Preventing fixation: Evidence of item-method directed forgetting protecting against mental impasses in creative problem-solving.

ABSTRACT: Creative problem-solving can be impeded by mental impasses which are caused by fixation on associated but misguiding ideas. Recently, research has focused on the question of which processes might be involved in overcoming fixation and how it can be prevented from occurring altogether. In the present study, we investigated whether initially encoded fixation words can be forgotten by means of item-method directed forgetting, a procedure in which participants are presented with a series of items that are each followed by a remember cue or forget cue. Here, the series of items partly consisted of words that were misleadingly associated with compound remote associate problems that had to be solved later on. Two groups were compared: For one group, fixation words were followed by forget cues (fi

SUBMITTER: Gauselmann P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12000249 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature