Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation

Creative thinking is described as being intuitive, being creative and visual; and discovering new ideas. Creative thinking asks questions such as why? What if? What else? In creative thinking, a person can envision potential ideas and alternatives as an approach to problem solving. According to Simpson and Courtney (2002), creative thinking is of its greatest value when known solutions have failed and change has not occurred.

These effects of mind wandering has been shown to be inefficient towards learning and this is due to the fact that while we are engaged in mind wandering our attention is on our internal thoughts and feelings therefore mind wandering impairs the ability to integrate any new information from the external environment (Smallwood et al., 2007). Relating this principle to myself it was clearly evident to me that meditation serves as an antidote for a wandering mind it is beneficial in gaining wisdom about oneself, experiencing positive emotions and improving day to day learning (Moneyham and Schooler, 2013).

In the context of creativity’s stated definition, we will proceed to group our arguments into three themes of factors: cognitive ability, expertise training, and environmental conditions. The human brain is highly adaptable and can continue to develop new cognitive abilities, even past adulthood (Norman, 2015). Proper cognitive expertise and training can help workers produce and operate in ingenious ways (Ginamarie, Lertiz & Mumford, 2004). Finally, the working environment can both motivate or stifle creative output. Managers can influence all three components: expertise, thinking skills, and motivation (Amabile, 1998).

To fully comprehend the extent of the effect mind wandering can have on an individual and their education we must understand how learning in a classroom-based environment tends to work. Many educational tools that are used involve discourse comprehension. Discourse comprehension is explained as an ongoing process where the individual receives stimuli from an external environment, which is then encoded and translated into terms that can be understood and consistent with their internal depictions (Smallwood, Fisherman & Schooler, 2007). The most obvious explanation for mind wanderings negative impact on learning is that it represents a block or breakdown of the normal coupling or comprehension process between the external stimuli to the internal representations (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Discourse comprehension, or processing, is

IQ is defined as a measure of intelligence that shows the ratio of an individual’s mental age to their chronological age, this is then multiplied by 100 (Cattel 1972). Creativity cannot be measured by undertaking an IQ test, creativity is subjective and the simplest way of defining it is the ability to create original, useful and surprising new things. However, over the years pioneering research has inspired psychologists to devise tests to measure creativity. The most famous Divergent Thinking test is Guildfords Alternative Uses Task established in 1967. This test proposes that the individual involved should think of alternative uses for a common item such as a brick. This way of measuring Divergent Thinking is universally used in contemporary testing of creativity.

broader question of what does and does not inhibit creativity.” (931) He states that it seems to be

When I was young I use to love being busy, but my downtime was playing with Barbie’s, watching Disney movies, or being outside with my next door neighbor. To me that was relaxing. In Doing Nothing is Something Anna Quindlen rants between two topics, she says that doing nothing is when the brain is the most creative, and thinks the most. Then Quindlen says that she use to hate being told to go outside and do things. What is doing nothing? “A hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity” (82). Everyone has a different meaning of doing nothing, or what creativity is, and how it comes to be; but nothing is when your mind runs, it isn’t boredom, but entertainment and it’s different for every individual.

For disruptive thinking, an individual must be able to think in creatively. For most people, they believe that creativity is something that a person has genetically, however that is not true. It is a lie that we convince ourselves over the years. Psychologists say that creativity is passed through genetics because they believe that

but when the words won't come - no manner of prayer or curse - baleful incantation or wheedling whining will draw them out. Window gazing does not spark the mind to creative leaps and coffee gets cold too quick and leaves me wanting more, but more also gets cold too quick and a cycle of caffeine winds me up and I am too jittery to type - even if there were words, but the words won't come. I look at the ideas and notes

