以概念結合所產生之新屬性探討創造的認知歷程

Abstract

概念結合是指將含有兩種或兩種以上的概念組合，以產生一個滿足原有那幾個概念表徵的新概念。在概念結合後，對新概念的詮釋裡有可能會出現在原先的概念中沒有的屬性，本研究即在探討概念結合時名詞配對中是否含有否定名詞，以及詮釋的嘗試次數對產生新屬性的影響。實驗材料為16對名詞—名詞的配對，研究中65個大學生被隨機分派至名詞配對中有或無否定概念的情境，對同一名詞配對進行三次詮釋，並對每個詮釋舉出三個屬性。實驗結果發現，受試者對名詞配對的詮釋嘗試的次數越多，則新屬性出現的機會也會隨著顯著上升。名詞配對中若含有否定概念時，其概念結合後產生的新屬性與肯定型態的名詞配對間則無差異顯著。在含有否定型態的名詞配對中，詮釋失敗的次數顯著高於肯定型態的名詞配對。由新屬性的分數與創造力測驗所測得的變通性有低的正相關，但與流暢性或獨創性無顯著相關，顯示概念結合時產生新屬性的歷程可能和一般的分歧思考歷程不完全相似。

Conceptual combination involves joining of two or more concepts to produce a new meaning which satisfies the representation of each constituent concept. However, there may be new attributes emerged from conceptual combination which cannot be explained by each individual concept. The cognitive processes that produce emergent attributes in conceptual combination may be viewed as a creative process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the number of interpretive attempts in conceptual combination and the type of noun-noun pairs on the type of the interpretation and the number of emergent attributes. Sixteen noun-noun pairs which contain only affirmative concept or include one negated concept were used. Sixty-five participants were asked to interpret these sixteen noun-noun pairs, in random order, three times. The results showed that the number of emergent attributes indeed increased with the number of interpretive attempts. However, inclusion of a negated concept in the noun-noun pair did not increased the number of emergent attributes. One plausible reason is that a negated concept is difficult to conceptualize in conceptual combination task.