<p>In my personal experience, typing my thoughts when I am working through creative problems seem to help. But it's subjective and would like to have some confirmation.</p>

<p>Atkin in "The Phenomenological Influence of Inner Speech on Executive" shows that Thinking Out Loud can help in one problem-solving exercise. It seems that it was first noted by Newell and Simon in 1972 in their book.</p>

<p>(this is also confirmed anecdotally in Rubber Duck Debugging in programming, which for some works while typing)</p>

<p>There is a lot of literature connected to writing for learning, in school settings, so I am not sure if this works for creative problems or mostly for integrating knowledge. </p>

<p>There is also idea of "freewriting" by Peter Elbow which is something similar to what I mean, but it seems his research and articles that cite him focus on freewriting for writing fiction (I guess it's a bit similar).</p>

<p>Regarding phrasing, I saw phrases used as inner speech writing and private writing, but it doesn't seem to return a lot of results. </p>

<p>Sorry if I am breaking any rules here, I am not a student of psychology just a hobbyist</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-15T05:33:20.347Z
Welcome to Psychology.SE.  You have not "broken any rules".  We welcome all who are interested. I would suggest going through the [tour] which outlines how we work.
Chris Rogers
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-16T07:26:09.543Z
Creativity/focus and improved problem solving seem like two separate things to me. Could you focus on one? In the case of problem solving/reasoning, it is the act of externalizing thought which forces you to make things you might have only implicitely inferred before explicit. This is why explaining your research to others, or writing a paper, often opens up questions you didn't consider before. Same with debugging. This then gives you the opportunity to answer them yourselves without any further input.
Steven Jeuris
<language><creativity><writing>
Is there any research connected with typing/writing to help in creativity or focus?
qnsi
# Is there any research connected with typing/writing to help in creativity or focus?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-08-14)

In my personal experience, typing my thoughts when I am working through creative problems seem to help. But it's subjective and would like to have some confirmation.

Atkin in "The Phenomenological Influence of Inner Speech on Executive" shows that Thinking Out Loud can help in one problem-solving exercise. It seems that it was first noted by Newell and Simon in 1972 in their book.

(this is also confirmed anecdotally in Rubber Duck Debugging in programming, which for some works while typing)

There is a lot of literature connected to writing for learning, in school settings, so I am not sure if this works for creative problems or mostly for integrating knowledge.

There is also idea of "freewriting" by Peter Elbow which is something similar to what I mean, but it seems his research and articles that cite him focus on freewriting for writing fiction (I guess it's a bit similar).

Regarding phrasing, I saw phrases used as inner speech writing and private writing, but it doesn't seem to return a lot of results.

Sorry if I am breaking any rules here, I am not a student of psychology just a hobbyist

**Tags:** language, creativity, writing

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Welcome to Psychology.SE.  You have not "broken any rules".  We welcome all who are interested. I would suggest going through the [tour] which outlines how we work.  
> **username_2**: Creativity/focus and improved problem solving seem like two separate things to me. Could you focus on one? In the case of problem solving/reasoning, it is the act of externalizing thought which forces you to make things you might have only implicitely inferred before explicit. This is why explaining your research to others, or writing a paper, often opens up questions you didn't consider before. Same with debugging. This then gives you the opportunity to answer them yourselves without any further input.  

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## 0 answers

