Solving Anagrams: Category Priming and the Differential Availability of Category Solutions

Schuberth, Richard E.; Spoehr, Kathryn T.; Haertel, Robert J.

doi:10.1080/14640747908400751

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Further, this verbal response prompt was congruent with the verbal response prompt employed in our RAT task (described below). Other anagram priming tasks, similar to the one employed in the present experiment, have been shown to effectively prime other cognitive parameters, providing evidence of validity for our evaluated priming task (Ansburg & Hill, 2003; Dominowski & Ekstrand, 1967; Schuberth, 1979).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 68%

Effects of Verbal Priming With Acute Exercise on Convergent Creativity

2020

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The acute effects of moderate-intensity treadmill exercise during anagram problem solving on subsequent creativity performance has yet to be empirically investigated, which was this study’s purpose. A two-visit (counterbalanced order), within-subject experiment was conducted among individuals aged 18–35. For the acute exercise visit, participants engaged in a 15-minute bout of moderate-intensity treadmill exercise while solving anagram problems. For the anagram only visit, participants engaged in 15 minutes of seated rest while solving anagram problems. Average RAT performance was higher for the exercise + anagram problem-solving visit ( M = 10.51, SD = 3.25) compared to anagram-solving + seated rest ( M = 9.29, SD = 4.12). The difference between conditions was statistically significant, t(44) = 2.385, p = .021, Cohen’s d = 0.36. These findings demonstrate that acute exercise coupled with anagram problem-solving, prior to RAT completion, is a potential strategy for enhancing verbal convergent creative thinking.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 68%

Effects of Verbal Priming With Acute Exercise on Convergent Creativity

2020

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“…One may therefore quantify the instance dominance of a given word with respect to a given lexical category, and one would predict that this factor would be of crucial importance in predicting the time to access a word within that category. This relationship was confirmed by Schuberth et al (1979). On the other hand, words in different categories of the same instance dominance should be retrieved equally rapidly, irrespective of the size of the various categories.…”

supporting

confidence: 55%

“…Schuberth et al, 1979). However, there was no effect of anagram length upon performance when the effect of instance dominance was statistically controlled.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Models of anagram solution

Richardson

Johnson

1980

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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It is generally accepted that anagrams are solved by means of an interrogation of the lexicon on the basis of an orthographically regular subsequence of the letters given. This study was concerned with the effect upon the solution process of providing the semantic category that contained the solution. In this situation, the instance dominance of the solution in the specified category affected the solution time for anagrams drawn from small categories, but the number of letters in the anagrams did not. For anagrams drawn from large categories, the reverse was true. Moreover, cuing with the appropriate taxonomic category produced a significant reduction in solution time in the case of items from small categories, but not in the case of items from large categories. It is concluded that subjects employ a semantically directed interrogation of the lexicon when they are cued with a small category, but a structurally directed interrogation of the lexicon otherwise.

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“…Semantic priming has been widely used across a number of tasks and settings. For example, people are faster to solve anagrams related to semantically primed than unprimed categories (Schuberth et al, 1979;White, 1988). In combination, these lines of research suggest that semantic priming can lead people toward both correct and incorrect solutions.…”

Section: Eliciting False Insights With Semantic Primingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eliciting false insights with semantic priming

Hj¹,

Laukkonen²,

Tangen³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The insight experience (or ‘Aha moment’) generally evokes strong feelings of certainty and confidence. An ‘Aha’ experience for a false idea could underlie many false beliefs and delusions. However, for as long as insight experiences have been studied, false insights have remained difficult to elicit experimentally. That difficulty, in turn, highlights the fact that we know little about what causes people to experience a false insight. Across two experiments (total N=300), we developed and tested a new paradigm to elicit false insights. In Experiment 1 we used a combination of semantic priming and visual similarity to elicit feelings of insight for incorrect solutions to anagrams. These false insights were relatively common but were experienced as weaker than correct ones. In Experiment 2 we replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and found that semantic priming had a greater impact than visual similarity on false insights, although the combination of the two manipulations produced the strongest effect. These studies highlight the importance of misleading semantic processing in the generation of false insights.

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Solving Anagrams: Category Priming and the Differential Availability of Category Solutions

Cited by 12 publications

References 19 publications

Effects of Verbal Priming With Acute Exercise on Convergent Creativity

Effects of Verbal Priming With Acute Exercise on Convergent Creativity

Models of anagram solution

Eliciting false insights with semantic priming

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