Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2012 Oct 1;23(10):1117-22. doi: 10.1177/0956797612446024. Epub 2012 Aug 31.
Although anecdotes that creative thoughts often arise when one is engaged in an unrelated train of thought date back thousands of years, empirical research has not yet investigated this potentially critical source of inspiration. We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on validated creativity problems (the Unusual Uses Task, or UUT) can be facilitated by engaging in either a demanding task or an undemanding task that maximizes mind wandering. Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest, or no break, engaging in an undemanding task during an incubation period led to substantial improvements in performance on previously encountered problems. Critically, the context that improved performance after the incubation period was associated with higher levels of mind wandering but not with a greater number of explicitly directed thoughts about the UUT. These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.
虽然关于创造性思维常常在人们从事不相关的思维活动时产生的轶事可以追溯到几千年前，但实证研究尚未探究这一潜在的关键灵感来源。我们使用酝酿范式来评估在进行一项要求高的任务或一项最大限度地产生思维漫游的不要求任务时，是否可以促进验证过的创造力问题（不寻常用途任务，或 UUT）的表现。与从事要求高的任务、休息或不休息相比，在酝酿期间从事不要求任务会导致之前遇到的问题的表现大幅提高。关键的是，在酝酿期后提高表现的背景与更高水平的思维漫游相关，而与更多关于 UUT 的明确指向性思维无关。这些数据表明，从事允许思维漫游的简单外部任务可能有助于创造性解决问题。
