ABSTRACT
Creative problems require the production of solutions novel to the solver. It has often been proposed that novel solution ideas can be facilitated by setting the problem aside for a time, after a period of preliminary work. Personal accounts of this phenomenon by many eminent creative thinkers in a range of domains have often been reported (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Ghiselin, 1952). In his analysis of creative thinking, Wallas (1926, p. 80) labelled a stage in which the problem is set aside and not consciously worked on as ‘‘Incubation’’, and this stage is addressed in the present study.
