Chapter 26 Exercises

Creativity and Insight: The Cognitive Science of Having Good Ideas

Section A: Foundational Concepts (Remember/Understand)

Exercise 1: The Three Phases of Insight Without looking at the chapter, describe the three phases of insight problem solving in order. For each phase, write one sentence explaining what happens cognitively. Then explain why the first phase (impasse) is actually necessary for insight to occur — why can't you skip straight to the Aha moment?

Exercise 2: Terminology Matching Match each term to its correct definition without looking at the chapter:

Exercise 3: True or False Determine whether each statement is true or false. If false, explain why.

a) Creative ideas emerge from generating something entirely new out of nothing.

b) Incubation works best when preceded by genuine, effortful engagement with the problem.

c) Divergent thinking alone is sufficient for creativity — convergent thinking just gets in the way.

d) Brain imaging shows that insight involves a burst of neural activity in the right anterior temporal lobe.

e) Constraints always reduce creativity because they limit the range of possible solutions.

f) The "ten-year rule" suggests that creative eminence in any field typically requires about a decade of intensive preparation.

g) Brainstorming groups consistently produce more and better ideas than the same number of individuals working alone.

h) Functional fixedness is a consequence of the same categorization efficiency that makes experts good at routine tasks.

Exercise 4: Fill in the Gaps Complete each sentence from memory:

a) Graham Wallas's 1926 model of creative thought proposed four stages: _, _, _, and _.

b) Sarnoff Mednick proposed that creative thinking is fundamentally about making _ — connections between ideas that are _ in your mental network.

c) The SCAMPER technique includes seven prompts: _, _, _, _, _, _, and _.

d) Sio and Ormerod's meta-analysis found that the incubation effect was strongest for problems requiring _ and was larger when the incubation period involved _ rather than demanding tasks or doing nothing.

e) Karl Duncker's candle problem demonstrated _ — participants couldn't see the box of thumbtacks as a potential _ for the candle.

Exercise 5: The Creativity-Expertise Connection In your own words, explain why creativity and expertise are partners rather than opposites. Use at least three specific concepts from Chapters 25 and 26 in your explanation (e.g., knowledge restructuring, remote associations, combinatorial view, deep processing, Dreyfus model).

Section B: Application (Apply/Analyze)

Exercise 6: Diagnosing Creative Blocks Read each scenario below. Identify the specific creative barrier at work (fixation, functional fixedness, divergent-only without convergence, convergent-only without divergence, lack of domain knowledge, or lack of incubation). Explain your diagnosis using concepts from the chapter.

a) Priya has been staring at her engineering design project for four hours straight. She keeps trying variations of the same basic approach, each one failing for similar reasons. She refuses to take a break because she feels like she's "almost there."

b) Marcus (our career changer from earlier chapters) is trying to learn data visualization. He has lots of creative ideas about how to present information, but when he tries to implement them, he doesn't have the technical skills to evaluate which approaches would actually communicate the data clearly. His designs look creative but are confusing.

c) A team is working on redesigning a product. They spend two hours generating wild ideas on a whiteboard, filling it with possibilities. Then they go home. The next day, they generate more ideas. After a week, they have hundreds of ideas and no product. Nobody wants to be "the person who says no."

d) A student is asked to use a paperclip for something other than clipping papers. She stares at it and says, "It's a paperclip. It clips papers. What else would you do with it?"

e) A writer has been working on a novel for three years and has done extensive research on the historical period, developed complex characters, and mapped out a detailed plot. But the opening chapter still doesn't work. He revises it for the fifteenth time, using the same basic structure he started with.

Exercise 7: Applying SCAMPER Choose a learning strategy you currently use (e.g., flashcards, summarization, a note-taking method, a study schedule). Apply all seven SCAMPER prompts to it. For each prompt, generate at least one specific idea:

• S (Substitute): What component could you replace?
• C (Combine): What could you merge this strategy with?
• A (Adapt): What idea from a completely different domain could you borrow?
• M (Modify): What would happen if you changed the scale, frequency, or intensity?
• P (Put to other uses): How could this strategy be applied in a context you haven't tried?
• E (Eliminate): What step could you remove? What's unnecessary?
• R (Reverse): What would happen if you did it backwards, flipped the order, or switched roles?

After generating ideas from all seven prompts, switch to convergent thinking: Which two ideas are most promising? Why?

