An Experimental Research On The Incubation Effect And It's Mechanism In Insight Problem Solving

This research examined the incubation effect and it's mechanism through two experiments which used a geometric insight problem called the farm problem and made undergraduate students or postgraduates serve as subjects. Experiment 1 showed that the incubation group solved significantly better than the control group, and the incubation group reading a story solved better than the group reading scientific knowledge, but with no significance. Experiment 2 showed that the incubation groups listening to materials solved best, and significantly differed from both the control groups; the incubation groups reading materials solved better than both the control groups, but with no significant difference from the long time control group. Combining both the experiments' results together, it was demonstrated that there was incubation effect in insight problem solving, which was due to the materials' nature of transferring one's attention; and that the way of the incubation tasks' presence affected the incubation effect, and the different way of work from the original work's resulted in stronger incubation effect...