Clifton Hill Cottage, Clifton Hill, Bristol, UK. A model of thinking space in which the thinking processes are considered as an accumulation of thinking steps, ...
SCIENCE AND SOCIETY Computer Modelling & New Technologies, 2000, Volume 4, No.2, 107-109 Transport and Telecommunication Institute, Lomonosov Str.1, Riga, LV-1019, Latvia
COMPUTER TESTING OF OPERATOR'S CREATIVE THINKING A.E. KIV1, V.G. ORISCHENKO1, L.D. TAVALIKA1, SUE HOLMES2 Laboratory of Computer Modelling, South-Ukrainian Pedagogical University Staroportofrankovskaya, 26, 65008 Odessa, Ukraine Clifton Hill Cottage, Clifton Hill, Bristol, UK A model of thinking space in which the thinking processes are considered as an accumulation of thinking steps, or thinking elements, is proposed. Differential equations are formulated for thinking processes corresponding to concrete kinds of professional activities. On the basis of the mathematical model of thinking processes new computer tests for operator's creative thinking testing were worked out. Application of new tests is illustrated in the case of work-group organisation.
1. Introduction Behaviour of operator, which interacts with complex systems, is a subject for numerous investigations. The technical aspects of the problem are considered for a long time. There are also investigations devoted to study of influence of psychological characteristics of operator on the results of his work. However, the attention is not concentrated on the features of operator's thinking and his abilities to solve creative tasks. Analysis of operator behaviour in real situations (for example, at Chernobyl accident [1] ) shows that the structure of his thinking is an important factor for solving difficult problems in extreme conditions. A high professional level in many cases does not allow operator to find the optimal solution in critical situations if he has not the necessary structure of thinking. In the Part 2 we describe a mathematical model of creative thinking .The Part 3 contains the description of new approaches for computer tests working out intended for thinking parameters testing. In the Part 4 we show the possibility of new computer tests using for organisation of work-group which have to decide creative tasks. The Part 5 contains a conclusion. 2. Description of the model A brief description of the model of thinking space (TS) was done in [2]. TS contains discrete thinking elements, and each of them corresponds to given thinking step of a person in the process of his moving to the problem solution. Thinking steps may be divided in different groups for varieties of the model. In particular, it may be three groups: effective steps (ES), wrong steps (WS) and intermediate steps (IS). In this case three differential equations may be written, which describe the "kinetic" of each kind of steps. Such equations are known in natural sciences, and many types of them are good studied mathematically. Let us do the following notations: N1, N2 and N3 are the numbers of ES, IS and WS accordingly. Then, for example, for N1 the equation is:
dN 1 = I 1 + a1 N1 + b1 N 2k − c1 N 3 , dt
(1)
where the coefficients have a sense of psychological parameters of thinking. So Ii is a parameter of intuition, a1 characterises the quality of information processing and may be named as a parameter of logic. The third term describes the ability to prepare in TS intermediate elements and to construct ES with the rate b1. Thus, b1 has a sense of coefficient of strategy thinking and k is the "degree of psychological reaction " and characterises a volume of TS. At last Ci shows how a person takes into account WS and may name as a coefficient of critical thinking component. A set of three equations like (1) can be investigated on the basis of quality theory of differential equations and solved numerically. The described model of TS has to be modified in each case accordingly to different fields of Human activities taking into account the character of problems which must be solved.
