The Effect Of Insight Experience On Old Problem Re-solving And Similar Problem Solving

The insight memory advantage refers to the situation in which memory performance could be improved by solving a problem with insight experience.In re?solution tests and recognition or recall tests,several studies demonstrated an insight memory advantage by spontaneous insight or induced insight paradigms.For recognition and recall tests,previous study has been fully explored this effect.For the re?solution test,the neural mechanisms of the effect of induced insight were studied by the f MRI technique.However,the neural mechanisms of the effect of insight on re?solution in the temporal dimension were not known.In addition,people would not only re-solve old problems in daily life,but also usually solved the variation of old problems.However,the neural mechanism of the effect of insight on similar problem solving was not known.In order to solve these issues,the present study adopted the study-test paradigm,and designed two experiments to investigate the neural mechanisms of the effect of insight on old problem re-solving and similar problem solving by ERP technology.The Experiment 1 consisted of two sub-experiments,which respectively examined the neural mechanism of the effect of spontaneous insight and induced insight experience on resolution.A within?subjects design was employed in in each sub-experiment.The independent variable was the type of experience at the study phase,and the dependent variable was the resolution rate,the reaction times(RTs)of re-solution,insight rate and ERP amplitude for old problems.Experiment 1a investigated the neural mechanism of the effect of spontaneous insight on re-solution.A total of 25 subjects participated in this experiment.Experiment 1b investigated the neural mechanism of the effect of induced insight on re-solution.A total of 22 subjects participated in this experiment.The results showed that:(1)in study phase,insight items induced a more negative N400.(2)compared with non-insight items,insight items during study phase were re?solved better in test phase.(3)compared with non-insight items,spontaneous insight items during solution induced a more positive P300 waveform and induced insight items induced larger P300 components,smaller N400 components and larger LPC components in test phase.These results indicated that insight experience could promote the re-solution of old problems.Experiment 2 consisted of two sub-experiments.Experiment 2a was mainly to evaluate the materials of similar problems;Experiment 2b was to investigate the neural mechanism of the effect of spontaneous insight on similar problem solving.This sub-experiment was 2 × 2within-subjects designed.The independent variables were the type of experience at the study phase and the type of similar problem.The dependent variable is the solution rate,the RTs of solution,insight rate and ERP amplitude for similar problems.The results showed that:(1)compared with the non-insight item,the spontaneous insight item induced a larger N400 component in the study phase.(2)in terms of solution rate,the solution rate of similar problems whose answers were consistent with the answers of old problems was higher than that of similar problems whose answers were inconsistent answers with the answers of old problems;the solution rate of similar problems with consistent answers to problems solved by insight in study phase was higher than that of similar problems with consistent answers to problems solved by non-insight in study phase;the solution rate of similar problems with inconsistent answers to problems solved by insight in study phase was lower than that of similar problems with inconsistent answers to problems solved by non-insight in study phase,in terms of RTs of solution,the RTs of solution of similar problems with consistent answers was shorter than that of similar problems with inconsistent answers.(3)compared with similar problems with inconsistent answers,similar problems with consistent answers induced smaller N2 components in the test phase.(4)similar problems with consistent answers to problems solving by insight in study phase elicit smaller N400 components than similar problems with consistent answers to problems solved by non-insight in study phase;similar problems with inconsistent answers to problems solving by insight in study phase elicit larger N400 components than similar problems with inconsistent answers to problems solved by non-insight in study phase,but this was not significantly.These results indicated that insight experience could promote the recall of the old problem method and produce different mechanisms for different types of similar problems.