Creative Insight in Duncker's Candle Problem: A Neurobiological
Perspective
Dr. George Terzis
Saint Louis University
I evaluate conflicting interpretations of Duncker' s famous candle problem
to determine whether vision-related insight depends on unconscious processes
that reorganize the problem solver's visual awareness. Although traditional
attempts to establish this conclusion have proved unsuccessful, it is, I
believe, defensible on neurobiological grounds. Paradoxically, part of this
defense may be gleaned from Weisberg and Suls's attempt to show that successful
subjects relied exclusively on conscious cognitive means to solve Ducker'
s problem. According to their research, subjects succeeded, not because they
solved it spontaneously, but because they consciously modified a previous
unsuccessful solution. But the researchers' subjects also relied extensively
on pre-solution imaging, thus making our question: How did such imaging allow
subjects to see the solution relevance of a previously ignored visual object?
I defend a neurobiological answer to this question, one based on a mechanism
suitably responsive to high-level processes.