PSYC 200 - Journal Article Presentation

Tamer Dakkak
21402724

FUNCTIONALFIXEDNESSASRELATEDTOPROBLEMSOLVING:A
REPETITIONOFTHREE
EXPERIMENTS
BYROBERTF.ADAMSON
STANFORDUNIVERISTY
 A hypothesis was made that problem solving
may in some instances be delayed by
functional fixedness

But the experiments were made under poorly

specified experimental conditions and with
only 14 students

So this encouraged Robert Adamson to

repeat the experiments and hope for better
results
PROCEDURE

All students taking part in the study were

college students ( 57 students = 35 men, 22
women)

29 students were assigned to experimental

group and 28 to control group

The problems were : 1) Dunckers box, 2)

gimlet, 3) paperclip
PROCEDURE

In number1) the students task is to mount

three candles vertically on a screen with
objects as : paste-board boxes, five matches,
five thumbtacks

The solution is to mount one candle on each

box by melting wax on the box and sticking
the candle to it, then to tack the boxes to the
screen.
 PROCEDURE
The gimlet problem involves suspending
three cords from a board attached to an
overhead beam. with two screw-hooks and
the gimlet itself.

The paperclip problem consists of first

attaching four small black cardboard squares to
a large white square, then hanging the large
square from an eyelet screwed into the
aforementioned beam.
Design

Control and experimental groups were given

the same problems to solve

For experimental, at least one of the

solutions was burdened with a prior function
in each problem

The control group was given the objects

without pre-utilization
 Results
Box problems confirms Dunckers finding that pre-utilization
causes functional fixedness
The performance of the experimental group was markedly inferior
to that of the control with respect both to the number of solutions
obtained and the time required to reach solution.
Gimlet problem = only 3 students failed to do it, The highly
significant difference obtained shows clearly the presence of
functional fixedness
Paperclip problem = As in first two experiments, pre-utilization
of solution objects resulted in poorer performance by
experimental group
Summary

Experiments were repeated to show reliability

Results in Dunckers and in this experiments

is a proof that functional fixedness exists