Measuring Intuitive Thinking In Insight In Scientific Inventions And Exploring Its Brain Structures

Insight can be the first step toward creating a groundbreaking product. The Representation Change (RC) Theory and the Progress Monitoring (PM) Theory and other theories of insight have been verified through numerous studies, but they indeed are not so perfect. We put forward a Prototype Heuristic Theory of insight and explored its cognitive mechanism by this study. Based on this theory, insight would occur as soon as the critical heuristic information contained in prototypes was suddenly obtained to play an orientational role in the process of searching the right problem solution searching space.The process of prototype heuristics consists of two stages: "representations connection" stage and "relationship mapping" stage and the core process was the representations connection. In the "representations connection" stage, what mainly involved is automatic thinking process and intuitive thinking. In the "relationship mapping"stage, what mainly involved is controlled thinking process, logical thinking and analysis thinking. The Prototype Heuristic Theory we proposed supposed that the main factor in the "representations connection" stage is the semantic similarity between representations of scientific problems and heuristic prototypes. However, in previous researches, the experiment materials used were all presented in words, the cognitive process of which must be word processing, so it is too hard to explore in a pure intuitive thinking environment without word process, whether the main factor in the "representations connection" stage is still the semantic similarity between representations of scientific problems and heuristic prototypes.Creativity has close relationship with intuitive thinking. The flash of intuitive inspiration always can create new ideas. Intuition is one of the key of creative thinking. The innovative and breakthrough characteristics of creative thinking were mainly realized by intuitive thinking.First, in experiment I, we collected and made into several prototypes presented in videos to complete the Scientific Inventional Problem Material and constructed corresponding indexes. The findings of experiment I lay a foundation for exploring cognitive process of solving creativity problems in reality and the intuitive thinking in scientific inventional process.Then, in experiment II, the "learning-testing" paradigm was adopted and we tested the semantic similarity between scientific inventional problem and prototypes, to explore the relationship between intuitive thinking in insight induced by heuristic prototypes which presented in videos with semantic similarity between scientific inventional problem and prototypes. Our results showed that if individuals could successfully represent the "required-function" of problems and "construction-feature" or "function-feature" of prototypes and found the semantic similarity between the "required-function" of problems and "construction-feature" or "function-feature" of prototypes (especially the "function-feature"), the representations connection would take place between the problem and the certain prototype. After the representations connection taking place between the problem and the certain prototype, the relationship between "means-ends" in the representation of the prototype will be mapped into the "unknown means-similar ends" in the representation of the problem, which is called the process of "relationship mapping". Finally the heuristic information from certain construction of the prototype can be obtained by problem solvers to apply to solving insight problems in scientific innovations.At last, in experiment III, the voxel-based morphometry method was used to uncover focal differences in brain structures related to intuitive thinking in insight induced by heuristic prototypes which presented in videos in 105 healthy young Chinese adults. The results showed that the score of intuitive thinking in insight induced by heuristic prototypes which presented in videos positively correlated with regional gray matter density (rGMD) in the left lingual gyrus and nearly positively correlated with rGMD in the right middle temporal gyrus. Meanwhile,the score of intuitive thinking in insight induced by heuristic prototypes which presented in videos negatively correlated with rGMD in the precentral gyrus and nearly positively correlated with rGMD in the left middle temporal gyrus and left frontal gyrus.People with high intuitive thinking ability may be better at the extraction and utilization of key information contained in prototypes when solving scientific inventional problems.