The Role of Mind Wandering During Incubation in Divergent and Convergent Creative Thinking
Qiuyu Du, Rebecca Gordon, Andrew Tolmie

TL;DR
This study explores how mind wandering during incubation affects creative thinking, finding that its impact is limited and depends on task type and awareness.
Contribution
The study compares effects of two types of mind wandering on divergent and convergent creative thinking, revealing context-dependent outcomes.
Findings
Mind wandering with awareness improved low-difficulty convergent thinking performance.
Mind wandering without awareness hindered moderate-difficulty novel convergent problems.
Divergent and convergent thinking showed no correlation in performance.
Abstract
Background/Objectives. While mind wandering has often been linked to negative outcomes, some research suggests it has potential benefits for creativity, particularly through incubation. However, two critical gaps remain: limited understanding of mind wandering’s effects on creative performance and lack of comparative research examining its impact on both divergent and convergent thinking. The study addressed these gaps by comparing the effects of two types of mind wandering (i.e., with and without awareness) on both types of creative thinking, using repeated and novel problems post-incubation to isolate effects. Methods. Eighty-five participants completed divergent (Unusual Uses Task, UUT) and convergent (Compound Remote Associate Task, CRA) thinking tasks, interspersed with a 0-back incubation task. Thought probes measured mind wandering frequency and awareness. Performance was…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMind wandering and attention · Perfectionism, Procrastination, Anxiety Studies · Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
