The Impact Of Working Memory On The Resolution Of Different Creative Problems

Insight and analytic problem solving are two ways to achieve creative problem solving or creative product generation.Insight refers to the sudden formation of a concept or the reconstruction of knowledge.The appearance of insight is usually unexpected.It is usually more suitable for solving complex problems,such as coming up with a marketing plan for a new company.In contrary,when employ an analytic approach,the correct answer to the solution always come from a series of conscious initiative thinking.The whole process of analytic problem solving usually takes place under the control of consciousness,and the solution would be found through a logistic analysis of the problem.Working memory plays an important role in many complex cognitive activities,such as attention control,fluid intelligence,information processing speed,and so on.It leads the role of temporary storage and information processing.The topic of the impact of working memory on the creative problem solving has been paid a lot of attention by researchers,for the reason that central executive function components of working memory are closely related to the effects of attention control and suppression of distraction.Researchers tried to clarify whether the two solutions to the problem are affected by the working memory,respectively,so as to have a batter understand of both insight and analytic.According to the dual process theory,the individual behavior relies on the control processing system as well as the automatic processing system.The former relies on the working memory control while the later does not.working in the form of automatic connection.Based on the existing research regarding insight and analytic,this study proposes that the analytic problem-solving depends on the control processing system,which could be affected by individual differences in working memory capacity and working memory load,and insight depends on the automatic processing system and is therefore would not be affected by working memory.This study consists of two experiments.In Experiment 1 we measured working memory capacity of the subjects by the Automation Operation Span task(AO-span).The Remote Association Task(RAT)under insight-analytic paradigm was applied examine creative problem performance.In Experiment 2 we applied the dual-task paradigm which asks the subjects to speak loudly following the warning sounds,so as to imposes working memory load to the subjects while completing the creative problem-solving task The result shows that firstly,individual with high working memory capacity solve more RAT problems in total.Secondly,high working memory load do harm to creative problem solving.Thirdly,higher working memory capacity is related to analytic performance but unrelated to insight performance.Fourthly,insight won't be influenced by working memory load,but analytic do.Finally,lower working memory capacity and higher working memory load are both related to higher proportion of insight-solving.In general,this study confirms the view of the dual process theory,and the results support the conclusion that working memory only affects the analytic problem and does not have an impact on insight.When the individual cognitive resources are insufficient,that is,when faced with high working memory load,or individual working memory capacity is small,the subjects are more inclined to take an automatic-connection processing.