The Relationship Between Mind Wandering And Creative Problem Solving

Mind-wandering has proven to be a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon, with experience-sampling studies suggesting that our minds are disengaged from the goings-on around us between 25% and 50% of our waking hours. Although mind wandering make people reduce responsiveness to external stimuli, it is associated with rich internal activity that often entails contemplating problem solving and future goals. One of the positive function of mind wandering is that it can facilitate creative problem solving, while there are still little empirical research that investigated this potentially critical inspiration of mind wandering. For this purpose,our study was designed to answer three questions:1)Whether performance on creative problems can be facilitated by engaging in mind wandering? 2)What kind of mind wandering can promote creative problem solving? 3)From the perspective of individual differences of working memory capacity (WMC), whether high WMC group can be more benefited from the process of mind wandering?We explored the positive function of mind wandering on creativity from two perspectives:the trait of mind wandering and the individual differences of WMC. Study one explored the relationships between the trait of mind wandering, the frequency of mind wandering during background task and the creativity, using Mind Wandering Frequency Questionnaire (MWFQ), Williams Prefer Measurement Forms (WPMF), Thought Sampling Method, and the Unusual Usage Task (UUT). Study two and Study three explored the differences of creative performance between high WMC and low WMC engaging in mind wandering under the same task demanding condition and the different task demanding condition.We got the main research conclusion as follows:1)The spontaneous thought factor of MWFQ was positively correlated with each dimension and total score of WPMF, namely the higher the score of spontaneous thought characteristic of the individual, the more obvious tendency of creativity.2)The spontaneous thought factor and total score of MWFQ were positively correlated with the score of UUT, showing that the higher the score of spontaneous thought characteristic of the individual also did very well in the creative task.3)External motivation and intrinsic motivation were closely related to creative problem solving.4)The frequency of mind wandering was highest under the low task demanding condition, and compared to high WMC individuals, low WMC individuals can better benefit from the effect of incubation. 5)Under the low task demanding condition, the score of UUT was positively correlated with the frequence of mind wandering during the laboratory task in the low WMC individuals rather than high WMC indiduals, indicating that low WMC individuals may be able to directly benefit from the process of mind wandering, thus promoting creative problem solving.