"Incubation in Problem Solving" -- Eliaz Segal

Key Insight: Taking a break from a hard problem is about breaking through your organizing assumption, not "letting your mind rest" or "letting your subconscious work on the problem"!

Incubation: a break in the activity devoted to the problem, which may eventually facilitate the solution process

How Does It Work?

Hypothesis	Explanation
*argued in this paper*Attention-Withdrawal Hypothesis -- you get a New Organizing Assumption	The role of the break is to release you from false organizing assumption -- allow you to see the problem with new eyes
Autonomous-Processes	Your "subconscious" is working on the problem, or your brain is getting a break because it's tired, or you forget irrelevant information
External-Cues Hypotheses	The role of the break is to bring in external cues, trigger critical memory traces

• Length of the break doesn't change result
• More helpful to engage mind than to veg out

This study uses insight problems to study incubation -- one in which it's easy to come to an impasse due to your assumptions, then have an 'A-ha' moment.

Caution: "taking a break while solving a problem that must be solved only by a gradual and continuous pro- cess is a senseless move that only impairs the solution process or at least delays it."

Key observation: "Some gestalt psychologists noticed that participants tend to fixate on a false assumption when trying to solve an insight problem, and that in order to solve it, one has to form the correct assumption instead".

You must "restructure the problem elements" or "change the representation of the problem".

An organizing assumption is key to the problem-solving process. A theme around which to vary.
"But why must one assume any assumptions at all in order to solve an insight problem, and why do solvers almost always assume false assumptions? Whether an assumption is false or correct, it is not another piece of information, but rather an organizing agent that connects all the elements of the problem to each other and thus enables the solver to understand the problem and to act upon it. Without an organizing assumption, the problem would not be formed in the mind of the solver in the first place, and changing it would change the way one represents the problem. The organizing assumption has another critical function: It directs the attentive activity of the solver into closed borders, or in other words, into a bounded problem space. When the organizing assumption is false, it is impossible to reach the solution within the limits of the false problem space."

"Taking a distracting break when running into a dead end (impasse) in the solution process, and then returning to the problem, proved more efficient than working continuously for the same net duration."