Insight On the Origins of New Ideas Current Issues in Thinking and Reasoning Series

Research on insight problem solving examines how new ideas are generated to solve problems that initially resist the application of prior knowledge or analogue solutions. In the laboratory, insight problems are designed to create an impasse; overcoming the impasse is sometimes accompanied by a distinctive phenomenological experience, the so-called Aha! moment. Insight: On the Origins of New Ideas presents research that captures these episodes of insight under laboratory conditions and informs models that account for their emergence.

Descriptions and analyses of episodes of discovery both in and out of the laboratory are included to provide a general overview of insight. Featuring contributions from leading researchers, the volume debates the relative importance of intelligence and working memory, the development of an alternative interpretation of the problem based on deliberate analyses and heuristics, and unconscious inferences in the emergence of insight. These discussions generate new testable hypotheses to shed light on the cognitive processes underpinning insight, along with concrete methodological recommendations that, together, map a productive programme of future research.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of thinking and reasoning - specifically those interested in insight and creative problem solving.

Introduction

Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau

1 The dialectic between routine and creative cognition

Stellan Ohlsson

2 Whose insight is it anyway?

Edward M. Bowden and Kristin Grunewald

3 Magic tricks, sudden restructuring, and the Aha! experience: a new model of nonmonotonic problem solving

Amory H. Danek

4 When does higher working memory capacity help or hinder insight problem solving?

Marci S. DeCaro

5 Working memory in insight problem solving

Ken Gilhooly and Margaret E. Webb

6 The relationship of insight problem solving to analytical thinking: evidence from psychometric studies

Adam Chuderski and Jan Jastrzębski

7 Breaking past the surface: remote analogical transfer as creative insight

Tim George and Jennifer Wiley

8 An ecological perspective on insight problem solving

Sune Vork Steffensen and Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau

9 Insight, problem solving, and creativity: an integration of findings

Robert W. Weisberg

Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau is Professor of Psychology at Kingston University, UK.