Surprise

About: Surprise is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4371 publications have been published within this topic receiving 99386 citations.

How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified

Abstract: How Designers Think is based on Bryan Lawson's many observations of designers at work, interviews with designers and their clients and collaborators. This extended work is the culmination of twenty-five years' research and shows the author's belief that we all can learn to design better. The creative mind continues to have power to surprise and this book aims to nurture and extend this creativity. This book is not intended as an authoritative description of how designers should think but to provide helpful advice on how to develop an understanding of design. 'How Designers Think' will be of great interest, not only to designers seeking a greater insight into their own thought processes, but also to students of design in general from undergraduate level upward.

Motivated closing of the mind: "Seizing" and "freezing."

Abstract: A theoretical framework is outlined in which the key construct is the need for (nonspecific) cognitive closure. The need for closure is a desire for definite knowledge on some issue. It represents a dimension of stable individual differences as well as a situationally evocable state. The need for closure has widely ramifying consequences for social-cognitive phenomena at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis. Those consequences derive from 2 general tendencies, those of urgency and permanence. The urgency tendency represents an individual's inclination to attain closure as soon as possible, and the permanence tendency represents an individual's inclination to maintain it for as long as possible. Empirical evidence for present theory attests to diverse need for closure effects on fundamental social psychological phenomena, including impression formation, stereotyping, attribution, persuasion, group decision making, and language use in intergroup contexts. The construction of new knowledge is a pervasive human pursuit for both individuals and collectives. From relatively simple activities such as crossing a busy road to highly complex endeavors such as launching a space shuttle, new knowledge is indispensable for secure decisions and reasoned actions. The knowledge-construction process is often involved and intricate. It draws on background notions activated from memory and local information from the immediate context. It entails the extensive testing of hypotheses and the piecing of isolated cognitive bits into coherent wholes. It integrates inchoate sensations with articulate thoughts, detects meaningful signals in seas of ambient noise, and more. Two aspects of knowledge construction are of present interest: its motivated nature and its social character. That knowledge construction has a motivational base should come as no particular surprise. The host of effortful activities it comprises pose considerable demands on resource allocation; hence, it may well require motivation to get under way. Specifically, individuals may desire knowledge on some topics and not others, and they may delimit their constructive endeavors to those particular domains. But what kind of a motivational variable is the "desire for knowledge"? At least two answers readily suggest themselves: Knowledge could be desired because it conveys welcome news in regard to a given concern or because it conveys any definite news (whether welcome or unwelcome) in instances in which such information is required for some purpose. For instance, a mother may desire to know that

Predictability, surprise, attention, and conditioning

Abstract: Role of attention in Pavlovian conditioning, and use of auditory and visual stimuli to condition rats