Paper Status Tracking

Journals by Title

Journals by Subject

Contact us

	[email protected]
	3275638434

	Paper Publishing WeChat

Useful Links

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Article

Open Access

Forgetting In Creative Problem Solving for College Students

Author(s)

ZHAO Yue

Full-Text PDF Download XML 816 Views

DOI:10.17265/2159-5542/2022.03.008

Affiliation(s)

Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT

As more and more benefits of forgetting have been found in recent studies, whether forgetting could promote individual’s ability of creative problem solving remains a controversial debate. This article discusses the effect of two types of forgetting, the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) and the forgetting during incubation, in benefiting creative problem solving by introducing and analysing the relevant experiments. The results reveal that retrieval-induced forgetting only works when previous mental fixations occurred and the promotion varies when solving different types of problems. The level of RIF is irrelevant to the performance in solving closed-ended creative problems and high level of RIF even impairs the creativity when solving open-ended problems. And forgetting during incubation cannot explain the incubation effect. The spreading activation of relevant information or the unconscious work is more likely to be the possible reasons. In conclusion, the current article brings about the discussions about the work conditions and effects of forgetting in creative problem solving.

KEYWORDS

retrieval-induced forgetting, incubation, creative problem solving

Cite this paper

Psychology Research, March 2022, Vol. 12, No. 3, 145-152

References

Anderson, M. C. (2003). Rethinking interference theory: Executive control and the mechanisms of forgetting. Journal of Memory and Language, 49(4), 415-445.

Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: Retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(5), 1063.

Bristol, A. S., & Viskontas, I. V. (2006). Dynamic processes within associative memory stores: Piecing together the neural basis of creative cognition. In J. C. Kaufman and J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity and reason in cognitive development (pp. 60-80). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, J. (1958). Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10, 12-21.

Campbell, J. I., & Thompson, V. A. (2012). Retrieval-induced forgetting of arithmetic facts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38(1), 118.

Giebl, S., Storm, B. C., Buchli, D. R., Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2016). Retrieval-induced forgetting is associated with increased positivity when imagining the future. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(2), 351-360.

Gilhooly, K. J. (2016). Incubation and intuition in creative problem solving. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1076.

Gilhooly, K. J., Georgiou, G., & Devery, U. (2013). Incubation and creativity: Do something different. Thinking & Reasoning, 19(2), 137-149.

Hardt, O., Nader, K., & Nadel, L. (2013). Decay happens: The role of active forgetting in memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(3), 111-120.

Levy, B. J., McVeigh, N. D., Marful, A., & Anderson, M. C. (2007). Inhibiting your native language: The role of retrieval-induced forgetting during second-language acquisition. Psychological Science, 18(1), 29-34.

Lin, W. L., & Lien, Y. W. (2013). Exploration of the relationships between retrieval-induced forgetting effects with open-ended versus closed-ended creative problem solving. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 10, 40-49.

MacLeod, M. (2002). Retrieval-induced forgetting in eyewitness memory: Forgetting as a consequence of remembering. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 16(2), 135-149.

Mednick, S. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69(3), 220.

Olson, K. R., Heberlein, A. S., Kensinger, E., Burrows, C., Dweck, C. S., Spelke, E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2013). The role of forgetting in undermining good intentions. PloS One, 8(11), e79091.

Peterson, L., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(3), 193.

Robertson, G. S. (June, 26, 2009). A brief history of the mathematical definition of forgetting curves. Friday.

Sio, U. N., & Rudowicz, E. (2007). The role of an incubation period in creative problem solving. Creativity Research Journal, 19(2-3), 307-318.

Smith, S. M. (1995). Fixation, incubation, and insight in memory and creative thinking. The Creative Cognition Approach, 135, 156.

Smith, S. M., & Blankenship, S. E. (1989). Incubation effects. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 27(4), 311-314.

Smith, S. M., & Blankenship, S. E. (1991). Incubation and the persistence of fixation in problem solving. American Journal of Psychology, 104, 61-87.

Storm, B. C. (2011). The benefit of forgetting in thinking and remembering. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(5), 291-295.

Storm, B. C., & Angello, G. (2010). Overcoming fixation: Creative problem solving and retrieval-induced forgetting. Psychological Science, 21(9), 1263-1265.

Storm, B. C., Angello, G., & Bjork, E. L. (2011). Thinking can cause forgetting: Memory dynamics in creative problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(5), 1287.

Storm, B. C., & Koppel, R. H. (2012). Testing the cue dependence of problem-solving-induced forgetting. The Journal of Problem Solving, 4(2), 4.

Tulving, E. (1974). Cue-dependent forgetting: When we forget something we once knew, it does not necessarily mean that the memory trace has been lost; it may only be inaccessible. American Scientist, 62(1), 74-82.

Underwood, B. J. (1957). Interference and forgetting. Psychological Review, 64(1), 49.

Valueva, E., & Lapteva, N. (2020). Do we need to forget fixations to incubate? A paradox of the forgetting fixation theory. Psychology, 17(4), 682-695.

Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12(3), 129-140.

Wikipedia contributors. (2021a, May 23). Forgetting. Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 5, 2021 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forgetting&oldid=1024607612

Wikipedia contributors. (2021b, March 10). Creative problem-solving. Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 23, 2021 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creative_problem-solving&oldid=1011450550

Wu, C. (1998). The Chinese version of the creative thinking test. Taiwan: Foundation for Scholarly Exchange.

Yaniv, I., & Meyer, D. E. (1987). Activation and metacognition of inaccessible stored information: Potential bases for incubation effects in problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13(2), 187.