Abstract
Knowledge and experience is both the basis and the resistance of insight problem solving behaviors. Advantaged knowledge hinders insight problem solving, whereas disadvantaged knowledge is the key to solve insight problems. Particularly, advantaged knowledge "help" problem solvers understand, think and solve problems with familiar path, which may let problem solvers get into the impasses, such as chunking effects that prevent the construction of initial state of problem space; constraint effects prevent the establishment of target state of problem space; functional fixed effects prevent correct operator identification. All of these three effects belong to the generally mental set, it may occur possibly because there might be a hierarchical processing model in the brain, which give higher priority to the familiar path of percept, deliberate and solve problem than novel information processing. The familiar solution path that with higher priority will comes to mind first and biased the attention, which not only reduce the exploration tendency of alternative solutions and also increase the difficulty of operate alternatives. Problem solvers must make a greater effect to win the unbalanced attentional competition between the disabled familiar solution paths and alternatives. Or else, the mechanization of familiar solution may let the brain loss attention flexibility, which in turn decrease the possibility to divert attention from familiar solution to explore and operate alternative solutions quickly and fluently. In order to break impasses and get insights, problem solver have to inhibited advantaged knowledge related familiar but disabled solution path, reactivated disadvantaged knowledge related novel solution. It violates the cognitive processing tendency of the brain, which is very difficult to spontaneously occur. However, it was possible to directly activate disadvantaged knowledge by means of spreading activation or increase the likely of activate disadvantaged knowledge by means of attention regulation, and then facilitated insight problem solving.
Key words
insight, prior knowledge, spreading activation, attention regulation
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Prior knowledge and insight problem solving: a comment from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2018, 41(6): 1339-1344
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