Many innovations in organizations result when people discover insightful solutions to problems. Insightful problem-solving was considered by Gestalt psychologists to be associated with productive, as opposed to re-productive, thinking. Productive thinking is characterized by shifts in perspective which allow the problem solver to consider new,…

Previous studies have shown that people start traveling sales problem tours significantly more often from boundary than from interior nodes. There are a number of possible reasons for such a tendency: first, it may arise as a direct result of the processes involved in tour construction; second, boundary points may be perceptually more salient than…

Most models of human performance on the traveling salesperson problem involve clustering of nodes, but few empirical studies have examined effects of clustering in the stimulus array. A recent exception varied degree of clustering and concluded that the more clustered a stimulus array, the easier a TSP is to solve (Dry, Preiss, & Wagemans,…

The article provides a review of recent research on human performance on the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and related combinatorial optimization problems. We discuss what combinatorial optimization problems are, why they are important, and why they may be of interest to cognitive scientists. We next describe the main characteristics of human…

The article provides a review of recent research on insight problem-solving performance. We discuss what insight problems are, the different types of classic and newer insight problems, and how we can classify them. We also explain some of the other aspects that affect insight performance, such as hints, analogs, training, thinking aloud, and…

Results on human performance on the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) from different laboratories show high consistency. However, one exception is in the area of individual differences. While one research group has consistently failed to find systematic individual differences across instances of TSPs (Chronicle, MacGregor and Ormerod), another…