| Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, Vol. 4, Iss. 2, Apr, 2000, pp. 169-187 @2000 Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences Symbolic Dynamic Patterns of Written Exchanges: Hierarchical Structures in an Electronic Problem Solving Group Abstract: A spontaneous scientific creative problem solving discussion, which had transpired across a listserver, was captured and content-analyzed according to two protocols. One protocol centered on social interaction and the second pertained to problem completion behavior. Data were analyzed for topological entropy and dimensional complexity with a hierarchical variation of the symbolic dynamics procedure that was first introduced by Guastello, Hyde, and Odak (1998). The principal findings were that (1) There was a greater prevalence of clarification and initiating (particularly creative) behaviors compared to a real-time creative problem solving episode; they were presumably liberated by the unblocking effect that tends to characterize computer-assisted group discussions. (2) There were complex responses containing up to five conversational elements as identified by a Social Interaction scoring system. (3) The two different scoring protocols produced different indicators of string length and entropy. The content of those patterns, which are, in principle, decomposed orbits, is discussed. Keywords: topological entropy, Lyapunov dimension, symbolic dynamics, creative problem solving, group dynamics |