The Role of an Incubation Period in Creative Problem Solving

Ut Na Sio · Elisabeth Rudowicz

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Creativity in Education and Neuroscience Design Education and Practice Memory Processes and Influences

Abstract

This experimental study tested the spreading-activation hypothesis that an incubation period helps to sensitize problem solvers to relevant concepts. The study also tested the selective forgetting hypothesis that an incubation period helps to desensitize problem solvers to irrelevant concepts. Chinese Chess GO players, 28 experts and 29 novices, solved 18 remote association tasks (RAT) and lexical decision tasks (LDTs) under immediate, rest, and incubation conditions. After each RAT, a set of LDTs incorporating the RAT solution and the irrelevant concept were presented, either immediately, or after a 2-min delay, or after a 2-min delay filled with incubation tasks. The findings of the study support the spreading activation hypothesis and suggest that spreading activation occurs only in a fixated mind. No support was found for the selective forgetting hypothesis.

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References

1962The associative basis of the creative process.1971Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations.1926The art of thought 1954Experimental psychology.1995The Creative Cognition Approach 1995The Creative cognition approach 1955The Creative Process 1991Incubation and the Persistence of Fixation in Problem Solving

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