University of Hertfordshire

Age, quality of life and cognition.

This ESRC funded study examined relationships between physical health, current everyday problem solving, IQ and quality of life. An interesting result was that people’s quality of life was more related to everyday problem solving skill (or “wisdom”) than to IQ as measured by abstract tasks.

How insight problems are solved.

How do people tackle “insight” problems that require a change in the way that it is understood? For example, understanding how someone could walk over a lake requires that the lake be represented as not in its normal state (maybe it is a severe winter at the time?). It seems that deliberate searching for alternative ways of understanding key words is involved. This suggests that insight problem solving can be understood as a non-mysterious process.

Creative thinking

We are seeking to understand how people carry out a creative thinking task (e.g., “think of as many different uses as you can for a brick”). People were asked to think out loud while doing this task. We found that after producing uses from memory people switch to scanning the objects’ properties to suggest uses or scan broad possible uses that could be applied (e.g., Use as furniture? As food? As transport?).

Publications:

Selected Recent Papers

Gilhooly, K. J., Fioratou, E., Anthony, S.H., & Wynn, V. (in press, 2007). Divergent thinking: strategies and executive involvement in generating novel uses for familiar objects. British Journal of Psychology.

Gilhooly, M. L., Gilhooly, K.J., Phillips, L. H., Harvey, D., Brady, A. & Hanlon, P. (in press, 2007). Real world problem solving and quality of life in older people. British Journal of Health Psychology.

Gilhooly, K. J., Gilhooly, M. L., Phillips, L. H.., Harvey, D., Murray, A., & Hanlon, P. (in press, 2007). Cognitive aging: activity patterns and maintenance intentions. International Journal of Aging and Human Development.

Gilhooly, K .J. and Murphy, P (2005). Differentiating insight from non-insight problems. Thinking and Reasoning, 11, 279-302.

Phillips, L.H., Smith, L. & Gilhooly, K.J. (2002). The effects of age and induced positive and negative mood on planning. Emotion, 2, 263-272.

Recent Research Grants

1. Title: Insight problem solving processes and verbalisation effects. Funding body: ESRC.Grant RES 000 22 2191. Amount and duration: £83, 322 (FEC). 12 months, 2007.

2. Title: An empirical approach to the taxonomy of insight problem solving: a large scale study. Funding body: Leverhulme Trust. Grant F/00795/A. Amount and duration: £68,408. 24 months, 2005-2007.

3. Title: An empirical approach to the taxonomy of insight problems: a pilot study. Funding body: Leverhulme Trust. Grant F/00275/A.Amount and duration: £ 15,000. 6 months, 2001

4.Title: Quality of life and real life cognitive functioning. Funding body: ESRC Growing Older Research Programme. Grant L48030400171.Co-grant holders: M. Gilhooly, L Phillips, P Hanlon. Amount and duration: £ 146,943. 1999-2001