Creative processes benefit from a temporary distraction, the ‘incubation phase’. Distraction may stimulate largely unconscious processes active during incubation, such as dissociation and bisociation, both contributing to originality. Educators could enhance students’ incubation by inserting a well-chosen contrasting sub-task, that distracts from the target task. It therefore stimulates the ongoing unconscious processes generating original ideas. Such a task might be found in contrasting Arts disciplines.

The research aims to define, develop and test such contrasting sub-tasks. After instructional design studies, we will test the effectiveness on creative ideation after incubation, originality of the final product and metacognition, prerequisite for near-transfer.

Funded by: NWO Promotiebeurs voor Leraren