THINKING
Thinking is the base of all cognitive
activities or processes and is unique to human beings. It involves manipulation and analysis of information received from the environment. For example, while seeing a painting, you are not simply focusing on the colour of the painting or the lines and strokes, rather you are going beyond the given text in interpreting its meaning and you are trying to relate the information to your existing knowledge. Understanding of the painting involves creation of new meaning that is added to your knowledge.
Thinking, therefore, is a higher mental process through which we manipulate and analyse the acquired or existing information. Such manipulation and analysis occur by means of abstracting, reasoning,imagining, problem solving, judging, and decision-making. Thinking is mostly organised and goal directed. All day-to-day activities, ranging from cooking to solving a math problem have a goal.One desires to reach the goal by planning,recalling the steps that one has already followed in the past if the task is familiar or inferring strategies if the task is new.
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Thinking is an internal mental process,which can be inferred from overt behaviour.If you see a chess player engrossed in thinking for several minutes before making a move, you cannot observe what he is thinking. You can imply infer what he was thinking or what strategies he was trying to evaluate, from this next week.
BUILDING BLOCKS OF THINKING
We already know that thinking relies on knowledge we already possess. Such Knowledge is represented either in the form of mental images or words. People usually think by means of mental images. Suppose you are travelling by road to reach a place, which you had visited long back. Youwould try to use the visual representation of the street and other places. On the other hand,when you want to buy a storybook your choice would depend upon your knowledge about different authors, themes, etc. Here, your thinking is based on words or concepts. We shall first discuss mental image and then move on to concepts as the base of human thought.
We will discuss how thinking proceeds in a particular area:-
PROBLEM SOLVING
Problem solving is thinking that is goal-directed. Almost all our day-to-day activities are directed towards a goal. Here It is important to know that problems are not always in the form of obstacles or hurdles that one faces. It could be only a simple activity that you performed and to reach a defined goal.
Obstacles to Solving Problems
Two major obstacles to solving a problem are mental set and lack of motivation.
Mental Set is a tendency of a person to solve problems by following already tried mental operations or steps. Prior success with a particular strategy would somewhat help in solving a new problem. However this tendency also creates a mental rigidity that obstructs the problem solver to think of any new rules or strategies. Thus, while in some situations a mental set can enhance the quality and speed of problem solving, in other situations it hinders problem solving. You might have Thinking 155 Experienced this while solving mathematical problems. After completing a couple of questions, you form an idea of the steps that are required to solve these questions and subsequently you go on following the same steps, until a point where you fail. At this point you may experience difficulty in avoiding the already used steps. Those steps would interfere in your thought for new strategies. However, in day-to-day activities we often rely on past experiences with similar or related problems. Like a mental set, functional fixedness in problem solving occurs when people fail to solve a problem because they are fixed on athing’s usual function. If you have ever used a hardbound book to hammer a nail, then you have overcome functional fixedness.
Lack of Motivation
People might be great at solving problems, but all their skills and talents are of no use if they are not motivated. Sometimes people give up easily when they encounter a problem or failure in implementing the first step. Therefore, there is a need to persist in their effort to find a solution.
REASONING
If you find a person desperately running on the railway platform, you could infer a number of things such as: he is running to catch the train which is about to leave, he wants to see off his friend sitting in the train which is about to leave, he has left his bag in the train and wants to get in before the train leaves the station. To figure out why this person is running, you could use different kinds of reasoning, deductive or inductive.
Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
Since your previous experience indicates that people run on the platform to catch a train,you would conclude that this person is getting late and is running to catch the train.The kind of reasoning that begins with an assumption is called deductive reasoning.
Thus deductive reasoning begins with making a general assumption that you know or believe to be true and then drawing specific conclusions based on this assumption. In other words, it is reasoning from general to particular. Your general assumption is that people run on the railway platform only when they are getting late for the train. The man is running on the platform. Therefore, he is getting late for the train. One mistake that you are making (and generally people do commit such mistakes in deductive reasoning) is that you (they) assume but do not always know if the basic statement or assumption is true. If The base information is not true, i.e. people also run on the platform for other reasons than your conclusion would be invalid and wrong. Another way to figure out why the man is running on the platform is to use inductive reasoning. Sometimes you would analyse other possible reasons and observe what the man is actually doing and then draw a conclusion about his behaviour. Reasoning,that is based on specific facts and observation,is called inductive reasoning. Inductive Reasoning is drawing a general conclusion based on a particular observation.
DECISION-MAKING
Inductive and deductive reasonings allow us to make judgments. In judgment we draw conclusions, form opinions, evaluate events,objects, based on knowledge and available evidence. Consider this example, the man is very talkative, likes to mix with people, can convince others with ease — he would be most suitable for a salesperson’s job. Our judgment of this person is based on the specific characteristics of an expert salesperson. Herewe will discuss how we make decisions and judgments. Sometimes judgments are automatic and require no conscious effort by the person and occur as a matter of habit, for example Applying brakes on seeing that light. However, evaluating a novel or a literary text requires reference to your past knowledge and experience. Judging the beauty of a painting would involve your personal preferences. Thus Our judgments are not independent of our beliefs and attitudes. We also make changes in our judgments based on newly acquired information. Consider this example. A new teacher joins the school, students make on-the-spot judgment of the teacher as being very strict. However, in subsequent classes, they closely interact with the teacher and make changes in their evaluation. Now they judge the teacher to be extremely student-friendly.
