Abstract: There are four influential hypotheses pertaining to the cognitive mechanism of insight, which is the focus of current research on insight problem solving: (1) representation changing hypothesis, (2) constraints hypothesis, (3) structural hypothesis, (4) selective processing hypothesis. Based on these hypotheses, Zhang Qinglin proposed that in reality, insight should be caused by “prototypal events activation”; this suggests that the key to solving insight problems is to activate the “prototypal event” correctly and gain “key heuristic information” under experimental conditions. Based on Zhang’s hypothesis, the present study was designed to explore the emotion promoting effect in the logogriph activation of Chinese characters. We adopted the microgenetic method and constructed a new experimental paradigm called “prototypal event activating” to investigate the cognitive mechanism of insight problem solving. In addition, we introduced the variable of emotion in order to identify the relationship between cognition and emotion; this was done because many preceding relevant studies have revealed inconsistent results. We hypothesize that (1) positive induced emotion might promote prototypal logogriph activation, and (2) negative induced emotion might prohibit prototypal logogriph activation.
In order to test these hypotheses, we conducted two experiments as part of this study. These experiments adopted a three-stage experimental paradigm. First, the participants were asked to study the prototypal logogriph; second, the positive or negative emotion of the participants was induced; and third, the participants were required to complete the target logogriph test. The instruments used in the experiments were the Rywin standard reasoning test (the Chinese cities edition) and riddles associated with Chinese characters. SPSS13.0 was used for the statistical analyses.
The results showed that under the experimental condition, which included a test with a high-difficulty target logogriph, no significant influence of positive or negative induced emotion on prototypal logogriph activation was found. However, in the test with a medium-difficultly target logogriph, the positive induced emotion was found to significantly promote the prototypal logogriph activation, whereas the negative induced emotion did not significantly affect the prototypal logogriph activation, as compared to the performances of the participants in the controlled group. The sex variable did not have a significant main effect under both the experimental conditions.
Therefore, we can conclude the following: (1) It was statistically proven that the induced positive emotion significantly promoted the “prototype activation” in the logogriph test, which indirectly supports the prototypal event activation hypothesis. (2) This study suggested that the activation of the key heuristic information embodied in the prototypal logogriph is crucial to the cognitive mechanism of insight, and the activation is a continuum sequence having different phases. (3) In logogriph problem solving that is relatively easy, the induced positive emotion significantly promoted the key heuristic information activation. (4) The study proposed a possible experimental paradigm to investigate insight problem solving and emotion

Key words: Logogriph of Chinese characters, insight, activation, positive induced emotion, negative induced emotion, effect