, how you imagined it and why you think it does not work.

  • P well, the boy would have to put the elephant into the boat and see how far the water level rises on the boat’s outer shell. But that of course is not at all practical, because the boat would never support the elephant: if it is at all big enough. So, I thought about it, but somehow wrote it off immediately.

  • E: ok, can you think about some other way to measure the elephant’s weight?

Extract 2: interview phase

  • E: did the picture you wrote about a few minutes ago ever come to your mind while trying to solve the elephant problem.

  • P: yes of course, it is somehow the same as if you would use the boat in the water and the stones or containers to replicate the elephant’s weight. But, you cannot really make it work.

  • E: that is interesting; you did not mention this idea earlier. Do you think, you would have mentioned it on a paper, if the test would have been in a written form?

  • P: I do not think it is reasonable, no.

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Helfenstein, S., Saariluoma, P. Apperception in primed problem solving. Cogn Process 8, 211–232 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-007-0189-4

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