Today we will learn about the concept of insight, a sudden
understanding or unexpected development of a creative idea. It is often known
as an “aha!” moment or as I like to think of it, the Geordi La Forge moment. Since mental set can inhibit the
achievement of insight, it is important to examine both concepts together.
Understanding
Insight
Insight moments do not have to give rise to profound ideas like the
theory of gravity, they merely have to be sudden and unexpected.[3]
An insight can also be thought of as a restructuring one's representation
of the problem. Every time we face a problem we engage into a set of operations
that draw on previous knowledge or experience (mental sets) on how to solve the
problem. Whenever an initial representation leads to a solution, then it requires
no restructuring. However, as discussed in the previous post on mental rut, an
inappropriate plan will not only fail to lead to a solution, it will also continue
to act as a hindrance to the correct solution - a metaphorical roadblock. This
is because our prior knowledge or mental
sets cause a fixation on certain aspects of the problem blocking more
important aspects that are necessary to solve the problem.[4]
Therefore, mental rut is analogous to a truck being stuck in the mud. When one
persists with a counterproductive strategy they are merely spinning their wheels
and getting further entrenched in the mud (the incorrect representation).[5]
Representational
Change – Key to Overcoming Mental Ruts
The key to overcoming the impasse and solving the problem is a representational change.[6]
Representational
Change through Incubation
Incubation, a term we are already familiar with, is a good strategy
for achieving representational changes.[7]
Incubation encompasses putting the problem aside momentarily and waiting for
the incorrect strategy to decrease in priming, in turn allowing more correct
strategies that have been hindered by the repetitive activation of the incorrect
strategy to come into awareness.[8]
For this reason when we are doing an unrelated activity we often find a sudden
solution to a problem we had momentarily shelved.
Sticking with our truck in mud analogy, incubation represents the idea that rather than continue to
spin your wheels, it is preferable to instead wait until conditions become more
favorable for getting the truck out of the mud.[9]
The next post will address how to achieve representational changes
through strategies such as chunk decomposition, and constraint relaxation, as
well as more on incubation.
[1]
Michael Ollinger, Gary Jones, and Gunther Knoblich, Investigating
the Effect of Mental set on Insight Problem Solving, Experimental
Psychology Vol. 55 (2008), 269.
[2]
Deborah K. Smith, David B. Paradice, Steven M. Smith, Prepare
Your Mind for Creativity, Communications of the ACM 43.7 (2000), 113.
[3] Steven
Smith, Getting
into and out of mental ruts: A theory of fixation, incubation, and insight.
(1995). 232
[4] See
Ollinger, supra note 1, at 271.
[5] See
Steven Smith, supra note 3, at 245.
[6] See
Ollinger, supra note 1, at 271.
[7] Id.
[8]
See Steven Smith, supra note 3, at 241.
[9] Id. at 245.
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