Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Generic-parts technique (GPT), a method developed by McCaffrey (2012), involves repeatedly breaking an object intoparts and rephrasing their descriptions to not imply fixed functions. A previous study showed that GPT facilitates insightproblem solving. We investigated this methods effectiveness in idea generation. Ninety-four undergraduates were assignedto either an experimental group using GPT or a control group. In the training phase, the GPT-group participants wereexplained how to create a generic-parts diagram with an example of a bell, and they drew two diagrams for other objectsby themselves. The control-group participants were given a word association test of 180 words and were instructed towrite the first word that came to their mind. All participants then engaged in an unusual uses task with an umbrella. Theresults showed that the GPT-group generated less ideas than the control group. We concluded that GPT is not particularlyeffective in idea generation.