Prototype Position Effect Of Insight In Scientific Inventional Problem-solving

When scientists encounter an invention problem and have not found the sally port, they might come across a heuristic prototype that seems superficially irrelevant to the problem and find the new idea from the prototype for solving the problem. For example, Archimedes derived insight into the relationship between weight and volume when he noticed displaced water in a bathtub. How to illuminate from the prototype and find a new idea for solving the scientific problem (problem activated automatically) when scientists encounter a superficially irrelevant prototype is a "mysterious" mechanism of the brain——the cognitive neural mechanism of insight (or catching inspiration).There are two paradigms of heuristic prototype:"former-problem (problem guide)" and "former-prototype". Logically speaking, is the representation of problem affected by the representation prototype ("former-prototype") or the representation of prototype affected by the representation problem ("former-problem")?In fact, it is not a pure causal relationship between them for the neural mechanism of automated response is a parallel processing. But in the reality life, the scientific problem existed in the brain first seems more easily to heuristic prototype and more corresponding to the thinking pattern of the scientists.Based on Zhang’s hypothesis, this study was designed to explore the neural mechanism governing the act of catching inspiration in scientific innovation. We used scientific inventional problems as materials and took "former-problem (problem guide)" and "former-prototype" as paradigms to explore the prototype position effect in inventional problem-solving. In experiment 1, we explored the prototype position effect in inventional problem-solving from behavior data by controlled independent variable of prototype position and creativity tendency. In experiment 2, we controlled independent variable of prototype position and used fMRI technique to explore the neural mechanism for catching inspiration in scientific invention based on the behavior experiment.The results showed that under the experimental condition, the mean inventional problem-solving score for former-problem was higher than for former-prototype; the prototype position effect was affected by creative tendency which was measured by Williams Creativity Assessment Packet; the prototype position effect was also affected by inventional problem-solving ability which was divided by inventional problem-solving score. And our fMRI data showed that the left middle temporal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus were significantly activated when college students successfully caught inspiration under former-problem condition; left cingulate gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus were significantly activated when college students successfully solve the problem in the case of former-prototype condition.