4.2.6 Cognitive Creative Processes (continued)

Currently, major work on the cognitive processes involved in creativity has been carried out by a number of researchers stressed the importance of insight in creative thought. Sternberg and Davidson postulated that three types of insights are involved in creativity. Selective encoding involves separating relevant from irrelevant information. Selective combination entails synthesizing isolated pieces of information into unified wholes. Information is organized in new ways. Selective comparison involves relating new information to old information. These three types of knowledge acquisition set the stage for creative insights. One might speculate that divergent thinking abilities and transformation abilities partially underlie these types of knowledge acquisition and insight abilities.

Weisberg viewed creativity as another form of problem solving that involves matching what one knows with the situation. He stressed the incremental nature of problem solving. There are few real leaps of insight. Rather, novel products evolve in small steps that utilize local memory searches. The incremental nature of problem solving is true in both science and art. Weisberg would agree with Guilford that creative thinking does not involve extraordinary abilities, but rather ordinary cognitive processes that are found in all individuals.

On the other hand, Metcalfe presented evidence that some insight problems are different from memory retrieval tasks. She used a "feeling of knowing" paradigm to determine whether similar processes were involved in an insight problem and a memory-based trivial problem. In two studies, she found that people could predict memory performance fairly well, but could not predict performance for insight problems. She concluded that insight problems do involve a sudden illumination that can not be predicted in advance.

Simon greatly influenced the field with his work on models of information processing and problem solving as they apply to creativity. He also led the way in the area of computer simulation of creative problem solving. His work on selective forgetting and familiarization in memory helps explain the insight process. Langley and Jones developed a computational model of scientific insight. They stressed the importance of use of analogy in creative problem solving. Insight involves the recognition, evaluation, and elaboration of analogies. Memory processes are important in recognizing appropriate analogies for new situations.