NATURE OF CREATIVE THINKING
Creative thinking is distinguished from other types of thinking by the fact that it involves the production of novel and original ideas or solutions to problems. Sometimes, creative thinking is understood just as a new way of thinking or thinking differently. However, it is important to know that, besides novelty,originality is also an important characteristic of creative thinking. Every year new models of household appliances, tape-recorders, cars,scooters, and television sets produced may not be original unless unique features are added to these products. Creative thinking thus refers to originality and uniqueness of ideas or solutions that did not previously exist. Creative thinking is also generally characterized by what Bruner calls “effective surprise”. If the product or idea is unusual,the response of most who experience it is one of instant surprise or of being startled.Another important criterion that characterises creative thinking is its appropriateness in a particular context. Simply thinking of being different without any purpose, doing things in one’s own ways, being non-conformist, indulging in fantasy without any purpose or coming out with a bizarre idea,is at times mistaken for creative thinking. Researchers tend to agree that thinking is said to be creative when it is reality-oriented,appropriate, constructive, and socially desirable.
J.P. Guilford, a pioneer in creativity research, proposed two types of thinking:
convergent
Divergent
Convergent thinking refers to thinking that is required to solve problems which have only one correct answer. The mind converges to the correct solution. To illustrate, look at the questions given below. It is based on a number series,where you have to find the next number. Only One right answer is expected.Q. 3,6,9..... what will come next?Ans. 12.
Now you try to think of certain questions for which there is no one right answer but many answers. A few such questions are given below:
What improvements will you suggest in a chair so that it becomes more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing?
What will happen if examinations are abolished in schools?
Answers to the above questions requires divergent thinking which is an open-ended thinking where the individual can think of different answers to the questions or problems in terms of her/his experiences. This kind of thinking helps in producing novel and original ideas.
Divergent thinking abilities generally include fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.
•Fluency Is the ability to produce many ideas for a given task or a problem. The More ideas a person produces, the higher his fluency ability. For example, more the number of uses of a paper cup, more wouldbe the fluency.
•Flexibility Indicates variety in thinking.It may be thinking of different uses of an object, or different interpretation of a picture, story or differ ent ways of solving a problem. In case of use of a paper cup,for example, one may give an idea to use as a container or to draw.
•Originality Is the ability to produce ideas that are rare or unusual by seeing new relationships, combining old ideas with new ones, looking at things from different perspectives etc. Research has shown that fluency and flexibility are the necessary conditions for originality.
the ability that enables a person to go into details and workout implications of new ideas.
STRATEGY FOR CREATIVE THINKING
Research on characteristics of creative people has revealed that there are certain attitudes ,dispositions, and skills which facilitate creative thinking. Here are some strategies to help you enhance your creative thinking abilities and skills:
• Become more aware and sensitive to be able to notice and respond to feelings,sights, sounds, textures around you. Spot Problems, missing information, anomalies,gaps, deficiencies, and so on. Try to notice contradictions and incompleteness in situations that others may not do. For this,cultivate the habit of wider reading,exposure to a variety of information, and develop the art of asking questions,pondering over the mysteries of situations and objects.
• Generate as many ideas, responses,solutions or suggestions on a given task or situation to increase your flow of thoughts. Try deliberately to look for multiple angles of a task and situation to increase flexibility in your thinking. It Could be, for example, thinking of alter native arrangements of furniture in a room to generate more space, different conversing with people, looking for costs and benefits of a course of study or career, looking for ways of dealing with an angry friend, helping others, etc.
• Osbor n’s Brainstorming technique can be used to increase fluency and flexibility of ideas to open-ended situations. Brainstorming is based on the principle that producing ideas should be kept separate from the evaluation of their worth. The basic assumption is to let the minds think freely and the tendency to put judgment on the worth of ideas may be postponed, i.e. imagination should be given priority over judgment till all the ideas are exhausted. This helps in increasing the fluency of ideas and piling up alternatives. Brainstorming can be practised by playing brainstorming games with family members and friends keeping its principles in mind. Use of checklists and questions often provide a new twist for ideas.
• Originality can be developed by practicing fluency, flexibility, habit of associative thinking, exploring linkages, and fusing distinct or remote ideas. A creative thinker,it is said, may not evolve new ideas but evolve new combinations of ideas. It is the chain of thoughts and cross-fertilisation of ideas that may bring out something new.
• Engage yourself more frequently inactivities which require use of imagination and original thinking rather than routine work according to your interest and hobbies. It may be decorating the house,improvising or redesigning of old objects,making use of waste products in multiple ways, completing incomplete ideas in unique ways, giving new twists to stories or poems, developing riddles, puzzles,solving mysteries and so on.
• Never accept the first idea or solution.Many ideas die because we reject them thinking that the idea might be a silly idea.You have to first generate a number of possible ideas or solutions, then select the best from among them.
• Get feedback on the solutions you decide on from others who are less personally involved in the task.
• Try to think of what solutions someone else may offer for your problems.
• Give your ideas the chance to incubate.Allowing time for incubation between production of ideas and the stage of evaluation of ideas, may bring in the ‘Aha!’experience.
• Sometimes ideas cluster like branches ofa tree. It is useful to diagram your thinking so that you can follow each possible branch to its completion.
• Resist the temptation for immediate reward and success and cope with the frustration and failure. Encourage self-evaluation.
• Develop independent thinking in making judgments, figuring out things without any help or resources.
• Visualise causes and consequences and think ahead, predicting things that have never happened.
• Be aware of your own defenses concerning the problem. When we feel threatened by a problem we are less likely to think of creative ideas.
• Last but not the least, be self-confident and positive. Never undermine your creative potential. Experience the joy of your creation.
THANK YOU
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