Exercise 8: Constraint Manipulation in Practice Think about a learning challenge you're currently facing. Follow the Constraint Manipulation Protocol:

a) List all the constraints on the problem — both real constraints (externally imposed) and assumed constraints (things you've assumed are fixed but might not be).

b) For each assumed constraint, ask: "Is this actually necessary? What happens if I remove it?"

c) Now add a new constraint that doesn't currently exist. Choose something provocative: "I can only study for 15 minutes at a time." "I have to explain everything to a child." "I can't use any written notes." What new approaches does this forced constraint reveal?

d) Reflect: Did the constraint manipulation produce ideas you wouldn't have generated through normal problem-solving?

Exercise 9: Incubation Design Design an incubation protocol for yourself. Be specific:

a) Identify a problem you're currently stuck on (academic, creative, professional, or personal).

b) Describe the preparation work you've already done on it — have you genuinely engaged with the problem, or do you need more preparation before incubation can be effective?

c) Plan your incubation activity: What light, undemanding activity will you do? How long will the break be? (Research suggests 20 minutes to overnight is effective, depending on the problem.)

d) How will you capture insights when they arrive? What tools will you have accessible?

e) How will you verify any insights you generate during incubation?

Section C: Evaluation and Synthesis (Evaluate/Create)

Exercise 10: Analyzing Sofia's Creative Process Using the framework from this chapter, analyze Sofia Reyes's creative breakthrough with the Elgar Cello Concerto. Address each of the following:

a) How does Sofia's breakthrough illustrate the combinatorial view of creativity? What specific elements were being "combined"?

b) What role did analogical thinking play? What was the analogy, and was it based on surface similarity or structural similarity?

c) Where do you see incubation operating in Sofia's creative process?

d) How did Sofia's expertise (Chapter 25) serve as the foundation for her creativity? Could a less skilled cellist have had the same creative insight?

e) Connect Sofia's experience to the chapter's argument that creativity and expertise are partners, not opposites.

Exercise 11: The Myth of the Untrained Genius The chapter argues that the "untrained genius" narrative is almost always misleading. Choose one of the following figures (or a creative figure of your own choosing) and research or reflect on the role of preparation, domain knowledge, and deliberate practice in their creative achievements:

• Mozart
• The Beatles
• Picasso
• Marie Curie
• Lin-Manuel Miranda
• A creative figure from your own field

Write a one-paragraph analysis that addresses: How does this person's creative trajectory illustrate the ten-year rule? What domain knowledge did they build before their breakthrough? How does their story challenge or support the combinatorial view of creativity?

Exercise 12: Cross-Chapter Synthesis For each pair of concepts, explain the connection in your own words:

a) Default mode network (Chapter 4) and incubation (Chapter 26) — How does the DMN contribute to creative problem solving during breaks?

b) Deep processing (Chapter 12) and remote associations (Chapter 26) — Why does deeply processed knowledge produce more creative connections than shallowly processed knowledge?

c) Adaptive expertise (Chapter 25) and breaking fixation (Chapter 26) — How does adaptive expertise protect against the kind of fixation that blocks creativity? Why is routine expertise more susceptible to fixation?

d) Analogical transfer (Chapter 11) and creativity as combinatorial (Chapter 26) — How is analogical thinking the mechanism through which combinatorial creativity operates?

Exercise 13: Design a Creative Problem-Solving Session You've been asked to lead a one-hour creative problem-solving session for a group working on a challenging project. Using what you've learned in this chapter, design the session structure. Be specific about:

a) How will you ensure adequate preparation before the creative session? b) How will you structure the divergent thinking phase? How long, what rules, what technique? c) How will you manage the transition to convergent thinking? d) Will you include any form of incubation? How? e) Will you use constraints? Which ones, and why? f) What will you avoid (based on the brainstorming research)?

Section D: Reflection

Exercise 14: Your Creative Self-Assessment Write a one-page reflection addressing these questions:

• Before reading this chapter, would you have described yourself as "creative"? Has your answer changed? Why or why not?
• Think about a time you had a genuine creative insight — a moment when you saw a problem differently or made an unexpected connection. Can you identify the cognitive mechanisms at work? (Incubation? Remote association? Constraint-forced restructuring? Breaking fixation?)
• What is the relationship between your domain expertise and your creative potential? Where do you need to build deeper knowledge before you can be more creative?
• How might you deliberately build more creative capacity — not through "being more creative" as a personality trait, but through specific cognitive practices (wider reading, diverse experiences, deliberate analogical thinking, incubation protocols)?

This reflection connects to your progressive project (Phase 4) and will inform your Learning Operating System in Chapter 28.

These exercises cover all five learning objectives and span Bloom's levels from Remember through Create. Complete at least Exercises 1-4 (Section A) and one exercise from each of Sections B, C, and D for a thorough review of the chapter's core concepts.