Abstract
It still remains uncertain whether working memory updating ability influences spatial insight problem solving and whether working memory updating ability plays a role in the representation restructuring phase. The current study explored the correlation of working memory updating ability and spatial insight problem solving by behavior and eye movement experiments, and the results showed that high working memory updating ability individuals spend significant shorter time to solve spatial insight problem than low working memory updating ability individuals. For participants with high or low working memory updating ability, the underlying mechanism of spatial insight problem solving is sudden rather than incremental, which demonstrated that the working memory updating ability did not influence the representation restructuring phase. Working memory updating ability influences spatial problem solving, and it works critically in the problem space search phase, while the restructuring phase is sudden and immediate, which is not influenced by working memory updating ability. The representation restructuring tends to be spontaneous.
Highlights
Creative thinking plays an important role in human society, facilitating individual and social development
Verbal insight problem has been proved to be correlated with executive function, and the results suggested that executive function influences searching within the problem space but not the problem representation restructuring phase (Xing et al, 2017)
Analysis of Time of Spatial Insight Problem Solving The average score of working memory updating (WMU) ability is 24.42 ± 7.02 (M ± SD)
Summary
Creative thinking plays an important role in human society, facilitating individual and social development. Creative thinking is ubiquitous in current society, production, transportation, and entertainment, especially in the field of education. Insight is an important cognitive process in creative thinking. Bowden and Jung-Beeman (2007) argued that insight is a phenomenon accompanied by an “aha” experience in which participants suddenly and intuitively understand complex perceptual situations or capture the intrinsic property of things. Ash and Wiley (2006) indicated that the process of insight problem solving consists of three main phases: the initial representation phase, the faulty problem space search phase, and the post-impasse problem representation restructuring phase. In the initial representation phase, the problem solver would inappropriately represent the problem. The faulty problem space search phase may lead to the form of impasse.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
