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106 Creativity

toward the ceiling of a room, so the concept ceiling might not be highly active
and actions directed toward the ceiling are unlikely to receive enough activa-
tion to pass the threshold of retrieval. Also, outward tension is more often used
to push two things apart than to achieve stability. Finally, the handle of the
clamp is likely to be categorized as a tool, or part of a tool, a view that is likely
to interfere with seeing it as a functional part of the hat rack.
In unfamiliar situations, the mind cannot predict with any certainty which
interpretation of a discourse will turn out to be most useful. There are mul-
tiple examples of classical insight problems in which the goal description can
be understood in different ways, and in which the less useful interpretation
is likely to come to mind before the more useful one. Consider the Inverted
Pyramid Problem: There is a steel table in a room; there is a $100 bill on the
table; a steel pyramid is perfectly balanced, upside down, with its tip resting on the
bill. The goal is to remove the bill without upsetting the precarious balance of the
pyramid. The phrase remove the dollar bill can send activation down slightly
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different paths, depending on the exact meaning assigned to the verb “remove.”
This word might be understood to mean transport the bill to another location.
In this case, it might evoke a representation in which the goal state contains
both the pyramid and the dollar bill, physically separated from each other. This
interpretation suggests that the dollar bill is to remain intact; a change of place
is not typically associated with a transformation of the object. This interpreta-
tion of the goal constrains the possible actions in such a way that an impasse is
unavoidable. On the other hand, if “remove” is interpreted to mean make the
bill disappear, then the goal is consistent with the destruction of the dollar bill
and actions like burn it, pour acid on it, smear it with honey and let ants eat it
and wait until it rots have a higher likelihood to come to mind.
The time to impasse depends, in part, on the size of the search space.
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Prior knowledge might affect the size of the search space in such a way as to
delay the solution. A person who is knowledgeable about the relevant domain
might be able to think of more options to explore within the unhelpful solu-
tion space, while a less knowledgeable person might quickly run out of things
to try and hence move sooner into the process of impasse resolution.
In short, the possibility of unwarranted impasses on unfamiliar problems
follows from the facts that perception and comprehension are interpretive
processes, that interpretations are constrained by prior experience and that an
interpretation constrained in the wrong way might fail to trigger retrieval of the
crucial knowledge elements, so the problem solver creates an inappropriately
constrained solution space. The occurrence of an unwarranted impasse is mas-
sively contingent on the exact structure of a person’s knowledge network. In