Failure Indices

From Jsarmi

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).