Carruthers reports that taking a short break in the middle of a task supports creative thinking. In her presentation, Carruthers shares information about a study during which 100 people were asked to think of unusual uses for a familiar object, such as a brick. The total number of ideas generated was included in the analysis of performance as was the number of types of ideas and how creative and unusual the options presented were.
In the middle of the process of trying to come up with those unusual uses, 75 of the 100 participants were asked to work on a different, irrelevant task for five minutes. When the work of the interrupted 75 before and after that break was compared, Carruthers found a higher proportion of ideas were from new categories and a greater proportion of ideas were original after the break than before the five-minute diversions. So, breaks in the middle of creative tasks have some value.
Lindsey Carruthers. 2016. “Give It a Rest: A Short Distraction from a Creative Problem-Solving Task Can Increase the Proportion of Flexible and Original Ideas.” August 31, British Psychological Society, Cognitive Psychology Section Annual Conference, Barcelona, Spain.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.