Pictorial examples during creative thinking tasks can lead participants to fixate on these examples and reproduce their elements even when yielding suboptimal creative products. Semantic memory research may illuminate the cognitive processes underlying this effect. Here, we examined whether pictures and words differentially influence access to semantic knowledge for object concepts depending on whether the task is close- or open-ended. Participants viewed either names or pictures of everyday objects, or a combination of the two, and generated common, secondary, or ad hoc uses for them. Stimulus modality effects were assessed quantitatively through reaction times and qualitatively through a novel coding system, which classifies creative output on a continuum from top-down-driven to bottom-up-driven responses. Both analyses revealed differences across tasks. Importantly, for ad hoc uses, participants exposed to pictures generated more top-down-driven responses than those exposed to object names. These findings have implications for accounts of functional fixedness in creative thinking, as well as theories of semantic memory for object concepts.

中文翻译：

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创造性思维任务中的功能固定性取决于刺激方式。

创造性思维任务中的图片示例可以引导参与者专注于这些示例并重现它们的元素，即使在产生次优的创意产品时也是如此。语义记忆研究可能会阐明这种影响背后的认知过程。在这里，我们检查了图片和单词是否会根据任务是封闭式还是开放式对对象概念的语义知识的访问产生不同的影响。参与者查看日常物品的名称或图片，或两者的组合，并为它们生成常见的、次要的或特别的用途。刺激模态效应通过反应时间进行定量评估，并通过一种新颖的编码系统进行定性评估，该系统将创意输出从自上而下驱动到自下而上驱动的响应进行连续分类。两种分析都揭示了任务之间的差异。重要的是，对于临时用途，与暴露于对象名称的参与者相比，暴露于图片的参与者产生了更多的自上而下驱动的响应。这些发现对创造性思维中功能固定性的解释以及对象概念的语义记忆理论都有影响。