Creativity
A Naturalistic Study of Insight
Author: Klein, Gary; Jarosz, Andrea
Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making 5 (4) 2011-12 p335
Although insight is often invoked as a phenomenon of problem solving and innovation, it has rarely been studied in a naturalistic fashion. The purpose of the study reported here was to learn more about insights as they occur in field settings as opposed to controlled laboratory conditions. The authors collected a set of 120 examples of insight taken from cognitive task analysis interviews, media accounts, and other sources and coded each incident using a set of 14 features. The results generated a descriptive model of insight that is different from the findings that emerge from research with puzzle problems. It posits multiple pathways for gaining insights. One pathway is triggered by detecting a contradiction. A second pathway is triggered by a need to break through an impasse. The third pathway gets triggered by seeing a connection.
"Aha!": The neural correlates of verbal insight solutions
Author: Iacoboni, Marco; Aziz-Zadeh, Lisa; ...
Human brain mapping 30 (3) 2009-03 p908
->What are the neural correlates of insight solutions? To explore this question we asked participants to perform an anagram task while in the fMRI scanner. Previous research indicates that anagrams are unique in that they can yield both insight and search solutions in expert subjects. Using a single-trial fMRI paradigm, we utilized the anagram methodology to explore the neural correlates of insight versus search solutions. We used both reaction time measures and subjective reports to classify each trial as a search or insight solution. Data indicate that verbal insight solutions activate a distributed neural network that includes bilateral activation in the insula, the right prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate. These areas are discussed with their possible role in evaluation and metacognition of insight solutions, as well as attention and monitoring during insight.
Additive and nonadditive factors in creative processes
Author: Rothenberg, Albert
Journal of Social and Biological Structures 11 (1)1988 p135
Aha! Insight experience correlates with solution activation in the right hemisphere
Author: Jung-Beeman, Mark; Bowden, Edward M
Psychonomic bulletin & review 10 (3) 2003-09 p730
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In one experiment, we tested for an association between semantic activationin the right hemisphere (RH) and left hemisphere (LH) and the Aha! experience when people recognize solutions to insight-like problems. The compound remote associate problems used in this experiment sometimes evoke an Aha! experience and sometimes do not. On each trial, participants (N = 44) attempted to solve these problems and, after 7 sec, named a target word, made a solution decision, and rated their insight experience of recognizing the solution. As in prior studies, the participants demonstrated more solution priming for solutions presented to the left visual field-RH (lvf-RH) than for solutions presented to the right visual field-LH (rvf-LH). As was predicted, following unsolved problems the participants showed greater priming for solutions that they rated as evoking an insight experience on the subsequent solution decision than for solutions that did not evoke an insight experience. This association was stronger for solutions presented to the lvf-RH than for those presented to the rvf-LH. These results tie the subjective experience of insight to an objective measure—semantic priming—and suggest that people have an Aha! experience in part because they already had semantic activation that could lead them to recognize the solution quickly. We believe semantic activationin both hemispheres cooperatively contributes to problem solving, but weak solution activation that contributes to the Aha! experience is more likely to occur in the RH than in the LH.
Aha! Voila! Eureka! Bilingualism and insightful problem solving
Author: Cushen, Patrick J; Wiley, Jennifer
Learning and Individual Differences 21 (4) 2011 p458
What makes a person able to solve problems creatively? One interesting factor that may contribute is experience with multiple languages from an early age. Bilingual individuals who acquire two languages by the age of 6 have been shown to demonstrate superior performance on a number of thinking tasks that require flexibility. However, bilingual advantages have yet to be identified particularly on insight problems that are used as a model of creative problem solving following initial impasse. As such, the goal of the present study was to investigate the influence of language experience on problem solving performance on a matched set of insight and non-insight problems. Results demonstrate an interaction between type of problem (insight versus non-insight) and language status.
Climate for Creativity: A Quantitative Review
Author: Mumford, Michael D; Hunter, Samuel T; ...
Creativity Research Journal 19 (1) 2007-05 p69
Creativity is commonly held to emerge from an interaction of the person and the situation.In studies of creativity, situational influences are commonly assessed by using climate measures. In the present effort, a meta-analysis was conducted to examine 42 prior studies in which the relationships between climate dimensions, such as support and autonomy, and various indices of creative performance were assessed. These climate dimensions were found to be effective predictors of creative performance across criteria, samples, and settings. It was found, moreover, that these dimensions were especially effective predictors of creative performance in turbulent, high-pressure, competitive environments. The implications of these findings for understanding environmental influences on creativity and innovation are discussed.
