The Influence Of Element Type And Crossed Relation On Chunk Decomposition In Chinese Characters

Creativity plays great role in both individual and social development,especially in solving complex problems that encountered in the current development of our country.How to solve problems efficiently as well as innovatively?Chunk decomposition,as one crucial mechanism and special form of creativity or insight,can provide illumination for answering this question.Generally speaking,a perceptual chunk consists of two basic components:elements or parts and the spatial relation between those elements.Previous studies have made fruitful investigations on how element type affects chunk decomposition difficulty and the related cognitive and neural mechanism.However,this remains the role of spatially crossed relation between elements in the perceptual chunk neglected.The aim of the current dissertation was to systematically investigate the role of element type and crossed relation in insightful chunk decomposition in three studies by virtue of behavioral experiments and the event-related potentials technique(ERP).Study one dissociated the role of element type and crossed relation on chunk decomposition difficulty in four behavioral experiments.In experiment one,participants completed the Chinese character transformation task,in which two characters were simutaneously presented and participants were asked to remove any part from the right character to the left character in order to get two new and valid characters.The task was a within-subject design with element type(character-level vs.stroke-level)as well as crossed relation(uncrossed vs,crossed).We hypothesized that both element type and crossed relation had dissociated influence on the difficulty of chunk decomposition.The results confirmed the hypothesis and showed that:relative to the uncrossed relation condition,the crossed relation condition resulted in lower solution rate and longer response times in chunk decomposition task;relative to the character-level chunk decomposition,chunk decomposition in the stroke-level resulted in lower solution rate and longer response times.However,the effect of element type on chunk decomposition difficulty was mainly limited to the uncrossed relation condition,with a reverse pattern in the crossed relation condition.The effects of element type and crossed relation on chunk decomposition difficulty were further examined in the character subtracting task in experiment 2 and experiment 3.The task for the participants were to remove one target element from a source character in order to get a new character.the difference between experiment 2 and experiment 3 was from stimuli presentation style:the source character and the removed element were simultaneously presented in experiment 2 whereas the presentation of the removed element was followed by the source character in experiment 3.In line with experiment 1,the two variables including element type(character-level vs.stroke-level)and crossed relation(uncrossed relation vs.crossed relation)were manipulated in a within-subject design in experiment 2 and 3.The results of experiment 1 were replicated in these two experiments.That is,relative to uncrossed relation,crossed relation lead to lower solution rate and longer response times in chunk decomposition;chunk decomposition in stroke level required longer response times compared to that in character level and this effect was limited to the uncrossed relation condition.One aim of experiment 4 was to examine the effect of element type and crossed relation on chunk decomposition difficulty.In addition,we tested the special role of crossed relation in chunk decomposition difficulty as well.For these purposes,in experiment 4,the two variables:element type(character level vs.stroke level)and spatial relation(left-right relation vs.top-down relation vs.crossed relation)were manipulated in a within-subject design in the character subtracting task with subsequent presentation style.The effects of crossed relation and element type on chunk decomposition difficulty were replicated.Additionally,the solution rate was lower in the condition of crossed relation than that in uncrossed relation(whatever in the condition of left-right relation or top-down relation).There is no difference between the two latter conditions.This indicated a special role of crossed relation in chunk decomposition difficulty.By using ERP,study two investigated how crossed relation affected the processing of chunk decomposition in a character subtracting task in which the removed element and the source character were subsequently presented.In two experiments(experiment 5 and 6),participants completed the chunk decomposition task in both the crossed relation condition and the uncrossed relation condition.The differences were as follows.In experiment 5,the shape of the removed element changed in the process of chunk decomposition and there were different types of spatial relation(e.g.,top-down relation,left-right relation)in the uncrossed relation condition.In experiment 6,the shape of the removed element was kept the same in the process of chunk decomposition and the removed element and the left one were consistently kept in top-down relation in the source character.In addition,we made analysis on the filler trials(where chunk can not be decomposed)in experiment 6.The two experiments consistently showed that,compared to the uncrossed relation condition,the crossed relation condition showed an early enhanced N2 deflection and a late decreased LPC deflection.By using ERP,study three investigated how crossed relation affected the processing of chunk decomposition in a character subtracting task in which the removed element and the source character were subsequently presented.In two experiments(experiment 7 and 8),participants completed the chunk decomposition task in the conditions of character level and stroke level.The difference is,the removed element and the left element were in uncrossed relation in experiment 7,whereas the two were in crossed relation in experiment 8.In experiment 7,we found that,the stroke-level condition relative to the character-level condition elicited an early enhanced N2 deflection.In experiment 8,we found both an early P300 effect and a late LPC effect.In sum,the current dissertation mainly revealed the cognitive and neural mechanisms of chunk decomposition of creative insight.Specifically,we concerned the role of element type and crossed relation in chunk decomposition.Behaviorally,we dissociated and demonstrated the role of element type and crossed relation on chunk decompostion difficulty and further revealed a more important role of crossed relation than element type in chunk decomposition difficulty.In the neural level,element type and crossed relation manifested different mechanisms in influencing the process of chunk decomposition:the element-type-based chunk decomposition mainly induced an early enhanced P300 deflection in the target identification phase and a late enhanced LPC deflection in the phase of perceptual representation change;the crossed-relation-based chunk decompostion mainly elicited an early enhanced N2 deflection in the target identification phase and a decreased LPC deflection,which indicated the involvement of conflict mornitoring and the difficulty of perceptual representation change,respectively.