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Chunk tightness

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Full-Text Articles in Education

Stimulus Complexity And Chunk Tightness Interact To Impede Perceptual Restructuring During Problem Solving, Zhonglu Zhang, Christopher M. Warren, Yi Lei, Qiang Xing, Hong Li Jul 2020

Stimulus Complexity And Chunk Tightness Interact To Impede Perceptual Restructuring During Problem Solving, Zhonglu Zhang, Christopher M. Warren, Yi Lei, Qiang Xing, Hong Li

Psychology Faculty Publications

The mutual influence of stimulus complexity and chunk tightness on perceptual restructuring was examined using a chunk decomposition task (CDT). Participants attempted to remove components of Chinese characters in order to produce new, valid characters. Participants had their electroencephalogram recorded while completing a CDT in conditions of low or high stimulus complexity, crossed with two levels of chunk tightness. Tight chunks overlapped spatially whereas loose chunks did not. Both increasing chunk tightness and increasing stimulus complexity impaired performance (lower accuracy, longer reaction times), and these factors interacted such that highly complex, tight chunks produced the worst performance. These factors also …


Identification And Transformation Difficulty In Problem Solving: Electrophysiological Evidence From Chunk Decomposition, Zhonglu Zhang, Yu Luo, Chaolun Wang, Christopher M. Warren, Qi Xia, Qiang Xing, Bihua Cao, Yi Lei, Hong Li Feb 2019

Identification And Transformation Difficulty In Problem Solving: Electrophysiological Evidence From Chunk Decomposition, Zhonglu Zhang, Yu Luo, Chaolun Wang, Christopher M. Warren, Qi Xia, Qiang Xing, Bihua Cao, Yi Lei, Hong Li

Psychology Faculty Publications

A wealth of studies have investigated how to overcome experience-based constraints in creative problem solving. One such experience-based constraint is the tendency for people to view tightly organized visual stimuli as single, unified percepts, even when decomposition of those stimuli into component parts (termed chunk decomposition) would facilitate problem solving. The current study investigates the neural underpinnings of chunk decomposition in creative problem solving by analyzing event-related potentials. In two experiments, participants decomposed Chinese characters into the character’s component elements and then used the base elements to form a new valid character. The action could require decomposing a “tight” chunk, …