The Role Of Unconscious Thinking In Brewing Effect

When people set aside a problem, which keeps undone though having occupied people’sthought for a long time, for a period of time, turning to work on other activities irrelevant, thesolve of the problem inspires us all of a sudden. This is the incubation effect.In recent years, more and more researchers engaged in the study that whether thephenomenon of incubation is scientific or not. At the same time, the generation mechanism ofincubation effect aroused the masses of psychological workers’ interest. Although someresearchers claim that found no incubation effect, there are lots of studies having verified theincubation effect is objective existence. Along with the maturing of the research, the generationmechanism of incubation effect varies: a fresh look, set shifting, conscious process andunconscious process, etc. Now more and more domestic and foreign researchers support the lastexplanation.In order to test whether the incubation effect has the scientific nature and whether it is theresult of unconscious thought, the researcher used the classic experiment paradigm in the fieldof incubation effect, adjusting the predecessors’ experimental design by adding new elementssuch as mere distraction task, cognitive style, to examine the existence of incubation effect intwo types of problem solving, as well as what causes and how to cause the effect.After two experimental studies, the researcher draws the following conclusions eventually:(1) Subjects in brewing conditions have a better performance than others, confirmingincubation effect does exist.(2) Incubation effect is the result of the unconscious processing.(3) In task under the condition of target, the unconscious thinking mode can produce moreincubation effect; but with the absence of target, the unconscious thinking mode did not have aincubation effect. That is to say, incubation effect depends on the mission objectives.(4) Though on the number of memories of correct attribute information, no incubationeffect has been found, there is a significant incubation effect on the ability of distinguishingthings with best qualities or worst qualities from others, that is to say, there is a separationbetween unconscious activation and conscious expression in the incubation effect caused by theunconscious processing.(5) The field dependent style shows a stronger incubation effect, because itscharacteristics of information processing are similar to the unconscious processing.