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Incubation is one of the 4 proposed stages of creativity: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification [1]. Incubation is defined as a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time [2].
The experience of leaving a problem for a period of time, then finding the difficulty evaporates on returning to the problem, or even more striking, that the solution "comes out of the blue", when thinking about something else, is widespread. Many guides to effective thinking and problem solving advise the reader to set problems aside for a time.
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Paradigm for Investigating Incubation
The most widely adopted paradigm for investigating incubation involves comparing problems on which participants take a break during solving with problems on which participants work for a continuous period. The total time spent on each problem is equated across the conditions and the incubation period is usually filled with unrelated activity to prevent further conscious work on the problem. Superior performance on problems for which work is split over two sessions is taken as evidence for the incubation effect, which is thus operationally defined as any benefit of a break during problem solving.
Incubation effect and Emotions & Creativity
When discussing the relation between incubation effect – emotions and creativity, researchers found that positive mood enhances creativity at work. That means that we would expect a given day’s creativity to follow reliably from the previous day’s mood, above and beyond any carry-over of that previous day’s mood. Theory and research on incubation, long recognized as a part of the creative process, suggest such cross-day effects. Thus, if positive mood on a particular day increases the number and scope of available thoughts, those additional thoughts may incubate overnight, increasing the probability of creative thoughts the following day [3].
Recent advances in neuroscience provide intriguing evidence of the mechanisms underlying incubation effects, particularly those that occur during sleep. This research reveals that people’s experiences while awake can be consolidated into memory and result in enhanced performance the next day without any additional practice or engagement in the task. Moreover, there is mounting evidence that sleep can facilitate the types of memory and learning processes, such as associative memory, that contribute to creative problem solving. In one relevant experiment, researchers demonstrated that problem-solving insight can be dramatically enhanced by a period of sleep following initial work on a problem.
See also
References Cited
- ^ Christensen, T. Bo (2005). Creative Cognition: Analogy and Incubation. Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Denmark
- ^ Seabrook Rachel, Dienes Zoltan (2003). Incubation in Problem Solving as a context Effect
- ^ Dodds, A. Rebecca, Ward, B. Thomas, & Smith, M. Steven (2004). A Review of Experimental Research on Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity. Texas A&M University
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