ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2015
Sudden insight is associated with shutting out visual inputs.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed.
- Eye behavior does not adapt to expected visual distraction during internally directed cognition.PloS one · 2018Trial
- Navigating the Garden Path: Evidence for Restructuring as a Shared Process.Journal of Intelligence · 2026Article
- The white matter of Aha! moments.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Multiunit and oscillatory activity in macaque V1 is modulated by blinking in a context-dependent way.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Exploring Creativity Through the Eyes: A New Framework Using Rorschach Inkblot Test Metrics.Annals of neurosciences · 2025Article
- In the blink of an eye: behavioural correlates of the confirmation bias effect.Cognitive processing · 2025Article
- Tulving's (1989) Doctrine of Concordance Revisited.Journal of cognition · 2025Review
- Can rewards enhance creativity? Exploring the effects of real and hypothetical rewards on creative problem solving and neural mechanisms.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2024Article
- Eye movements track prioritized auditory features in selective attention to natural speech.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Electroencephalography Spectral-power Volatility Predicts Problem-solving Outcomes.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Ambient and focal attention during complex problem-solving: preliminary evidence from real-world eye movement data.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Solving problems with an Aha! increases risk preference.Thinking & reasoning · 2024Article
- Gestalt's Perspective on Insight: A Recap Based on Recent Behavioral and Neuroscientific Evidence.Journal of Intelligence · 2023Review
- Identification of Language-Induced Mental Load from Eye Behaviors in Virtual Reality.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Insight Problem Solving Ability Predicts Reduced Susceptibility to Fake News, Bullshit, and Overclaiming.Thinking & reasoning · 2023Article
- The effects of type and workload of internal tasks on voluntary saccades in a target-distractor saccade task.PloS one · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal phase slip patterns for visual evoked potentials, covert object naming tasks, and insight moments extracted from 256 channel EEG recordings.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2023Article
- Quantifying the roles of conscious and unconscious processing in insight-related memory effectiveness within standard and creative advertising.Psychological research · 2022Article
- Eliciting false insights with semantic priming.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2022Article
- Long-Latency Event-Related Potentials (300-1000 ms) of the Visual Insight.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Creative ideas seem often to appear when we close our eyes, stare at a blank wall, or gaze out of a window--all signs of shutting out distractions and turning attention inward. Prior research has demonstrated that attention-related brain areas are differently active when people solve problems with sudden insight (the Aha! phenomenon), relative to deliberate, analytic solving. We directly investigated the relationship between attention deployment and problem solving by recording eye movements and blinks, which are overt indicators of attention, as people solved short, visually presented problems. In the preparation period, before problems eventually solved by insight, participants blinked more frequently and longer, and made fewer fixations, than before problems eventually solved by analysis. Immediately prior to solutions, participants blinked longer and looked away from the problem more often when solving by insight than when solving analytically. These phenomena extend prior research with a direct demonstration of dynamic differences in attention as people solve problems with sudden insight versus analytically.
Indexed as
Identifiers
26268431What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.