Premonitions of insight predict impending error.

Abstract

Five experiments explored the dynamic metacognitions that accompany the problem- and anagramsolving processes. Subjects repeatedly rated how warm or close they were to solution. High feelings of before an answer indicated that the answer would be incorrect. Moderately low ratings characterized correct responses. The data suggest that the high ratings may result from a process wherein subjects convince themselves that an inelegant but plausible (wrong) answer is correct. No gradual rationalization process precedes the correct response to insight problems. The warmth-rating data also indicate that when the correct answer was given to the problems and anagrams used in this study, there was usually a subjectively catastrophic insight process. In this article, I investigate dynamic metacognitions that lead up to the production of correct or incorrect solutions in solving insight problems and anagrams. A technique is used in which subjects are asked to give judgments about how close they feel to the solution of problems—call ed feeling-of-wa rmth judgments—repeatedly during the course of problem solving. These judgments are called warmth judgments after the searching game in which one person hides an object and then directs others who do not know where the object is by telling them that