107
SCIENCE AND SOCIETY 3. Computer tests working out The important stage of tests working out is analysing the main requirements to operator's thinking caused by his interaction with complex technique. This analysis allows to concretise equations (1) and write the necessary terms. The next stage of computer tests development is a choosing or creation of computer problems which demand approximately the same thinking operations as the real situation of operator working, i.e. creation of corresponding computer simulators as computer games which will propose to operator to solve the professional tasks. The simulator computer programs can analyse each step of operator (ES, WS, IS) and to give experimental dependences, for example, for N1(t). The last stage is to work out computer programs which are able to calculate the coefficients in equations (1) by comparison of experimental curves N1(t) with solutions of these equations. 4. Organization of work-group In this investigation computer tests were used which allow to get thinking parameters of intuition (I), of logic (L), of volume of thinking space (Vis), of operative memory (Mo) and of long-term memory (M1). We may consider these parameters as coordinates of the multidimensional space, in which each point corresponds to one member of work-group. Statistical cluster analysis allows to divide all members of group to subgroups with close psychological characteristics. It is naturally that there is a significant influence of researchers' experience on the efficiency of Human-Machine interaction in experimental works. But a structure of creative thinking and individual creative abilities of operators have also to be taken into consideration. It is especially important in the case of organisation of research groups. The robustness of our approach in accommodating a variety of creative abilities of researchers and modelling their impact on group process is illustrated using example involving a computer experiments in physics. We have investigated the influence of characteristics of operators' thinking on successfulness of their study of atom configurations in crystals by Method of Molecular Dynamics (MD). MD method [3] consists in approximate solving of differential equations of motion by transition to algebraic equations of finite differences. MD calculations have allowed to obtain a large information concerning defect atomic configurations in solids, radiation induced processes and formation of radiation defects. A group often researchers have got a task to investigate ion-induced atomic processes in crystal surface layers. Two different computer programs were given for conducting this work. It was possible in the first program to change initial conditions and characteristics of ion beams in order to get the necessary radiation effects. In the second program it was possible only to follow the radiation-stimulated processes. Researches have to analyse radiation-induced atomic configurations on different stages of irradiation and to do conclusions about mechanisms of radiation processes. The time of calculations was long and the number of stages which was necessary to analyse during the computer modelling processes was large. At the beginning all researchers were tested by help of described computer tests. The mean values of corresponding parameters are presented in the Table 1. Standard deviation of parameters was not more than 4 %. The level of significance corresponded to 95 %. TABLE 1. Results of testing of experimental group Researcher Parameters
I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
0,8
0,3
0,3
0,9
0,6
0,3
0,8
0,4
0,6
0,5
L
0,4
0,9
0,5
0,8
0,5
0,4
0,3
0,8
0,5
0,5
Vts
0,8
0,8
0,4
0,8
0,4
0,5
0,5
0,7
0,6
0,4
M0
0,6
0,8
0,5
0,8
0,7
0,6
0,6
0,8
0.4
0,3
M1t
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,8
0,6
0,8
0,9
0,5
0,6
0,4
Cluster analysis has shown that in the main there are three subgroups in our workgroup: 1) with large parameters I, Vts, M0, 2) with large parameters L, Vts, Mo, 3) with middle parameters I, L, Mo, M1t .One can see the results of work of these three subgroups with two mentioned programs in the Table 2.
108
SCIENCE AND SOCIETY TABLE 2. Rating of subgroups Programs
Subgroups 1
2
3
1
9
5
4
2
6
8
5
The quality of results was estimated by five independent experts. The maximum rating was 10. Table 2 consists the average data for six experiments. The relative mistake was not more than 0.15. All researchers had a large professional level and the same experience. As we see , the researchers of the first subgroup worked more successfully with the first program. They have shown abilities to foresee final results dependent on initial conditions of mathematical experiment. At the same time they worked less successfully when it was necessary to follow the modelling process for a long time and to estimate many times intermediate results. In the last case members of the second subgroup worked more effectively. The third subgroup did not show high results with both programs. 5. Conclusion New computer tests are applied for testing specialists, which have to work in one work-group and to decide the common problems. It is shown that in the process of organisation, in particular, of theoretical groups it is important to take into account characteristics of creative thinking of researchers. Experiment was conducted in the case of investigations of radiation-induced changes in crystals by computer simulation. It was concluded that the most favourable conditions for getting good results will be realised if the necessary correlation between subgroups will be found. In our case the optimum organisation of research group corresponds to predominance of researches of second subgroup with large L, Vts and Mo parameters of thinking. 6. References [1]
[2]
[3]
.Kiv A.E., Orischenko V.G., Polozovskaya I.A.(1995) Logic of automatic system and logic of operator. In: Automated systems based on human skill ( D. Brandt and T. Martin (Eds.)) Pergamon Press, Oxford, 25-27. Kiv A.E., Orischenko V.G, Polozovskaya I.A. and Zakharchenko I.G. (1994). Computer Modelling of the Learning Organization. In: Advances in Agil Manufacturing (P.T. Kidd and W. Karwowski (Eds.)) IOS Press, Amsterdam, 553-556. Beeler J.R., Yoshikawa H.H. (1971) Computer Experiments in Nuclear Materials Technology. In: Materials Research and Standards 2, No. 2, 29-35
Received on the 15th of October 2000
109
