Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Intelligent problem-solvers externalize cognitive operations

Nature Human Behaviour volume 3, pages 136–142 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Humans are nature’s most intelligent and prolific users of external props and aids (such as written texts, slide-rules and software packages). Here we introduce a method for investigating how people make active use of their task environment during problem-solving and apply this approach to the non-verbal Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test for fluid intelligence. We designed a click-and-drag version of the Raven test in which participants could create different external spatial configurations while solving the puzzles. In our first study, we observed that the click-and-drag test was better than the conventional static test at predicting academic achievement of university students. This pattern of results was partially replicated in a novel sample. Importantly, environment-altering actions were clustered in between periods of apparent inactivity, suggesting that problem-solvers were delicately balancing the execution of internal and external cognitive operations. We observed a systematic relationship between this critical phasic temporal signature and improved test performance. Our approach is widely applicable and offers an opportunity to quantitatively assess a powerful, although understudied, feature of human intelligence: our ability to use external objects, props and aids to solve complex problems.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Predicting academic achievement using the conventional and the adapted click-and-drag Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test in Experiments 1a and 1b (n = 495).
Fig. 2: Simulated data for the dual-mode (green) and single-mode model (blue) and empirical data for experimental participants (black) in Experiment 2 (n = 70).
Fig. 3: Shape parameters, scale parameters, partial autocorrelations as a function of Raven IQ test performance in Experiment 2 (n = 70).
Fig. 4: Variance of intermovement intervals, total number of movements, total time spent on task as a function of Raven IQ test performance in Experiment 2 (n = 70).

Code availability

The routines/code that were used to perform the statistical analyses in this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. For the routine/code that was used for simulating the dual-mode and single-mode problem-solvers see Supplementary Code.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. Jensen A. R. The G Factor: The Science of Mental Ability. (Praeger, Westport, CT, USA, 1998).

  2. Deary, I. J., Strand, S., Smith, P. & Fernandes, C. Intelligence and educational achievement. Intelligence 35, 13–21 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kyllonen, P. C. & Christal, R. E. Reasoning ability is (little more than) working-memory capacity?! Intelligence 14, 389–433 (1990).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E. & Conway, A. R. Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: a latent-variable approach. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 128, 309–331 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Duncan, J. et al. A neural basis for general intelligence. Science 289, 457–460 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Conway, A. R., Cowan, N., Bunting, M. F., Therriault, D. J. & Minkoff, S. R. A latent variable analysis of working memory capacity, short-term memory capacity, processing speed, and general fluid intelligence. Intelligence 30, 163–183 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Engle, R. W. Working memory as executive attention. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 11, 19–23 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Kyllonen, P. C. In The General Factor of Intelligence: How General Is It? (eds. Sternberg, R. J. & Gigorenko, E. L.) 415–445 (Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, USA, 2002).

  9. Baddeley, A. Working memory: looking back and looking forward. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 4, 829–839 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Colom, R., Flores-Mendoza, C. & Rebollo, I. Working memory and intelligence. Pers. Indiv. Differ. 34, 33–39 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Conway, A. R., Kane, M. J. & Engle, R. W. Working memory capacity and its relation to general intelligence. Trends Cogn. Sci. 7, 547–552 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Gray, J. R., Chabris, C. F. & Braver, T. S. Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence. Nat. Neurosci. 6, 316–322 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Olesen, P. J., Westerberg, H. & Klingberg, T. Increased prefrontal and parietal activity after training of working memory. Nat. Neurosci. 7, 75–79 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Kane, M. J., Hambrick, D. Z. & Conway, A. R. A. Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are strongly related constructs. Psychol. Bull. 131, 66–71 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J. & Perrig, W. J. Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 6829–6833 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Hutchins, E. Cognition in the Wild. (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Clark, A. & Chalmers, D. The extended mind. Analysis 58, 7–19 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Clark, A. An embodied cognitive science? Trends Cogn. Sci. 3, 345–351 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Giere, R. in The Cognitive Bases of Science (ed.s Carruthers, P., Stitch, S. & Siegal, M.) 285–299 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002).

  20. Clark, A. Supersizing the Mind: Action, Embodiment, and Cognitive Extension. (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2008).

  21. Rowlands, M. The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology. (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2010).

  22. Bocanegra, B. R. Troubling anomalies and exciting conjectures: a bipolar model of scientific discovery. Emot. Rev. 9, 155–162 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Lee, K., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. In Perceptual and Cognitive Development (eds. Gelman R. et al.) 185–211 (Academic Press, New York, 1996).

  24. Mithen, S. In Evolution and the Human Mind (eds. Carruthers, P. & Chamberlain, A.) 207–217 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002).

  25. Clark, A. Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK, 2003).

  26. Risko, E. F. & Gilbert, S. J. Cognitive offloading. Trends Cogn. Sci. 20, 676–688 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Risko, E. F. & Dunn, T. L. Storing information in-the-world: metacognition and cognitive offloading in a short-term memory task. Conscious. Cogn. 36, 61–74 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Gilbert, S. J. Strategic offloading of delayed intentions into the external environment. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 68, 971–992 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Euden, G. & Hearn, V. Einstellung defused: interactivity and mental set. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 64, 1889–1895 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Steffensen, S. V., Vallée-Tourangeau, G. & Sirota, M. Insight with hands and things. Acta Psychol. 170, 195–205 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Weller, A., Villejoubert, G. & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. Interactive insight problem solving. Think. Reasoning 17, 424–439 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Kirsh, D. & Maglio, P. On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action. Cognitive Sci. 18, 513–549 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Kirsh, D. Thinking with external representations. AI Soc. 25, 441–454 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Duncan, J., Chylinski, D., Mitchell, D. J. & Bhandari, A. Complexity and compositionality in fluid intelligence. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 5295–5299 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Kaplan, R. & Saccuzzo, D. Psychological Testing: Principles, Applications, and Issues. 8th edn. (Cengage, Boston, 2012).

  36. Barabasi, A. L. The origin of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics. Nature 435, 207–211 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Tomasello, M. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  38. Goodale, M. Thinking outside the box. Nature 457, 539–539 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors received no specific funding for this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Educational, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

    Bruno R. Bocanegra

  2. Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    Bruno R. Bocanegra & Fenna H. Poletiek

  3. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

    Fenna H. Poletiek

  4. Institute for Mental Health Care GGZ Rivierduinen, Leiden, the Netherlands

    Bouchra Ftitache

  5. School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Andy Clark

Authors
  1. Bruno R. Bocanegra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Fenna H. Poletiek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Bouchra Ftitache
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Andy Clark
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

B.R.B., F.H.P. and B.F. designed the experiments. B.R.B. carried out the experiments, simulations and statistical analyses. B.R.B., F.H.P., B.F. and A.C. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bruno R. Bocanegra.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Results, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Supplementary Note, Supplementary Figs 1–10, and Supplementary References

Reporting Summary

SI Guide

An explanation of how the Supplementary Code can be run.

Supplementary Code

An excel file that allows simulations of the data, noted in the SI and described in the SI Guide.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bocanegra, B.R., Poletiek, F.H., Ftitache, B. et al. Intelligent problem-solvers externalize cognitive operations. Nat Hum Behav 3, 136–142 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0509-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0509-y

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing