Structured imagination

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A structured imagination is a targeted, cognitive activity that is organized around structures and principles. In particular, conceptual knowledge , which is partly idiosyncratic , but partly shared by different people (environment etc.), influences the object to be imagined. In contrast to mental imagination, it goes beyond what one already knows, but does not have to contain exclusively new things.

The following remarks refer to the presentation in Chapter 6 by Finke, Ward and Smith (1992).

Basic assumptions about the structure of ideas

Our conception is structured by organizational principles. When we imagine something, two mechanisms are involved:

  1. Categorization
    • Basic level (category in which an object is classified most often)
  2. Discovery processes
    • mental synthesis (combining individual strands of knowledge to form an image)
    • mental transformation (transferring individual properties of other objects from other categories to a new object to be introduced)

The authors were now interested in how exactly this structuring takes place and which parts of the conception are influenced by it. To do this, they first looked at older research approaches to categorization in order to derive hypotheses for a newer, methodologically different study that Ward carried out in 1991 and on which they then report.

Traditional approaches to research on categorization

One can differentiate between two research approaches; traditional ones deal primarily with the role of categorization processes, while newer models illuminate the role of synthesis and transformation.

Traditional approaches to research on categorization

Research methodology

Within this tradition, the process of categorization has been studied in two ways:

  1. Let people create new categories at their discretion and see which criteria are decisive for creating categories
  2. Have existing categories assessed indirectly and thus check to what extent they correspond to the type of existing category formation

These approaches, however, have a more passive, rather restricted experiment instruction, as the persons always have to assign objects selected by the experiment leader or assess existing categories.

Key results:

Basic level (Rosch et al. (1976))

Each object can be categorized on different levels. The basic level describes what most people would use to categorize an object. It is the mean between the breadth of the category and the ease of distinguishing between members and non-members of the category.

Other research shows that attributes of categories often appear together (in clusters) (e.g. wings are more associated with feathers than with fur). In addition, certain properties are not important for creating categories (e.g. size).

The "generative cognition" approach (examples: Ward (1991))

In more recent studies, subjects are asked to invent new objects themselves. This is to answer the question of how people go beyond existing categories and specimens to create something new.

Research methodology: Test subjects should imagine a planet and then draw beings of several species that they can imagine residing there. The previous results are used to make assumptions about the behavior of the test subjects.

Study I - Experiments to Create New Entities

In a first study, Ward (1991) examined how samplers imagine living things on earth-like and earth-like planets.

Assumptions based on previous research

  1. The basic level, as it is very fundamental, should be a structuring principle of our imagination. Beings of the same species will have the same "basic level"; H. are similar in their shape and the number and type of body processes and sensory organs; Beings of different species will differ in this.
  2. Certain characteristics will vary as they are not central to the formation of categories (e.g. size).
  3. The clusters can probably also be found in the creatures.
  4. New properties for creating categories should be found (otherwise you could have stayed with old approaches ...).

Experiment I - A planet like the earth The content-related questions were u. a .:

  • Are there common, predictable structures?
  • Are there any similarities between the creations themselves?
  • Are the differences between and within species similar or idiosyncratic from person to person?
  • And, most importantly, were the similarities predictable from traditional research and familiar categories?

The test subjects were asked to imagine an Earth-like planet and then paint a being that could live there. Then they were asked to paint another being from the same species, then one from another species. After each round, detailed questions were asked about the respective being in order to really interpret everything correctly and to obtain information about the invisible.

The evaluation showed the following:

  • As expected, the beings showed similarity to those that existed on earth: symmetry, appendages (arms, legs, etc.), sense organs were mostly very typical of earth inhabitants in terms of their arrangement and number
  • The shape is the same in 94% of the beings of the same species, but organs and processes are also similar, although there is a strong variation in beings of different species; this suggests the importance of the basic level in categorizing and thus imagining and drawing

You can see: If imagination is used to create a new copy of an already known category (here: earth dwellers), it is highly structured by the known attributes of other category members

Experiment II - A Planet Different From Earth The test subjects were given the same instructions as those in the first study, except that they were asked to imagine the whole thing on a planet that was essentially different from Earth. The results were very similar to those in the first experiment, only the beings were not so “Earth-like” (i.e. the relationships between the drawn beings and the common or different properties remained, but overall the beings were more strange).

Conclusion: The imagination is highly structured, different processes and concepts play a role and influence the structure.

Overall, it follows from this study that the imagination draws on existing knowledge.

Study II - Experiments on Correlated Attributes (Clustering)

Attributes are mostly correlated with other attributes, in the following some experiments are presented.

Experiment I - the connection between feathers, beaks and wings is investigated, correlation is determined in drawings from study II (see above)

Experiment II - the connection between intelligence and human structure is examined, conclusion: if you tell people that the being should be highly intelligent, then it is drawn more human-like, internal and external characteristics belong together for human beings

Experiment III - the relationship between the relation of head to body size and age was investigated. Conclusion: The test persons draw larger heads in "baby beings"

Conclusion: Correlations between certain attributes could be confirmed.

Structures and processes of structured imagination

What processes take place in the subject's head when the subject is to create new beings? There are two theories about this, both of which can be confirmed by evaluating different creations:

  1. Simple categorizing models: 1) Matching the essence - is it a member of an already known category? (in the study, for example, “earth dwellers”) 2) Comparison of a possibly presented being with an existing representation (are there similarities or differences to what is already there?) 3) Creating the new being with the help of mental synthesis and mental transformation
  2. Naive theories: Some characteristics of the being are important because they are embedded in systems of belief (e.g. bird needs wings because of wind / lift / ability to fly etc.) Creation of the being takes place in a context of meaning, based on "naive theories" that seem logical to us and belief systems that help us to bundle and organize information.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ RA Finke, TB Ward, SM Smith: Creative Cognition: Theory, Research and Applications (=  A Bradford book ). MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. 1992 (Chapter 6: Structured Imagination).
  2. ^ Eleanor Rosch, Carolyn B. Mervis, Wayne D. Gray, David M. Johnson, Penny Boyes-Braem: Basic Objects in Natural Categories. In: Cognitive Psychology. 8, 1976, pp. 382-439.