Additive Tendencies in Problem Solving:Evidence from The Chinese Character Conversion Task
Previous studies have found that people are more inclined to use additive strategies and ignore favorable subtractive strategies when solving problems,however,what factors influence this preference for addition remains unclear.The present study explored this issue by using a Chinese character conversion task.Experiment 1 found that when using a single strategy(either adding or subtracting one stroke alone)to convert a false character into a valid one,the frequency of subtractive answers was higher than that of additive ones,which suggests that subtraction is easier than addition.Experiment 2 demonstrated that the frequency of additive answers was higher than subtractive ones under a free-choice strategy condition where participants could choose to add or subtract one stroke.Additionally,the high perceptual integration condition caused higher proportion of additive answers compared to the low perceptual integration condition.This study validates the additive tendency and reveals a new finding,that is,the intercomponent perceptual integration enhances the additive tendency.
problem solvingadditive tendencyperception integrationChinese character
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
