How can taking a break help us solve problems more effortlessly?

[zoobyshoe]

I'd thought this was a well established fact for most of my life, as it explains some personal experiences that would be difficult to explain otherwise. Only here, with talk of scientific evidence, did it occur to question this. I've tried and haven't found a lot of reliable material, but I'm not good at looking for this.

Here are some
'There is in fact experimental evidence that both defocused attention (Dewing & Battye 1971; Dykes & McGhie 1976; Mendelsohn 1976), and high sensitivity (Martindale & Armstrong 1974; Martindale 1977), including sensitivity to subliminal impressions (Smith & Van de Meer 1994) are associated with creativity.' http://cogprints.org/2105/00/inklings.htm

Martindale (1999) identified a cluster of attributes associated with high creativity. One is defocused attention: the tendency not to focus exclusively on the relevant aspects of a situation, but notice also seemingly irrelevant aspects (Dewing & Battye, 1971; Dykes & McGhie, 1976; Mendelsohn, 1976). A related attribute is high sensitivity (Martindale, 1977, 1999; Martindale & Armstrong, 1974), including sensitivity to subliminal impressions; stimuli that are perceived but of which one has no memory (Smith & Van de Meer, 1994).http://cogprints.org/3417/01/cf.htm

And,
So we did that study, and what we found from the debriefing was indeed that they were thinking at a very free-floating way that's kind of analogous to what is characterised as free association in psychoanalytic thinking. And what we observed during 'rest' was that the parts of the brain that are active during rest are the parts that we call the association cortex. The association cortex has no specific function; it's part of the brain and you know we have about four association cortices in our brains spotted around in different locations. They're the parts of the brain that make connections with other parts of the brain. So my theory is that during the creative process which derives from these kind of unconscious states that we go into when we free-associate or when our brain 'rests' – during that, ideas are floating around, colliding, making connections, sometimes the connections are not very important or trivial but sometimes they're original. And people who have especially well developed association cortices are likely to be more creative. That's the working theory, and I'm just embarking on a study right now of highly creative people using functional imaging and using tasks or conditions where I can study the way their association cortex works. I mean I'm giving them tasks that will stimulate their creativity and then see if indeed that draws on their association cortex. It's actually one of the more fun studies I've done.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/stories/s1580738.htm

Fuzzyfelt: thanks for posting this. It took me a couple years to get round to reading the links, but they are quite interesting. I recommend them to anyone interested in this thread.

 

[Proton Soup]

i don't think there's anything "savant" about this. i think it's pretty common and just the way brains work.

 

[zoobyshoe]

i don't think there's anything "savant" about this. i think it's pretty common and just the way brains work.

That's the point made here about savant brains:

http://wireheading.com/brainstim/savant.html

There's nothing "savant" about them. They're normal brains with some functions subtracted.

 

[FredericGos]

i don't think there's anything "savant" about this. i think it's pretty common and just the way brains work.

yes, I didnt mean that some of us are savants because we experience these things. My point was that we all do because the brain works in this 'layered' way. So savants are just normal people lacking some functionality in their brains.

 

[WARGREYMONKKTL]

Something similar can happen when ur sleeping. It turns out that while ur asleep the brain reorganises information and u end up with a better memory the next day.


May I ask, where did you get this information? Is it from a book?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Something similar can happen when ur sleeping. It turns out that while ur asleep the brain reorganises information and u end up with a better memory the next day.


May I ask, where did you get this information? Is it from a book?

PIT2 can't answer your quetion. He's been banned, as indicated by a horizontal slash through his username.

 

[Frame Dragger]

This is a common technique among artists.

I'm rather surprised that everyone is talking about this as if there's so little study done on it.

While I believe that the left-brain / right brain model has been somewhat discredited, the work done on localized task delegation is still valid isn't it? Parts of the mind are better at vocal, talking, analyzing, word-based tasks, while other parts are better at visual, creative, holistic picture-based tasks.

When you're stuck on a problem, it's because your dominant analytical mind is fully active and overrides the more passive, less communicative holistic mind. Unfortunately, the analytical mind also quite linear, and won't choose the path less taken.

By talking a break, or distracting yourself, your analytical mind moves on to something else. This is gives your more passive, creative, but less communicative mind a chance to tackle the problem. It has no problem taking illogical paths, which is often what needs to happen when you're at a logical dead-end.

Oh yes, and in fact the easiest way to test this is often done in basic learning trials. Introduce someone to a "racing" videogame, and let them run through a difficult course many times. Have them take a break, (better yet a night's sleep) and come back to it; they tend to improve far more than one who continues to hammer at it. Our minds organize memory while dreaming, but much of this organization and consideration is subliminal and done during waking. It's fun, but it also points out the "ensemble" nature of human consciousness; we think a lot, but much of the work isn't done with conscious deliberation.