Exploring the Predictive Power of Eye Movements on Insight Problem Solving

The precise mechanisms precipitating the process of representational change in problem solving have been investigated for nearly a century. One current hypothesis is that analyzing the unchanging elements of previous attempts may facilitate restructuring. We investigated this hypothesis by providing solvers with three common examples of unsuccessful problem attempts, their own problem attempts, or no previous attempts. The prior attempts conditions eliminated the need to rely on working memory to access previous unsuccessful attempts. While there was no evidence for an overall effect of the prior attempts conditions, cognitive reflection was identified as a reliable predictor of restructuring and solving. Eye-tracking data were collected to further investigate the contributions of these systems to fixations while solving. The current study is an exploratory analysis of this data, with analyses focusing on participants' fixations on problem-irrelevant space and unsuccessful attempts.