Tracing the Spark of Creative Problem-SolvingBy BENEDICT CAREYPublished:
December 6, 20The puzzles look easy, and mostly they are. Given three words —
“trip,” “house” and “goal,” for example — find a fourth that will complete a compound
word with each. A minute or so of mental trolling (housekeeper, goalkeeper, trip?)
is all it usually takes.
Craig Frazier
Multimedia
Craig Frazier
The payoff of tackling a mental exercise: leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis
And that escape is all the more tantalizing for being incomplete. Unlike the
cryptic social and professional mazes of real life, puzzles are reassuringly soluble;
but like any serious problem, they require more than mere intellect to crack.
cryptic social and professional mazes of real life, puzzles are reassuringly soluble;
but like any serious problem, they require more than mere intellect to crack.
“It’s imagination, it’s inference, it’s guessing; and much of it is happening subconsciously,”
said Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto and the
author of “The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life.”
“It’s all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order
from chaos,” Dr. Danesi said. “And once you have, you can sit back and say, ‘
Hey, the rest of my life may be a disaster, but at least I have a solution.’ ”For almost a century
scientists have used puzzles to study what they call insight thinking, the leaps of understanding
that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis.In one classic
experiment, the German psychologist Karl Duncker presented people with a candle, a box
of thumbtacks and the assignment of attaching the candle to a wall. About a quarter
of the subjects in some studies thought to tack the box to the wall as a support — some
immediately, and others after a few failed efforts to tack wax to drywall.The creative leap
may well be informed by subconscious cues. In another well-known experiment,
psychologists challenged people to tie together two cords; the cords hung from the
ceiling of a large room, too far apart to be grabbed at the same time.
a pair of pliers to one cord and swinging it like a pendulum so that it could be caught
while they held the other cord. In some experiments researchers gave hints to those
who were stumped — for instance, by bumping into one of the strings so that it swung.
Many of those who then solved the problem said they had no recollection of the hint,
though it very likely registered subconsciously.All along, researchers debated the
definitions of insight and analysis, and some have doubted that the two are any
more than sides of the same coin. Yet in an authoritative review of the research,
the psychologists Jonathan W. Schooler and Joseph Melcher concluded that
the abilities most strongly correlated with insight problem-solving “were not
significantly correlated” with solving analytical problems.
Either way, creative problem-solving usually requires both analysis
and sudden out-of-the-box insight.
“You really end up toggling between the two, but I think that they are truly
different brain states,” said Adam Anderson, a psychologist at the
University of Toronto.
At least, that is what brain-imaging studies are beginning to show. At first,
such studies did little more than confirm that the process was happening as
expected: brain areas that register reward spiked in activity when people came
up with a solution, for instance..Yet the “Aha!” moment of seeing a solution
is only one step along a pathway. In a series of recent studies, Dr. Beeman at
Northwestern and John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, have imaged
people’s brains as they prepare to tackle a puzzle but before they’ve seen it.
Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity,
one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely
to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can
be solved either way).This signature includes strong activation in a brain area
called the anterior cingulate cortex. Previous research has found that cells in this
area are active when people widen or narrow their attention — say, when they filter
out distractions to concentrate on a difficult task, like listening for a voice in a noisy
room. In this case of insight puzzle-solving, the brain seems to widen its attention, in
effect making itself more open to distraction, to weaker connections..At this point we
have strong circumstantial evidence that this resting state predicts how you solve
problems later on,” Dr. Kounios said, “and that it may in fact vary by individual.”“
The punch line is that a good joke can move the brain toward just this kind of state.
In their humor study, Dr. Beeman and Dr. Subramaniam had college students solve
word-association puzzles after watching a short video of a stand-up routine by Robin
Williams. The students solved more of the puzzles over all, and significantly more by
sudden insight, compared with when they’d seen a scary or boring video beforehand.
This diffuse brain state is not only an intellectual one, open to looser connections
between words and concepts. In a study published last year, researchers at the University
of Toronto found that the visual areas in people in positive moods picked up more background
detail, even when they were instructed to block out distracting information during a
computer task.
The findings fit with dozens of experiments linking positive moods to better creative
problem-solving. “The implication is that positive mood engages this broad, diffuse
attentional state that is both perceptual and visual,” said Dr. Anderson. “You’re not
only thinking more broadly, you’re literally seeing more. The two systems are working
in parallel.”
The idea that a distracted brain can be a more insightful one is still a work in progress.
So, for that matter, is the notion that puzzle-solving helps the brain in any way to navigate
the labyrinth of soured relationships, uncertain career options or hard choices that so
often define the world outside.
But at the very least, acing the Saturday crossword or some mind-bending Sudoku
suggests that some of the tools for the job are intact. And as any puzzle-head can attest,
that buoyant, open state of mind isn’t a bad one to try on for size once in a while.
Whether you’re working a puzzle or not.
