Dissociation Of Levels Of Unconscious Processing In Creative Problem Solving

Although the process of creative problem solving is often accompanied by intuition,incubation and insight,the mechanisms behind these phenomena are mysterious.During the exploration of these problems,unconscious processing has become an increasingly important topic in creative problem solving.It is not difficult to find the answer three kinds of activation states in general,availability,accessibility and no activation.Availability refers to the answer reaching the consciousness can be consciously perceived,and can be acquired and reported verbally.Accessibility means that the solution is in the level of unconscious processing,which can not be consciously perceived and reported.But it may have an influence on the related performance and behavior.The ideas of no activation are not approach to the unconsciousness,can not be reported and has no impact on the next tasks.Theoretically,Freud,for the first time,made the human mind divide into consciousness,preconsciousness and unconsciousness.Consciousness is corresponded to the state of availability,while unconsciousness is linked to the state of accessibility.Also,Wegner and Smart proposed that an idea has three states,deep activation(unconscious),surface activation(awared but vague)and fully activation(conscious).Deep activation is related to the state of accessibility,and moreover,fully activation are associated with the state of availability.Empirically,early researches found the benefits of conscious cues in creative problem solving.Besides,later researches adopted subliminal mask paradigm revealed the benefits of unconscious cues in creative problem solving.Others found an inverted-U-curve relationship between unconscious processing time and creativity.Based on previous theoretical and exprimental researches,we wonder if there exist the different levels of unconscious processing in creative problem solving.Two behavioral experiments and two fMRI experiments were applied to test the hypothesis of existence of unconscious processing and its different levels in the processes of creative problemsolving and to explore their neural mechanism.In the first experiment,classical creativity task(RAT)and lexical decision task(LDT)were adopted to investigate the existence of unconscious processing,which is different from conscious processing.The results showed that the reaction time of the correct solved RATs is significantly faster than that in the unsolved RATs.Compared to the control group,a stronger priming effect by unconscious processing was also observed in the unsolved group.It revealed that the conscious processing is different from the unconscious processing,and there is a trend of the different levels of unconscious processing.Promoted sandwich mask priming paradigm was used in experiment two to explore the unconscious deep processing and unconscious shallow processing in the processes of creative problem solving.The incomplete subliminal cue group had a weaker priming effect by unconscious processing than intact subliminal cue group,and priming effect in both groups were significantly higher than that in control group.The results illustrated that intact hint may lead the unconscious processing to a deeper level of processing,and by the same logic,incomplete subliminal cue caused a shallow level of unconscious processing.Experiment three used functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)approach to explore the difference between special regions in neural activity during unconscious processing and during conscious processing.The results found that the common activation regions of the conscious processing and unconscious processing are the regions associated with long-distance semantic processing,such as left inferior parietal lobe(BA40),left middle frontal gyrus(BA10)and right inferior frontal gyrus(BA47).Conscious conditon was related to activation in left lingual gyrus(BA19),in left precuneus(BA7),right inferior parietal lobe(BA40),anterior cingulate gyrus(BA32),right caudate and so on.Unconscious processing was related to activation in right precuneus(BA18)and right angular gyrus(BA39).Compared with the unconscious condition,conscious condition had a stronger activation in bilateral middle temporal gyrus(BA21),bilateral inferior parietal lobe(BA40),bilateral cuneus(BA18)and left anterior cingulate cortex(BA24),right caudate and so on,and had a weaker activation in bilateral superior frontal gyrus(BA6)and bilateral middle occipital gyrus(BA6).The results revealed that the left inferior parietal lobule(BA40),the left middle frontal gyrus(BA10)and the right inferior frontal gyrus(BA47)were more important in the remote semantic association during conscious processing and unconsciuos processing.Middleoccipital gyrus(BA6)and right angular gyrus(BA39)may be important to the unconscious processing in creative problem solving.The aim of experiment four,which employed distraction paradigm to verify the same postulation in the experiment two,is to determine the activation differences between the deep level and shallow level of unconscious processing.The behavior results showed that compared with the digital calculation group,the digital comparison group had a greater priming effect by unconscious processing,also,these two groups were significantly higher than that in control group.It indicated that the low cognitive load group had a significant priming effect than the high cognitive demanding group.It verified the hypothesis repeatedly.Left inferior parietal lobe,left middle frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus were activated in both levels of unconscious processing,which duplicated the results in experiment three.Compared to the shallow level condition,the deep level condition had a stronger activation in right middle temporal gyrus,right middle occipital gyrus,right inferior parietal lobe,right insula,bilateral middle frontal gyrus,left anterior cingulate gyrus,post cingulate gyrus,left caudate and left lenticular nucleus..Compared to the deep level condition,the shallow level condition had a stronger activation in right lingual gyrus,right middle frontal gyrus,right superior frontal gyrus,bilateral inferior frontal gyrus,left inferior parietal lobule,left insula and left inferior temporal gyrus.Right insula may be major region related to the different levels of unconscious processing in creative problem solving.In conclusion,there exists a dissociation of the deep level of unconscious processing and the shallow level of unconscious processing in the processes of creative problem solving and they involved in different brain activities.It is the first time to put forward the concept of the dissociation of the different levels of unconscious processing in the field of creative problem solving.It is supported by the series of the experiment results,which is of great significance to enrich the theory of consciousness and unconsciousness.