Incubation benefits only after people have been misdirected

Abstract

Incubation refers to the popular idea that stopping work on a problem may, at times, be a more efficient means by which to reach a solution than continuing to work. Empirical studies of incubation have used few participants and have provided ambiguous and discrepant results. We investigated three potential accounts of incubation in retrieval and search problems (subconscious work, spreading activation, and fixation forgetting) with the help of a large Internet-based participant pool. The amount of time allotted for explicit work on each of 12 problems was controlled, while the distribution of that time was manipulated in several incubation conditions. When problems were presented by themselves, none of the incubation conditions aided in the solution of either anagram or remote associate test problems. However, incubation benefits arose when participants were given misdirecting clues (probably because time delays facilitated forgetting of these clues).

Remote Associates Test and Alpha Brain Waves

“…They concluded that incubation under these conditions facilitated forgetting of the misleading cues arising from mental fixation. Evidence for the fixation forgetting explanation of incubation effects has also been obtained in studies using rebus puzzles (Smith & Blankenship, 1989) and anagrams (Vul & Pashler, 2007) as the problem solving task. However, these findings do not exclude the possibility that incubation effects may be due to contributions from other psychological mechanisms, such as unconscious activation in implicit memory taking place during the incubation period (Dorfman, et al, 1996).…”

Divergent effects of detachment from work: a day-level study on employee creativity

“…However, consistent empirical support for such incubation effects is scarce and the underlying psychological processes remain unclear (Madjar & Shalley, 2008;Sio & Ormerod, 2009;Vul & Pashler, 2007). It is not clear, for instance, whether incubation effects result from unconscious problem-solving processes during the time away from the problem or from sustained conscious reflective thinking (cf.…”

The effects of tests on learning and forgetting

“…The experiment was programmed using both server-side PHP scripts and client-side JavaScript. The server-side PHP programs stored data and controlled experiment flow, and the client-side JavaScript precisely controlled the timing of item presentation and recorded response times (see Vul & Pashler, 2007, for timing accuracy details).…”