Can problems be solved by setting them aside or by sleeping on them? Incubation, the process of stopping conscious work on problems for a set period of time, is an integral part of the creative problem solving process. Providing an overview of the main issues, findings and implications of cognitive research on incubation effects in problem solving and creativity, this book argues that incubation is an effective strategy for tackling problems that do not yield to initial solution attempts. Gilhooly reasons that unconscious work is automatic and explores the underlying processes involved in incubation, providing evidence to showcase the major role of unconscious processing in problem solving. Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity concludes with a discussion of the implications of unconscious work theory for enhanced problem solving, positioning incubation as an effective and important stage in creative problem solving. This book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers of problem solving, creativity and thinking and reasoning as well as for students from all disciplines taking problem solving modules.

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts themselves present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major practical theoretical contributions. Kenneth Gilhooly has an international reputation as an eminent scholar and pioneer in the field of thinking and reasoning. The book covers key works on problem solving, expertise, working memory and thinking, and ageing. A specially written introduction gives an overview of his career and contextualises the selection in relation to changes in the field during this time. The book enables the reader to trace developments in thinking and reasoning over the last forty years.It will be essential reading students and researchers of cognitive psychology interested in the history of thinking and reasoning.

To date we have only a fragmentary understanding of the thought processes that engender insightful solutions to problems that require a change in representation or the discovery of distant associations to presented information. We likewise have only a piecemeal understanding of the thinking that underpins creative problem solving, where solutions are needed that are new to the solver. Recently there has been a growing interest in removing the mystery from insight and creativity through better specified theories and theory-driven experimentation. The chapters in this volume reflect key developments in this expanding field of insight and creativity research. Collectively, the chapters converge on a nuanced view of insight and creative thinking as often arising from the interplay between two qualitatively distinct types of processes that interact to yield sudden, surprising and innovative solutions to problems that initially seemed impenetrable and resistant to the application of inventive ideas. This dual-process perspective, which capitalises on the distinction between 'special' (automatic, unconscious and associative) Type 1 processes and 'routine' (controlled, conscious and analytic) Type 2 processes, helps advance a theoretical understanding of insight and creativity, whilst also provoking important new research questions. This book was originally published as a special issue of Thinking and Reasoning.

To date we have only a fragmentary understanding of the thought processes that engender insightful solutions to problems that require a change in representation or the discovery of distant associations to presented information. We likewise have only a piecemeal understanding of the thinking that underpins creative problem solving, where solutions are needed that are new to the solver. Recently there has been a growing interest in removing the mystery from insight and creativity through better specified theories and theory-driven experimentation. The chapters in this volume reflect key developments in this expanding field of insight and creativity research. Collectively, the chapters converge on a nuanced view of insight and creative thinking as often arising from the interplay between two qualitatively distinct types of processes that interact to yield sudden, surprising and innovative solutions to problems that initially seemed impenetrable and resistant to the application of inventive ideas. This dual-process perspective, which capitalises on the distinction between 'special' (automatic, unconscious and associative) Type 1 processes and 'routine' (controlled, conscious and analytic) Type 2 processes, helps advance a theoretical understanding of insight and creativity, whilst also provoking important new research questions. This book was originally published as a special issue of Thinking and Reasoning.

Can problems be solved by setting them aside or by sleeping on them? Incubation, the process of stopping conscious work on problems for a set period of time, is an integral part of the creative problem solving process. Providing an overview of the main issues, findings and implications of cognitive research on incubation effects in problem solving and creativity, this book argues that incubation is an effective strategy for tackling problems that do not yield to initial solution attempts. Gilhooly reasons that unconscious work is automatic and explores the underlying processes involved in incubation, providing evidence to showcase the major role of unconscious processing in problem solving. Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity concludes with a discussion of the implications of unconscious work theory for enhanced problem solving, positioning incubation as an effective and important stage in creative problem solving. This book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers of problem solving, creativity and thinking and reasoning as well as for students from all disciplines taking problem solving modules.

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts themselves present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major practical theoretical contributions. Kenneth Gilhooly has an international reputation as an eminent scholar and pioneer in the field of thinking and reasoning. The book covers key works on problem solving, expertise, working memory and thinking, and ageing. A specially written introduction gives an overview of his career and contextualises the selection in relation to changes in the field during this time. The book enables the reader to trace developments in thinking and reasoning over the last forty years.It will be essential reading students and researchers of cognitive psychology interested in the history of thinking and reasoning.

Aging and Creativity examines the effects of aging on creative functioning, including age-related changes in cognition, personality, and motivation that affect performance or output. The book reviews and summarizes both lab-based and real-world-based studies. Changes in working memory, speed of processing, learning efficiency, and retrieval from long-term memory are all discussed as factors influencing creativity, as are health changes and changes in social roles with later age. The book concludes with practical implications of age effects on creativity for older people in work and everyday life.