在創造力的軼事記錄當中，常見許多關於頓悟經驗的描述。為了探究頓悟的本質，許多研究皆曾提出假設，試圖說明頓悟性問題索解的認知歷程，而這些研究大致認同，表徵建構和提示運作在頓悟性問題索解的認知歷程當中皆扮演相當重要的角色。然而，我們發現，目前相關的研究結果仍然存有三個主要的限制。第一，這些研究對於提示運作如何影響頓悟性問題索解的詮釋歧異；第二，多數研究偏重探討提示運作，忽略表徵建構和提示運作兩者之間的交互作用；第三，多數研究採用空間頓悟性問題作為研究材料，忽略語文頓悟性問題索解的認知歷程。為了突破上述限制，我們同時操弄數個與表徵建構和提示運作有關的變項，嘗試探究這些變項的交互作用，以瞭解語文頓悟性問題索解的認知歷程。實驗一發現，關鍵的典型性與提示的顯明性這兩個變項之間存有顯著的交互作用；實驗二則發現，聯想作業的內容與提示的顯明性這兩個變項皆能分別影響個體的解題表現。研究結果顯示，表徵建構和提示運作兩者相互依存，而提示運作係透過限制搜尋的方式影響個體表徵轉換的歷程。我們進而據此提出語文頓悟性問題索解的雙路徑假設，主張語文頓悟性問題索解的認知歷程應該包含建構非典型表徵、辨識關鍵的因素、形成合適的表徵等三階段歷程。整體而言，研究結果能夠有效幫助我們釐清語文頓悟性問題索解的認知歷程。

The insight experience figures prominently in anecdotal accounts of creative discoveries. To investigate the nature of insight, a host of studies have formulated hypotheses about the cognitive mechanism underlying insight problem solving. Despite widespread agreement that the construction of representations and the operation of hints play important roles in insight problem solving, however, there are at least three limitations of these studies which leave the cognitive mechanism underlying insight problem solving unclear. First, the interpretations for how the operation of hints influences participants’ performance remain inconsistent. Second, the majority of studies examining the operation of hints tend to overlook the interaction between the construction of representations and the operation of hints. Third, these studies tend to employ spatial insight problems as their experimental tasks, leaving the cognitive mechanism underlying verbal insight problem solving unclear. To deal with the above limitations, we simultaneously manipulated factors relevant to the construction of representations and the operation of hints in the present study to examine how these manipulations interact to influence participants’ performance on a set of verbal insight problems. In Experiment 1, the interaction between the manipulations of the typicality of critical components and the hint salience was observed. In Experiment 2, the interaction was absent while both manipulations of the content of preceding associates tasks and the hint salience influenced participants’ performance. The results suggested that the operation of hints in the shift between the construction and reconstruction of representations serves as external sources of search constraint and that the construction of representations and the operation of hints are dependent to each other. According to the dual route hypothesis proposed on the basis of these findings, we further claimed that the cognitive mechanism underlying verbal insight problem solving consists of three processes with the first one being the construction of atypical representations, the second one being the identification of critical components, and the third one being the formation of appropriate representations. The results had general implications for our understanding of the cognitive mechanism underlying verbal insight problem solving.

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