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Mental Fixation Research Paper

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Inhibition Versus Incubation for Overcoming Mental Fixation: A Review
Alyssa Di Mauro
The University of Southern Mississippi Abstract
This paper reviews current literature on mental fixation and how it can be overcome. The first paper looks at inhibition processes as a means to aid in creating problem solving. The second paper uses an incubation period as an alternative method for aiding in creative problem solving. Overall, both methods proved to be effective for understanding how to overcome mental fixation. All experiments explained in these two studies resulted in support of the researchers’ original hypotheses. This literature expands on some key concepts in problem solving and creativity discussed in Dr. Huff’s Cognitive Psychology …show more content…
A memory test followed in which participants were shown the category and asked to recall the paired exemplar, some of the presented category words having not been shown during the study list phase. This memory task was followed by an additional memory test, this one for all studied items. The results from this showed the RIF effect—that participants showed worse memory for previously retrieved items than for unpracticed items. Results were also consistent with the researchers’ hypothesis: items that were inhibited in a memory task were less likely to be used by participants as appropriate solutions for the later RAT. Unrelated words in the memory test did not affect performance on the RAT. Forgetting irrelevant information in the memory test has negative effects for creative thinking when that same information is a solution in the RAT. However, the researchers were concerned that the feedback for RAT trials that participants were given in the first experiment may have affected their memory for the previously-irrelevant memory solutions. They argue that participants could have used episodic retrieval in the RAT rather than a creativity task, which inherently changes activation of relevant memory representations. Therefore, in the second experiment, researchers aimed to strengthen the findings in the first experiment by withholding feedback after the RAT …show more content…
Overall, participants who solved more RAT problems showed more retrieval-induced forgetting. Retrieval-induced forgetting was consistent for the whole 60 seconds for participants in the continuous conditions. However, in the distributed conditions, retrieval-induced forgetting was significantly reduced in the last 30 seconds, eliminating the correlation between retrieval-induced forgetting and problem-solving performance. This implies that incubation periods provide enough time for irrelevant information to be forgotten, facilitating greater problem-solving abilities. Based on these findings, Koppel and Storm suggest that inhibition only facilitates creative problem solving when it aids in overcoming fixation. They also suggest that, given their findings about the variability of the degree to which incubation aided in overcoming fixation, that people with low inhibitory control would benefit more from an incubation period than those who have higher inhibitory control. Ultimately, this study effectively provides an alternative method for overcoming

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