Symbolic Dynamic Patterns of Verbal Exchange in a Creative Problem Solving Group

Abstract

Dynamical patterns of psychological events, such as the types of verbal exchanges that transpire during creative problem solving sessions, often take the form of a series of nominal events. Nonlinear dynamical processes have been reported in past research for individual contributions in previous problem solving research. In this study we investigated dynamical processes in collective group behavior over time. One group of eight people played a game of Island Commission, and the transcripts of the game were coded and analyzed. An analysis technique was developed, wherein principles of symbolic dynamics were used to generate measures of Shannon and topological entropy, Lyapunov dimensionality, and ultimately a taxonomy of response strings. Likelihood chi-square and phi-square coefficients were used in addition to ascertain the optimal string length, which was a set of 4 responses in this case. The data set of 528 observed strings could be reduced to 79 strings that appeared more than once, and reduced again to four major conceptual categories. The interrelations among numeric indicators is discussed.