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Available evidence indicates that the combination and reorganization of extant knowledge structures plays an important role in the generation of new ideas. This study was intended to test a model of the operations held to influence application of the combination-and-reorganization process. Accordingly, 155 undergraduates were asked to solve 12 category combination problems. The instructions given to subjects were manipulated to influence application of three operations held to influence the originality of category combinations: feature identification, feature mapping, and feature elaboration. The relatedness of the categories presented was also manipulated. We found that solution quality was consistently influenced by category interrelatedness and, under conditions restricting the pool of available relations, category elaboration. Feature identification and feature mapping were found to influence solution originality but not solution quality. The implications of these findings for understanding creative problem solving and the combination-and-reorganization process are discussed.
Baughman et al. (Sun,) studied this question.