Заттың дәстүрлі қолданылуына байланысты ойлау шектеуі

Inability to use an object other than how it is traditionally used
Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used. The concept of functional fixedness originated in Gestalt psychology, a movement in psychology that emphasizes holistic processing. Karl Duncker defined functional fixedness as being a mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem. This "block" limits the ability of an individual to use components given to them to complete a task, as they cannot move past the original purpose of those components. For example, if someone needs a paperweight, but they only have a hammer, they may not see how the hammer can be used as a paperweight. Functional fixedness is this inability to see a hammer's use as anything other than for pounding nails; the person couldn't think to use the hammer in a way other than in its conventional function. When tested, 5 year old children show no signs of functional fixedness. It has been argued that this is because at age 5, any goal to be achieved with an object is equivalent to any other goal. However, by age 7, children have acquired the tendency to treat the originally intended purpose of an object as special.

Experimental paradigms typically involve solving problems in novel situations in which the subject has the use of a familiar object in an unfamiliar context. The object may be familiar from the subject's past experience or from previous tasks within an experiment.

The barometer question is an example of an incorrectly designed examination question demonstrating functional fixedness that causes a moral dilemma for the examiner. In its classic form, popularized by American test designer professor Alexander Calandra (1911–2006), the question asked the student to "show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer?" The examiner was confident that there was one, and only one, correct answer. Contrary to the examiner's expectations, the student responded with a series of completely different answers. These answers were also correct, yet none of them proved the student's competence in the specific academic field being tested. Calandra presented the incident as a real life, first person experience that occurred during the Sputnik crisis. Calandra's essay, "Angels on a Pin", was published in 1959 in Pride, a magazine of the American College Public Relations Association. It was reprinted in Current Science in 1964, reprinted again in Saturday Review in 1968, and included in the 1969 edition of Calandra's The Teaching of Elementary Science and Mathematics. In the same year (1969), Calandra's essay became a subject of an academic discussion. The essay has been referenced frequently since, making its way into books on subjects ranging from teaching, writing skills, workplace counseling, and investment in real estate to chemical industry, computer programming, and integrated circuit design.

Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In a recent study, preliminary evidence supporting the universality of functional fixedness was found. The study's purpose was to test if individuals from non industrialized societies, specifically with low exposure to "high tech" artifacts, demonstrated functional fixedness. The study tested the Shuar, hunter horticulturalists of the Amazon region of Ecuador, and compared them to a control group from an industrial culture. The Shuar community had only been exposed to a limited amount of industrialized artifacts, such as machete, axes, cooking pots, nails, shotguns, and fishhooks, all considered "low tech". Two tasks were assessed to participants for the study: the box task, where participants had to build a tower to help a character from a fictional storyline to reach another character with a limited set of varied materials; the spoon task, where participants were also given a problem to solve based on a fictional story of a rabbit that had to cross a river (materials were used to represent settings) and they were given varied materials including a spoon. In the box task, participants were slower to select the materials than participants in control conditions, but no difference in time to solve the problem was seen. In the spoon task, participants were slower in selection and completion of task. Results showed that Individuals from non industrial ("technologically sparse cultures") were susceptible to functional fixedness. They were faster to use artifacts without priming than when design function was explained to them. This occurred even though participants were less exposed to industrialized manufactured artifacts, and that the few artifacts they currently use were used in multiple ways regardless of their design. They examined the inclusion of examples of inappropriate elements, by explicitly depicting problematic aspects of the problem presented to the students through example designs. They tested non expert participants on three problem conditions: with standard instruction, fixated (with inclusion of problematic design), and defixated (inclusion of problematic design accompanied with helpful methods). They were able to support their hypothesis by finding that a) problematic design examples produce significant fixation effects, and b) fixation effects can be diminished with the use of defixating instructions. In "The Disposable Spill Proof Coffee Cup Problem", adapted from Janson & Smith, 1991, participants were asked to construct as many designs as possible for an inexpensive, disposable, spill proof coffee cup. Standard condition participants were presented only with instructions. In the fixated condition, participants were presented with instructions, a design, and problems they should be aware of. Finally, in the defixated condition, participants were presented the same as other conditions in addition to suggestions of design elements they should avoid using. The other two problems included building a bike rack, and designing a container for cream cheese.

Based on the assumption that students are functionally fixed, a study on analogical transfer in the science classroom shed light on significant data that could provide an overcoming technique for functional fixedness. The findings support the fact that students show positive transfer (performance) on problem solving after being presented with analogies of certain structure and format. The present study expanded Duncker's experiments from 1945 by trying to demonstrate that when students were "presented with a single analogy formatted as a problem, rather than as a story narrative, they would orient the task of problem solving and facilitate positive transfer". This helps the subjects who have created functionally fixed designs understand how to go about solving general problems of this type, rather than using the fixed solution for a specific problem. Latour performed an experiment researching this by having software engineers analyze a fairly standard bit of code—the quicksort algorithm—and use it to create a partitioning function. Part of the quicksort algorithm involves partitioning a list into subsets so that it can be sorted; the experimenters wanted to use the code from within the algorithm to just do the partitioning. To do this, they abstracted each block of code in the function, discerning the purpose of it, and deciding if it is needed for the partitioning algorithm. This abstracting allowed them to reuse the code from the quicksort algorithm to create a working partition algorithm without having to design it from scratch. suggests analyzing the object and mentally breaking it down into its components. After that is completed, it is essential to explore the possible functions of those parts. In doing so, an individual may familiarize themselves with new ways to use the items that are available to them at the givens. Individuals are therefore thinking creatively and overcoming the prototypes that limit their ability to successfully complete the functional fixedness problem. shows a highly effective technique for doing so. As you break an object into its parts, ask yourself two questions. "Can I subdivide the current part further?" If yes, do so. "Does my current description imply a use?" If yes, create a more generic description involving its shape and material. For example, initially I divide a candle into its parts: wick and wax. The word "wick" implies a use: burning to emit light. So, describe it more generically as a string. Since "string" implies a use, I describe it more generically: interwoven fibrous strands. This brings to mind that I could use the wick to make a wig for my hamster. Since "interwoven fibrous strands" does not imply a use, I can stop working on wick and start working on wax. People trained in this technique solved 67% more problems that suffered from functional fixedness than a control group. This technique systematically strips away all the layers of associated uses from an object and its parts.