Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Insight problems cause impasses because they deceive the problem solver into constructing an inappropriate initial representation. The main theoretical problem of explaining insight is to identify the cognitive processes by which impasses are resolved. In past work, we have hypothesized two such processes: constraint relaxation and chunk decomposition. In the study reported here, we derive detailed predictions about the structure of eye movements from these hypotheses. Eye movement data from a study of match stick algebra problems were consistent with the predictions. The results support the view that a key component of creative thinking is to overcome the processing imperatives of past experience.