The purpose of this study is to demonstrate a constraint
relaxation which is followed by the transition to an
appropriate representation in insight problem solving. The
puzzle game “Tangram” was used as a new insight problem,
in which problem-solvers were presented a silhouette and
asked to make the same configuration by arranging 7 pieces.
At the beginning, problem-solvers had a constraint allocating
the pieces into a geometric shape, but then relaxed this to
reach the correct configuration at a later stage of problem
solving. Participants’ subjective assessments of their
confidence to reach the solution predicted neither the
constraint relaxation nor the successful problem solving.
However, eye-tracking data suggested that the successful
problem-solvers tended to search the problem space more
widely than the unsuccessful-problem solvers.