Accessibility of interrelational constructs: Implications for stimulus encoding and creativity.

Abstract The present studies tested the applicability of current notions concerning the determinants and consequences of construct accessibility to a situation involving interrelational constructs and the creative use of physical objects. In all three studies, subjects were shown a series of objects to remember that were described with either an undifferentiated linguistic construction (e.g., “tray of tomatoes”) or a differentiated linguistic construction (e.g., “tray and tomatoes”). Subjects were then given K. Duncker's ( Psychological Monographs 1945, 58 , 5, Whole No. 270) candle problem, ostensibly to examine the effects of an interfering task on long-term memory. Solution of the candle problem requires recognizing that a box filled with tacks can be used as a platform for the candle rather than just being a container for the tacks. Previous exposure to memory items described with the differentiated “and” construction increased the likelihood that subjects later differentiated the box from the tacks in their descriptions, and this differentiation, in turn, facilitated solving the candle problem. The implications of these results for extending the emerging theory of construct accessibility to interpersonal and organizational aspects of social behavior, as well as to creativity and the linguistic relativity hypothesis, are discussed.