Abstract
The metacognitive feelings of an “aha!” experience are key to comprehending human subjective experience. However, behavioral characteristics of this introspective cognition are not well known. An aha experience sometimes occurs when one gains a solution abruptly in problem solving, a subjective experience that subserves the conscious perception of an insight. We experimentally induced an aha experience in a hidden object recognition task, and analyzed whether this aha experience was associated with metacognitive judgments and behavioral features. We used an adaptation of Mooney images, i.e., morphing between a grayscale image and its binarised image in 100 steps, to investigate the phenomenology associated with insight: aha experience, confidence, suddenness, and pleasure. Here we show that insight solutions are more accurate than non-insight solutions. As metacognitive judgments, participants’ confidence in the correctness of their solution is higher in insight than non-insight problem solving. Intensities of the aha feeling are positively correlated with subjective rating scores of both suddenness and pleasure, features that show marked signs of unexpected positive emotions. The strength of the aha experience is also positively correlated with response times from the onset of presentation until finding the solution, or with task difficulty only if the solution confidence is high enough. Our findings provide metacognitive and temporal conditions for an aha experience, characterizing features distinct from those supporting non-aha experience.
Highlights
Cognitive findings are sometimes accompanied by particular experiences, just as in ancient Greek Archimedes exclaimed “eureka!” to express his delight of a scientific discovery
Since there was no need to distinguish speed differences, recognition times (RTs) could be measured by Morphing levels (MLs) units
We found that solving a hidden figure problem may evoke intense aha feelings along with feelings of suddenness and pleasure at the time of correct answer
Summary
Cognitive findings are sometimes accompanied by particular experiences, just as in ancient Greek Archimedes exclaimed “eureka!” to express his delight of a scientific discovery This phenomenon is called “aha!” experience (Gick and Lockhart, 1995; Topolinski and Reber, 2010; Webb et al, 2018). In the context of problem solving and creative thinking, “aha!” or “eureka!” experience is thought to be a synonym of insight (Weisberg, 2015), defined as a sudden change in knowledge representation or the rapid formation of a new concept, often leading to the solution of a problem (Kounios and Beeman, 2014). Social psychologist Robert Cialdini described the tendency as follows: “the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience” (Heath and Heath, 2007; Webb et al, 2019)
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