A demonstration of incubation in anagram problem solving

Incubation benefits only after people have been misdirected

“…This account is lent some credibility because the solution times we observed were shorter than those he reported: We saw mean solution times across conditions, ranging from 22 to 44 sec, as compared with the 29-79 sec that Peterson reported. Similarly, solution rates for our problems were on the order of 75%, whereas Goldman et al (1992) reported between 17% and 50% correct solutions; it could be the case that problems must be more challenging and time consuming for an interruption to prove beneficial. Figure 2 shows the cumulative proportion of anagrams solved during the 120 sec that the participants worked on these anagrams (plotted at intervals of 2 sec).…”

“…The great bulk of early incubation experiments consisted of just one difficult problem, and many of those studies used few participants (e.g., Gavurin, 1965, 20/condition;Murray & Denny, 1969, 18/condition;Olton & Johnson, 1976, 10/condition). Although later studies assigned between 10 and 48 problems to each participant, the total number of participants was still low: only 8 to 24 per condition (Goldman, Wolters, & Winograd, 1992;Smith & Blankenship, 1989, 1991. The small subject counts of previous studies, therefore, render null results perhaps somewhat suspect and create ambiguity in significant results; thus, it is still unclear to what degree previous studies of incubation effects should be trusted.…”

Incubation Provides Relief from Artificial Fixation in Problem Solving

“…The time allotted to solve problems was also short in comparison to most problems in the real world, and thus it lacks ecological validity. It is also possible that had participants received more time in the incubation period, there would have been a stronger incubation effect as reported by Goldman et al (1992). Future incubation studies should test the forgetting-fixation account using a trial-by-trail method, increasing the time allotted to the incubation period in the interest of improving ecological validity, and using other linguistic problems (e.g., Rebus) besides RATs.…”

“…Segal (2004) used a mathematical puzzle as the main problem task and found that the length of the incubation period does not influence the occurrence of an incubation effect, whereas other studies found an incubation effect only when the incubation period was sufficiently long (e.g., Goldman, Wolters, & Winograd, 1992). When anagrams are the main task, some studies have found the incubation effect (e.g., Both, Needham, & Wood, 2004), whereas others have failed to find it (e.g., Vul & Pashler, 2007).…”

Collaborative fixation: Effects of others' ideas on brainstorming

“…Incubation effects are not universally found (e.g. Dominowski & Jenrick, 1972;Gall & Mendelsohn, 1967;Olton, 1979;Olton & Johnson, 1976), although several studies have found that incubation intervals facilitate solving insight problems (Goldman, Wolters, & Winograd, 1992;Penney, Godsell, Scott, & Balsom, 2004;Segal, 2004;Smith & Blankenship, 1989). A study on the effect of breaks on individual brainstorming found that participants in the break conditions generated more ideas in the final portion of the brainstorming session than did those in a no-break condition (Paulus, Nakui, Putman, & Brown, 2006).…”