Differentiating insight from non-insight problems
Author: Gilhooly, KJ; Murphy, P
Thinking & Reasoning 11 (3) 2005-08 p279
This study aimed to investigate whether a range of tasks that have been generally classed as requiring insight form an empirically separable group of tasks distinct from tasks generally classed as non-insight. In this study, 24 insight tasks, 10 non-insight tasks, and tests of individual differences in cognitive abilities and working memory were administered to 60 participants. Cluster analysis of the problem-solving tasks indicated that the presumed insight problems did tend to cluster with other presumed insight problems, and similarly the presumed non-insight problems tended to cluster with other presumed non-insight tasks. Performance on presumed insight problems was particularly linked to measures of ideational flexibility with a different pattern of results for the non-insight tasks. Spatial insight problems were linked to spatial flexibility and verbal insight tasks were linked to vocabulary scores. The results are discussed in relation to recent developments of dual process theories of thinking.
Executive functions in insight versus non-insight problem solving: An individual differences approach
Author: Fioratou, E; Gilhooly, K. J
Thinking & Reasoning 15 (4) 2009-11 p355
This study investigated the roles of the executive functions of inhibition and switching, and of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory capacities, in insight and non-insight tasks. A total of 18 insight tasks, 10 non-insight tasks, and measures of individual differences in working memory capacities, switching, and inhibition were administered to 120 participants. Performance on insight problems was not linked with executive functions of inhibition or switching but was linked positively to measures of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory capacities. Non-insight task performance was positively linked to the executive function of switching (but not to inhibition) and to verbal and visuo-spatial working memory capacities. These patterns regarding executive functions were maintained when the insight and non-insight composites were split into verbal and spatial insight and non-insight composite scores. The results are discussed in relation to dual processing accounts of thinking.
Methods for investigating the neural components of insight
Author: Jung-Beeman, Mark; Bowden, Edward M
Methods (San Diego, Calif.) 42 (1) 2007-05 p87
The authors describe how they have used visual-hemifield and event-related neuroimaging approaches to study their theory specifying some of the neural components of insight. A set of problems developed by the authors, and the use of solvers’ self reports of insight, are presented to argue that advances in our understanding of insight are being unnecessarily stifled by over reliance on traditional insight problems and a widespread failure to determine whether insight has occurred on a solution-by-solution basis.
Neural activity when people solve verbal problems with insight
Author: Haberman, Jason; Reber, Paul J; ...
PLoS biology 2 (4) 2004-04 pE97
People sometimes solve problems with a unique process called insight, accompanied by an “Aha!” experience. It has long been unclear whether different cognitive and neural processes lead to insight versus noninsight solutions, or if solutions differ only in subsequent subjective feeling. Recent behavioral studies indicate distinct patterns of performance and suggest differential hemispheric involvement for insight and noninsight solutions. Subjects solved verbal problems, and after each correct solution indicated whether they solved with or without insight. We observed two objective neural correlates of insight. Functional magnetic resonance imaging () revealed increased activity in the right hemisphere anterior superior temporal gyrus for insight relative to noninsight solutions. The same region was active during initial solving efforts. Scalp electroencephalogram recordings () revealed a sudden burst of high-frequency (gamma-band) neural activity in the same area beginning 0.3 s prior to insight solutions. This right anterior temporal area is associated with making connections across distantly related information during comprehension. Although all problem solving relies on a largely shared cortical network, the sudden flash of insight occurs when solvers engage distinct neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections that previously eluded them.
Neural correlates of mental preparation for successful insight problem solving
Author: Lv, J.Y; Wei, D.T; ...
Behavioural Brain Research 216 (2) 2011 p626
A distinct type of mental preparation (activity in medial frontal and temporal areas) had been found to facilitate insight problem solving independent of specific problems [25]. In order to explore whether neural activity during a preparatory interval (mental preparation) is associated with which insight problems would be solved or not, we developed a task that uses Chinese logogriphs (riddles) as materials. Blood oxygenation level-dependent fMRI contrasts between Successful and Unsuccessful mental preparation were measured. Results showed that mental preparation leading to successful problem solving involves heightened activity in the left middle/medial frontal gyrus, the left middle/superior temporal gyrus, the right cerebellum, the bilateral claustrum and the left postcentral gyrus. We discussed the role of these areas in mental preparation for successful insight problem solving.
