Simpler is Better: Avoiding the TMI Trap

In studies of map-based problem solving, whether young or old, expert or novice, a consistent pattern was always seen - people of all ages and expertise seemed to prefer being presented more information, not less, even if it takes longer to study detail-laden maps, figures, or diagrams filled with extraneous material.

Too Much Information is the TMI trap.

In experiments involving Navy weather forecasters, Hegarty and colleagues found that "novice and experts alike have a tendency to choose more realistic over less realistic displays, even though realism impairs their performance in simple display comprehension tasks. Some experts prefer no just realism, but also prefer maps that display extraneous meteorological variables." More data and details were extremely seductive; the TMI trap has been seen in all types of problem solving scenarios involving all ages as well as all levels of experience. Hegarty adds, "detail, animation, realism, and showing the third dimension do not consistently enhance performance and often impede it."

Maybe the problem in the weather forecaster study is that the experts (postgraduates in meteorology) were not expert enough.

Other studies of expertise have suggested that experts differ from novices by the fact that they have more abstract (simplified) representations and they know more solutions. Experts are more likely to categorize problems, while novices are more likely to be misled by details or concrete aspects of the problem.

From Chi and colleagues: "When experts are presented a problem or task relevant to their domain of expertise, they see the problem in terms of prior meaningful patterns of information," like the recall of the significance of chess moves by expert chess players or  the significance of X-ray findings by experts radiologists. "Experts are more likely than novices to categorize problems at a deep level of abstraction (or function), whereas novices are more likely to categorize problems based on the surface features." In addition, experts are more likely to organize their schemas for problems in hierarchical fashions, that help them reason through the possibilities and again prioritize what approaches are best.

So simpler is better, but it's the kind of simplicity that's not based on lack of knowledge or experience. To the contrary. Expertise simple has plenty of knowledge and experience, but it's now also beyond them.

Getting All A's But Flunking Life - IQ Scores Climb As Creativity Sinks

Almost 30 years ago philosopher James Flynn discovered that IQ scores were increasing in every industrialized country around the globe. But before we pat ourselves on back, Bronson and Merryman warn us that we may be in the midst of a Creativity Crisis. Although IQ scores continue to climb, creativity scores, at least as measured on the Torrance Test of Creativity are dropping through the floor.

After reviewing the scores of 300,000 children using the Torrance Test of Creativity, Kyung-Hee Kim of the College of William and Mary saw a steep decline in scores from kindergarteners to 6th graders.

What are some of the reasons for this? A few possibilities are mentioned by Bronson and Merryman suggest one "likely culprit" is the number of hours kids spend in front of the TV or playing videogames. Other fingers are pointed at "drill and kill", "no time", and the "art bias" - thinking that creativity in school should only be taught in art class.

In The Invisible Gorilla, authors Chambris and Simons warn about the "illusion of knowledge". When Rozenglit and Keil polled random students in the hallways of the psych building and asked them if they knew how a crossbow worked or why the sky was blue, most gave up quickly, answering no more than one or two 'why' questions before encountering their ignorance. Not surprisingly, when students when then instructed about a particular process or mechanism, their ratings about their self-knowledge dropped! They had at least learned how little they knew.

We would add some additional reasons why creativity may be dropping with our current younger generation - there is more-and-more technology yes, but more often more breadth than depth, and more distancing from the tasks of direct learning and problem solving. From Keil: "One important factor underlying the illusion of explanatory depth arises from the richly hierarchical nature of most complex systems, which means that they can be understood at several levels of analysis. One can understand how a computer “works” in terms of the high-level functions of the mouse, the hard drive, and the display while not having any understanding of the mechanisms that enable a cursor to move when a mouse is moved, or allow information to be stored and erased, or control pixels on a screen. This hierarchical structure of complex causal systems seduces us into a sense of understanding at a high level, which is then mistaken for having an understanding at a lower level."

So maybe in our quest for higher learning, we are spending too little time flailing about at the low?

BTW, if you'd like to take part of the creativity test, go here.

When Words Get in the Way - Verbal Mediation Interferes with Spatial Imagery

A colleague recently mentioned the work of Jonathan Schooler who discovered that talking about a problem interfered with problem solving by insight. Verbal mediation does not worsen all types of problem solving of course - in older adults, in fact, researchers found that having older adults talk aloud while solving Raven's matrices increased their IQ performance by 11 points.

But verbal overshadowing is a real phenomenon, and another example of counteracting processes of words and images in the brain.

Verbal overshadowing refers to the process by which putting experiences into words can certain aspects of visual and other perceptual memories.

Examples:

-  After viewing a video of a bank robbery, subjects were 64% accurate picking the robber from a line if they relied on vision alone, but only 38% accurate if they gave a verbal description of the robber before searching the lineup.
- After viewing a map with landmarks, only those subjects who had been asked to verbally describe the map had trouble estimating the distances between landmarks. The thought is that words interfered with the spatial image of the map.
- After listening to a spoken phrase,  test subjects who were asked to write down everything they heard had a harder time identifying the voice that was used

More recent information about the verbal mediation suggests that individuals with stronger spatial ability are more susceptible to the verbal overshadowing effect...so that means that spatial thinkers may really not want to solve problems with words because it may disrupt their spatial processing and cause them to make more mistakes. In most of the students we see in the clinic where verbal mediation helps, their imagery for the task is weak (like dyslexic students verbalizing spelling words) - so this all makes sense.

In the figure at left, Melcher (2004) found that perceptual training increased the verbal overshadowing effect (in this experiment, subjects were trained on visual discrimination of different mushroom types).

Take-home point for teachers: when we're teaching or demonstrating a lesson, we should be attuned to primary modality we're trying to entrain. Sometimes we need to show and talk less.

Also if our students are spatial experts, we should understand why they don't like to "show their work" and not have it required of them.

Verbal Overshadowing of Spatial Mental Models
Verbal Overshadowing Articles
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