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Creative Insight: The Redistribution Theory 93

Amount of
progress
toward the
solution

Time
Search Impasse Renewed
search

Insight
Figure 4.1. Alterations in mode and tempo during the insight sequence.

the theory must specify both the causes of unwarranted impasses and the
processes by which they are resolved. Insight theories that propose causes of
impasses without specifying their resolution fail to explain why insight is pos-
sible, while creative mechanisms unaccompanied by impasse-producing pro-
cesses fail to explain why insights are infrequent. The triggering conditions
for the hypothesized processes should be such as to answer the question of
direction and hence of the aftermath: Why does one insight occur rather than
another? What determines whether an insight is full, partial or false? Insight
events occur in the context of analytical problem solving, so their explanation
has two parts: a mechanism for analytical thinking and the set of additional
hypotheses needed to account for insight.

ANALYTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING
When explaining change, it helps to have a description of the system that is
changing. Analytical thinking unfolds through interactions among three main
processes: problem perception, knowledge retrieval and heuristic search.
The initial perception of the problem serves as a probe for retrieving relevant
knowledge elements from long-term memory, which in turn are applied to the
current state of the problem to constrain the search for the solution. This com-
ponent of the theory of insight is not new but a synthesis of well-established
concepts and principles.