ABSTRACT
Incubation refers to the effect in problem solving that spending time away from a creative problem may be beneficial to performance compared to continuous problem solving. The Opportunistic Assimilation theory (Seifert et al., 1995) explains this phenomenon with benefits from cuing from the environment during time away from the problem. The theory states that reaching an impasse on problems will encode ‘failure indices’ in memory that will trigger memory of the problem if the subject later opportunistically encounters information that is relevant to solving the problem. The theory has so far received mixed empirical support. The present research tested hypotheses derived from the Opportunistic Assimilation theory of incubation using insight tasks and an innovative design that allowed for testing analogical retrieval and analogical mapping separately in the same design.