Neural correlates of the “Aha” experiences: Evidence from an fMRI study of insight problem solving
Author: Zhang, Qinglin; Jou, Jerwen; ...
Cortex 46 (3) 2010 p397
In the present study, we used learning–testing paradigm to examine brain activation of “Aha” effects with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during solving Chinese logogriphs. Blood oxygenation level-dependent fMRI contrasts between Aha and No-aha conditions were measured. Increased activities in the precuneus (BA 19/7), the left inferior/middle frontal gyrus (BA 9/6), the inferior occipital gyrus (BA 18), and the cerebellum were specifically associated with the “Aha” effects. The results indicate that (1) the precuneus might be involved in successful prototype events retrieval, (2) the left inferior frontal/middle frontal gyrus might be involved in forming novel association and breaking mental sets, (3) the inferior occipital gyrus and the cerebellum might be involved in re-arrangement of visual stimulus and deployment of attentional resources.
Studying insight problem solving with neuroscientific methods
Author: Luo, Jing; Knoblich, Guenther
Methods 42 (1) 2007 p77
Insights are sporadic, unpredictable, short-lived moments of exceptional thinking where unwarranted assumptions need to be discarded before solutions to problems can be obtained. Insight requires a restructuring of the problem situation that is relatively rare and hard to elicit in the laboratory. One way of dealing with this problem is to catalyze such restructuring processes using solution hints. This allows one to obtain multiple insight events and their accurate onset times, which are required for event-related designs in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and Electroencephalogram (EEG), and to reliably record the activity associated with the restructuring component of insight. In this article, we discuss in detail the methodological challenges that brain research on insight poses and describe how we dealt with these challenges in our recent studies on insight problem solving.
The Aha! Moment: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight
Author: John Kounios; Mark Beeman
Current Directions in Psychological Science 18 (4)2009-08-01 p210
A sudden comprehension that solves a problem, reinterprets a situation, explains a joke, or resolves an ambiguous percept is called an insight (i.e., the ‘‘Aha! moment’’). Psychologists have studied insight using behavioral methods for nearly a century. Recently, the tools of cognitive neuroscience have been applied to this phenomenon. A series of studies have used electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural correlates of the ‘‘Aha! moment’’ and its antecedents. Although the experience of insight is sudden and can seem disconnected from the immediately preceding thought, these studies show that insight is the culmination of a series of brain states and processes operating at different time scales. Elucidation of these precursors suggests interventional opportunities for the facilitation of insight.
The nature of insight
Author: Shanker, Stuart G
Minds and Machines 5 (4) 1995-11 p561
The Greeks had a ready answer for what happens when the mind suddenly finds the answer to a question for which it had been searching: insight was regarded as a gift of the Muses, its origins were divine. It served to highlight the Greeks'' belief that there are some things which are not meant to be scientifically explained. The essence of insight is that it comes from some supernatural source: unpredicted and unfettered. In other words, the origins of insight are unconscious, and hence, unexplainable. Wittgenstein felt that, as long as there continues to be a noun expression like to have a moment of insight which functions in the same way as the expression to have a hunger pang, thereby inducing us to treat moment of insight as the name of an experience, then people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. To the founders of AI, this argument reeked of obscurantism. The moment of insight, they felt, is indeed a mystery, but it is one that begs to be explained in causal terms. Indeed, the problem of insight served as one of the leading problems in the evolution of AI. Hence anyone interested in the foundations of AI is compelled to examine the manner in which the early pioneers of the field sought to explain the eureka experience. In this paper I will look at some of the key conceptual developments which paved the way for Newell and Simon''s theory of GPS: the fundamental changes in the notion of the unconscious — the emergence of the cognitive unconscious — which took place in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. In so doing, I hope to clarify what Wittgenstein may have had in mind in his strictures against mechanist attempts to analyse the nature of insight.
The neural basis of insight problem solving: An event-related potential study
Author: Zhang, Qinglin; Luo, Yuejia; ...
