Psychology of Insight

Question 1

Define insight

Answer 1

A change in conceptual understanding that allows a solution to a problem to be discovered

Question 2

Name 3 phenomena associated with insight

Answer 2

• Simple to state; hard to solve
• Fixation
• Impasse
• ‘Aha’
• Incubation

Question 3

Name 3 theories of insight

Answer 3

• Representational Change Theory
• Criterion of Satisfactory Progress
• Multiple Factor Theory

Question 4

What does Representational Change Theory suggest?

Answer 4

It is what you know that makes the problem hard

Question 5

What does Criterion of Satisfactory Progress suggest?

Answer 5

It is what you do that makes the problem hard

Question 6

What does Multiple Factor Theory suggest?

Answer 6

Difficulty of problem depends on perceptual, knowledge and search factors

Question 7

What kind of incubation is beneficial for divergent thinking?

Answer 7

Any kind of incubation

Question 8

What kind of incubation is beneficial for linguistic insight?

Answer 8

Low cognitive load in incubation

Question 9

What kind of incubation is beneficial for visual insight?

Answer 9

Lengthy prep period (must have tried everything before incubation)

Question 10

What does incubation do?

Answer 10

Relaxes prior knowledge constraints

Question 11

In a study on sleep and verbal problems, what task did they use?

Answer 11

Remote associates task

Question 12

What did Sio et al (2013) find about incubation vs sleep?

Answer 12

Incubation was only beneficial for easy tasks, sleep was only beneficial for difficult tasks.