Experimental procedure for assessing creative problem-solving in humans and pigeons

• Grant number: 21/09666-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: January 02, 2022
• End date: June 21, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Miriam Garcia Mijares
• Grantee: Rafael Silva Rodrigues
• Supervisor: Aaron P Blaisdell
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/27401-1 - Experimental procedure for evaluating creative problem solving in humans, BP.MS

Abstract

Creativity has been repeatedly linked to operant behavioral variability and insightful problem-solving behavior. However, little research has been done to study the interaction between those two phenomena. This research aims to analyze the relationship between operant behavioral variability and its effects on the participant's performance in a spatial problem-solving situation, by developing two correlated studies, using the same experimental design: one of them using the Portal 2 video game for human subjects and the second using a series of 6 touchscreen-equipped operant chambers for pigeons. The general procedure, for both studies, is intended to have two phases. The first phase, or Training Phase, consists of a set of a sequence of 12 problems presented in virtual chambers, in the case of human subjects, and touchscreen-equipped operant chambers, in the case of pigeon subjects. The other phase, the Test Phase, consists of a new problem in a new chamber, designed to be solved only by emiting a new behavior (i.e. untrained behavior) but related to all previously trained behaviors. The experiment with humans has been constructed and conducted since the beginning of the master research project (2020) and will be finalized by November 2021. The experiment with pigeons is still on planning and designing phase and is intended to occur during the BEPE internship, using all the technology and staff support available at the Comparative Cognition Lab (UCLA). After both of the experiments are constructed and the data collected, they will be compared, and each subjetc's performance will be analyzed, comparing those that could solve the problem by insight to those that could only solve by trial and error, and those that did not solve the problem. Finally, we will discuss whether this research method is adequate and sucessfull in evaluating the effects of operant behavioral variability in insightful behavior.