Brain and Cognition 68 (1) 2008 p100
The electrophysiological correlates of successful insight problem solving (Chinese logogriphs) were studied in 18 healthy subjects using high-density event-related potentials (ERPs). A new experimental paradigm (learning-testing model) was adopted in order to make subjects find a solution on their own initiative rather than receive an answer passively. Results showed that Successful guessed logogriphs elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P200–600) than did Unsuccessful guessed logogriphs in the time window from 200 to 600 ms after onset of the stimuli. Subsequently Successful logogriphs elicited a more negative ERP deflection than did Unsuccessful logogriphs in the time windows of 1500–2000 ms (N1500–2000) and 2000–2500 ms (N2000–2500). Maps of the P200–600 showed strong activity in the midline parieto-occipital scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generator of P200–600 in the left superior temporal gyrus and parietotemporo-occipital cortex areas. The N1500–2000 and N2000–2500 had a distinct activation over left frontal scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generator of the N1500–2000 in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the N2000–2500 in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). This result indicates that the parietotemporo-occipital cortex areas might be involved in forming rich associations in the early stage of successful logogriph solving. Then, the ACC might play an important role in the breaking mental set and the forming of novel associations. At last, “Aha” feeling might activate the PCC.
Insight and the subject
Author: Morelli, Eric James
International Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2) 2011-06p137
Frederick E. Crowe claims that Lonergan’s thought underwent a radical transformation after the publication of Insight. In several recent articles he argues that in the course of dealing with a problem of insight into insight and a problem of the subject as subject, Lonergan was on the verge of articulating a problem of the heteromorphism of subjectivity. I argue that Crowe’s claims depend on an uncritically selective and hermeneutically insensitive use of sources and a nest of ambiguities. By distinguishing the various senses in which Lonergan uses the terms insight into and image in Insight, I show that Lonergan’s thought did not undergo the development that Crowe claims it did. A dialectical reflection on Crowe’s arguments reveals that their ambiguity arises from Crowe’s implicit adoption of a form of cognitional atomism.
The AHA! experience: creativity through emergent binding in neural networks
Author: Stewart, Terrence C; Thagard, Paul
Cognitive science 35 (1) 2011-01 p1
Many kinds of creativity result from combination of mental representations. This paper provides a computational account of how creative thinking can arise from combining neural patterns into ones that are potentially novel and useful. We defend the hypothesis that such combinations arise from mechanisms that bind together neural activity by a process of convolution, a mathematical operation that interweaves structures. We describe computer simulations that show the feasibility of using convolution to produce emergent patterns of neural activity that can support cognitive and emotional processes underlying human creativity.
Intuition, Insight, Imagination and Creativity
Author: Duch, W
IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine 2 (3) 2007p40
Can computers have intuition and insights, and be creative? Neurocognitive models inspired by the putative processes in the brain show that these mysterious features are a consequence of information processing in complex networks.
Intuition is manifested in categorization based on evaluation of similarity, when decision borders are too complex to be reduced to logical rules. It is also manifested in heuristic reasoning based on partial observations, where network activity selects only those paths that may lead to solution, excluding all bad moves. Insight results from reasoning at the higher, non-verbal level of abstraction that comes from involvement of the right hemisphere networks forming large “linguistic receptive fields.” Three factors are essential for creativity in invention of novel words: knowledge of word morphology captured in network connections, imagination constrained by this knowledge, and filtering of results that selects the most interesting novel words.
These principles have been implemented using a simple correlation-based algorithm for auto-associative memory. Results are surprisingly similar to those created by humans.
Incubation, insight, and creative problem solving: a unified theory and a connectionist model
Author: Hélie, Sébastien; Sun, Ron
Psychological review 117 (3) 2010-07 p994
This article proposes a unified framework for understanding creative problem solving, namely, the explicit–implicit interaction theory. This new theory of creative problem solving constitutes an attempt at providing a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of incubation and insight). The explicit–implicit interaction theory relies mainly on 5 basic principles, namely, (a) the coexistence of and the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge, (b) the simultaneous involvement of implicit and explicit processes in most tasks, (c) the redundant representation of explicit and implicit knowledge, (d) the integration of the results of explicit and implicit processing, and (e) the iterative (and possibly bidirectional) processing. A compu- tational implementation of the theory is developed based on the CLARION cognitive architecture and applied to the simulation of relevant human data. This work represents an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related phenomena.