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The idea of the prepared-mind proposed by Seifert et
al. (1995) appears to be relevant to the cue-readiness
problem. According to them, when people find a standard
approach inappropriate, they generate failure indices
that mark initial problem solving attempts as unsuccessful.
These failure indices are presumed to have
the special status in long-term memory, in the sense that
they are activated for a longer period than other types
of memory traces. In the incubation phase where people
stop their initial attempts and are engaged in other
activities, a relevant cue is sometimes provided externally,
which reminds them of their initial failure and
leads them to an AHA experience. We agree that failure
and externally provided information play important
roles. However, this idea cannot be applied directly to
the cue-readiness problem, because their idea deals with
a situation where people do not encounter or find crucial
information in the initial phase but are given that information
externally in the incubation phase. The cuereadiness
problem is, however, concerned with a situation
where people find crucial information in the initial
stage.
In order to deal with the cue-readiness problem, we
have developed a dynamic constraint relaxation theory of
insight (Suzuki & Hiraki, 1997; Hiraki & Suzuki, 1998).