The Cognitive–Creative Profiles of Insightful Problem Solvers: A Person-Centered Insight Study

Abstract

This study aimed to portray insightful problem solvers. Participants solved classic insight problems and rebuses and completed cognitive and creativity tasks. Grouping the participants based on their success in solving insight problems of different modalities revealed that 95% of the spatial problem solvers succeeded in solving verbal ones (spatial verbal solvers) but not vice versa. Verbal problem solvers were not necessarily able to solve spatial ones. A latent class analysis (LCA) based on relationships among the cognitive and creativity variables confirmed these two types of insightful solvers. It portrayed two compatible classes of experts and successful solvers alongside two classes of low-level solvers. The former classes excelled in solving rebuses and verbal problems, yet the experts outperformed the others in spatial problems. Both classes scored higher in spatial divergent thinking measures than the low-level solvers. However, the experts benefited additionally from verbal divergent thinking and associative combination ability. Seemingly, should retrieval of diverse ideas be insufficient to solve the problem, the experts combine ideas by a novel association, thereby generating an insight. Moreover, individual differences in working memory indicated that experts favor associative–automatic strategy, whereas successful solvers utilize analytic strategy. These profiles illuminate “insight” in terms of cognitive and creative styles.