Ritter and Dijksterhuis (2014) found that unconscious processing during a period of incubation can positively influence creativity. They argued that it is not only the lack of conscious processing during an incubation period, but rather the presence of unconscious thoughts that heavily influence an individual’s level of creativity (Ritter & Dijksterhuis, 2014). Gilhooly, Georgiou, Garrison, Reston, and Sirota (2012) found that immediate incubation periods facilitated in creative tasks, such as the Alternative Uses Task (AUT), through unconscious processes. They suggested that delayed incubation periods can be interfered by conscious processing before the incubation period had initiated, where forgetfulness and unconscious processing are both occurring (Gilhooly et al., 2012). In contrast, an immediate incubation period where only unconscious processing takes place and subsequently followed by conscious problem solving post-incubation, is more effective for creativity (Gilhooly et al., 2012). Despite the supporting evidence, studies, such as Segal (2004), concluded that his findings did not support the evidence of unconscious processing reported in the current literature. Rather, his results supported his ‘returning act hypothesis’ that incubation served as a diversion to rearrange possible accurate assumptions when the participants returned to the target task (Segal, 2004). Hence, this notion of mental rearranging involves conscious processing rather than unconscious

The easiest place to get lost is within our own mind. As a thinker, I often find my mind flooded with many different thoughts. Nonetheless, it is a good thing that my mind is flooded. Whether it be thinking about the next move I will make on the basketball court or thinking about what color will coordinate well with another on a poster or even thinking about the answer to a test question, I always find myself thinking. I enjoy contemplating about the world and everything around me. I love to try and figure out why things happen the way they do. Why is it that some things are the way they are versus other things being completely different? I find it very interesting to just think about common day objects and how they came to be. For example,

According to the article, Mind wandering is defined as attentional shift away from a primary task or ongoing event in the external environment towards internally task-unrelated thoughts or feelings; it is the equivalent of a daydream. Mind wandering has been studied in a variety of ways including lab tests, reading books, and performing everyday tasks. Based on the results of the experiments, tasks that require no thought process at all increase the occurrence of mind wandering. For example, staring at a screen during an hour and fifteen minute lecture class will increase mind wandering. But, it is less frequent in tasks that require a little more brain power such as reading or studying. Researchers then began to ask questions like “would mind wandering happen during motion pictures that were specifically designed to hold viewers’ attention?” Film makers of commercially produced films apply cinematic devices for the purpose keeping viewers’ attention. Film viewing also involves processing information from several methods, which aid in keeping attention. Also, films are entertaining so it should keep our attention for a while. According to the article, there has been some research on the effects of film with mind wandering; but, the MW rates were not

A large proportion of the research on mind wandering has focused on the costs and benefits of mind wandering and how its effects relate to an educational environment. Mind wandering may be defined as the removal of attention from external stimuli or an immediate task towards unrelated concerns such as internal thoughts or imagined scenarios (Burton, Westen, & Kowalski, 2015). While mind wandering has been found to offer both positive and negative impacts, the common interpretation of recent research suggests that the costs of mind wandering significantly outweighs the benefits, particularly in higher education. Mind wandering has been found to have a negative impact on mood and cognitive abilities, including sustained attention, working memory and general intelligence (Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013). In an attempt to review the implications that mind wandering has on learning in higher education, this essay will briefly examine the costs and benefits of mind wandering.

Creativity has been shown to improve through long-distance hiking as it clears the mind and keeps hikers focused. While hiking, hikers use endorphins to mask pain, and dopamine to motivate goal attainment. These combined gives the hiker an exhilarated high that lasts for hours even after the hike has stopped. Studies have shown that this combination can boost your creativity and attention (Franz). Hiking in nature relaxes the competition among different brain activities and allows for a new way of

The present study successfully provided evidence for incubation effects that improved problem solving performance. The findings reported supports the results of Segal (2004), in which an incubation period or taking a break from solving the target problem is more effective on performance than uninterruptedly working through the target problem. The present study has also found that incubation can improve performance in creativity in regards to solving word problems. This was also concluded in Baird et al.’s (2012) paper, where they found that a low cognitive demanding task during incubation