>The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former group.

creative annealing

And people in the opposite regime basically suffer from a strong Einstellung. They can recall more easily, but that also means that they are strongly primed on things they've learned, it's perhaps similar to overfitting. I'd wager there is a golden mean.

Reminds me of a test i heard about regarding creativity, and found that kids were way more creative before being run through the education system. This because they would go outside assumed limitations (changing the size and and material when asked about how many ways they could use a paperclip).

I think my stubborn and and somewhat anti-authoritarian streak helped me avoid most of this damage. I was the kid who always questioned the arbitrary restrictions placed on problems, the ones designed to drive you down a certain subset of paths.

I still have trouble with trying to "conform" or find "the right way" to do something, though.

Yea I find anecdotal support for your claim, which indicates that indicates both ways of thinking can lead to creativity. Look at John Von Neumann's wikipedia page:

"At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German march music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Albert Einstein, from their work."

So those two geniuses were opposite in this way, and I would describe their thinking verbatim as you claim!

That is, in this case, von Neumann being a "surgical thinker", he might have needed external noise sources to achieve breakthroughs ...

There's a mixed approach that I've heard described.

Assume the solution to the problem is simple enough that it can be found in five minutes. Then spend five minutes trying to find the solution.

If you found the solution, congratulate yourself. If you didn't find the solution, do the above procedure for fifteen minutes instead of five.

This approach gives direct, "surgical" solutions for simple problems, and leads you to more creative solutions to more complicated problems.