Abstract
A “failed” experiment (Ross & Vallée-Tourangeau, 2021) tried to reveal the role played by materiality in solving an insight problem that made reference to embodied action, leading to valuable insights about the nature of cognition and the experimental method. In this commentary, we argue that this study reveals various forms of interactivity and brings new evidence against the idea that “pure” cognition can be isolated from either materiality or sociality. The question becomes, then, not whether the use of objects helps or hinders problem solving, but how objects, bodies, and other people participate in it, even in controlled lab settings, and to what effect. Reflections are offered on why and how cognition stays wild (i.e., embodied, dialogical, and surprising) and what this means for experimental work.
Highlights
Ross and Vallée-Tourangeau, (2021) distinguish first-order and second-order problem solving and set out to experimentally demonstrate the neglected superiority of first-order problem solving for certain creative tasks
To further illustrate the point, there is yet another layer of interactivity that was not considered by Ross and Vallée-Tourangeau, but which is evident in their data, namely the larger dialogical context of what it means for participants to be in a “psychology experiment.”
What the present studies and several others (e.g., Glăveanu et al, 2019; Hawlina, 2019) show us is that rethinking experiments in psychology, and other disciplines, remains an urgent task
Summary
Ross and Vallée-Tourangeau, (2021) distinguish first-order (hands-on and interactive) and second-order (cognitive and abstract) problem solving and set out to experimentally demonstrate the neglected superiority of first-order problem solving for certain creative tasks To this end, they use the socks problem: “If you have a drawer with brown socks and black socks mixed in a ratio of 4:5, how many would you have to pull out in order to guarantee a pair?” They expected, with good reasons, that participants who interacted with socks would be better at resolving the problem compared to participants who only imagined interacting with socks. Even the interactivity of participants who had socks was uncontrollable, with some upending the sock bag and getting distracted by counting the socks They conclude that interactivity permeated both conditions, and this realization has broad implications for experimental research that tries to control interactivity. Interactivity, it seems, is so fundamental to humans that it cannot be experimentally isolated
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