Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Remote associates problems (RAP) have been widely used to measure creative processes. However, studies haverarely explored the RAP processes. The main purpose of this study was to record eye movements while solving RAP. Theresults show that: (1) The mean fixation duration increases throughout the problem-solving process, which indicates that moreproblem solvers encounter impasses. This result supports the “impasse encounter” phase of insight. (2) During the initial periodof problem solving, individuals display more regression counts in the fixation region than in the key region, which supportsthat the impasses are caused by inappropriate initial representation. (3) During the middle period of the process, the timeindividuals spend gazing at the key region increases, while the time spend at the fixation region decreases. This supports the“impasse resolution and insight” phase of insight.