Visual Thinking Research

For this paper and pencil puzzle, it was a challenge to do and could not solve the puzzle. However, we both went through some strategies before we threw in the towel. The first paper above is the paper that i did, which has written notes of the strategies that i used.With this psychological puzzle test, i started off by using what McKim calls in her article "memory for design". I tried using shapes that i knew would connect the stars such as squares and triangles. I kept on trying to use different shapes and also tried to rotate the shapes as well, which is also referred to in the article as inverse drawing. With this, I mentally rotated the shapes before trying it on the actual stars. For subject number two (the second paper), the individual had a hard time figuring out the puzzle as well. After an interview with the individual about what strategies was used, there were somewhat similar to my strategies. What this person used was the "memory of design" method with familiar shapes. He tried to see if there was a simple shape that can go through most of the stars. He mentally pictured the shapes on the paper and also mentally rotated the shapes as well to see if it would help solve this puzzle. He also was trying to see if there was any type of maze pattern that would complete the puzzle with six connected lines to connect all stars. He kept on repeating both these strategies and also tried using a block method, which means that he tried using squares to try and cover all the stars. Unfortunately, it would take more than six connected lines. What we didn't know is that you can go outside what we thought was a "boundary" so we didn't figure it out.

For this second experiment, it was not as difficult as the first experiment was. In the first paper (which was my paper), I started off using my orthographic imagination, which is using the ability to imagine how a solid object looks from several directions. In order to do this, I tried rotating the paper as well as visualizing the shape in 3D form in order to rotate it in my mind. This can also be reffered to, what the article calls, "from another viewpoint", which is looking at the shape from different angles and points. Then i thought of the shapes being manipulated in some way so i used the folded pattern, which is another way to look at the shape in different ways in order to connect them with another shape that could be the same.  I finally connected the matching method with all this strategies. I figured out most of the answers but got kind of confused with the directions about " a shape from one pair doesn't appear in another". I thought that meant that one pair was not going to match so a pair would not be matched. For the second subject (the second paper), the individual started off by also using his orthographic imagination. He tried the rotating method like i did but instead of rotating the paper, he rotated the shapes in visually, or in his mind. Then he used the matching strategy and also used the spatial analogy stratedy, which uses reasoning. He also counted the spaces in the boxes and used a little common sense. He got all the answers right on the first try.