The Electrophysiological Mechanisms of Prototype-heuristics Insight in the Chinese Riddles Solving

LI Wen-Fu; LUO Jun-Long; GU Lei; ZHU Hai-Xue; ZHANG Qiang-Lin

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (2) : 315-319.

The Electrophysiological Mechanisms of Prototype-heuristics Insight in the Chinese Riddles Solving

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Abstract

Insight is one of the important ways to study creativity. A recent surge of interest into the neural underpinnings of insight has produced a banquet of research. Prototype heuristic theory is one of the cognitive mechanisms of insight proposed by china scholars recently. A lot of behavioral studies have shown that the theory can be divided into two parts: the prototype activation and heuristic information activation. These studies provide some evidences that the activation of the prototype came as a result of automatic processing and the activation of heuristic information in prototype maybe the result of controlled processing. Since there is no direct electrophysiological evidence to support the theory of two-stage view, therefore, this study explored the physiological mechanism of the prototype heuristics, using the ERP technique with characteristics of high temporal resolution, selected logogriph (a riddle about a Chinese Character) problem as the material. The experiments used the learning- test two-phase paradigm, the two phases of which are the learning phase and the test phase. Specifically, we used the called “five to five” experimental paradigm. 14 participants took part in the experiment. In the learning phase, the subjects learned five prototypical logogriphs in a random order. In the test phase, the subjects solved five target logogriphs paired with the prototypical logogriphs studied previously in a random order. The task for the subjects was to solve the target logogriphs based on the heuristic information obtained in the learning phase. In this study a Single-factor three-level experimental design was used. The three-level was: common component conditions (CCC), uncommon component conditions (UCC) and baseline conditions (BC). The results of the experiment showed that there is no significant difference among three conditions between 300 and 500 ms and CCC and UCC elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P800–1700) than did BC between 800 and 1700ms. We presumed that the insignificant difference between 300 and 500 ms maybe indicated that the activation of the prototypal logogriph from five was same in three conditions, which indicated that the activation of prototype logogriphs might be automatic. The P800-1700 component maybe reflected the application of the heuristic information to the test logogriph and getting the answer successfully. Subjects cannot solve the test logogriph directly from the heuristic information obtain from learning phase until access to the deep links between them. But in the baseline conditions, subjects can solve the logogriph in test phase based on heuristic information. These results might reflect the higher creative level in CCC and UCC conditions than that in BC condition. Additionally, the waveform elicited by CCC and UCC conditions was tend to consistent, which indicated that the same text may not be the key of prototype heuristics.

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Chinese riddles, insight, prototype heuristics, Event-related potential

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The Electrophysiological Mechanisms of Prototype-heuristics Insight in the Chinese Riddles Solving[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2013, 36(2): 315-319

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