A meta-analytic review of empirical studies that have investigated incubation effects on problem solving is reported. Although some researchers have reported increased solution rates after an incubation period (i.e., a period of time in which a problem is set aside prior to further attempts to solve), others have failed to find effects. The analysis examined the contributions of moderators such as problem type, presence of solution-relevant or misleading cues, and lengths of preparation and incubation periods to incubation effect sizes. The authors identified a positive incubation effect, with divergent thinking tasks benefiting more than linguistic and visual insight tasks from incubation. Longer preparation periods gave a greater incubation effect, whereas filling an incubation period with high cognitive demand tasks gave a smaller incubation effect. Surprisingly, low cognitive demand tasks yielded a stronger incubation effect than did rest during an incubation period when solving linguistic insight problems. The existence of multiple types of incubation effect provides evidence for differential invocation of knowledge-based vs. strategic solution processes across different classes of problem, and it suggests that the conditions under which incubation can be used as a practical technique for enhancing problem solving must be designed with care.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 115. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 August 2026.
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Outputs of similar age from Psychological Bulletin
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Altmetric has tracked 34,205,147 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,610 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 47.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
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