The purpose of making people remember random numbers was to burden their mind with an unrelated task, which was expected to interfere with conscious problem-solving. The third group was identical to the second except that people had to try to remember four digits instead of two. In the second group, two random digits flashed sequentially on the screen before the words appeared, and people had to try to recall those numbers after finishing the puzzle. Participants were divided into three groups. After typing an answer, they indicated whether they had reached it “with Aha!”-which they were told meant becoming “aware of the solution suddenly and clearly,” like a lightbulb illuminating a dark room-or calculated it step-by-step “without Aha!”-as if their brain was a room slowly being lit with a dimmer switch. The 105 undergraduates, most of whom were women, had up to 25 seconds to solve each problem.

(For example, if the test were conducted in English, people might be given the words “artist,” “hatch” and “route,” with the answer being “escape” because “escape artist,” “escape hatch” and “escape route” are all recognizable phrases.) The task was to find a fourth word that pairs with each. Each puzzle consisted of three Dutch words displayed on a computer screen.

“You can be overloaded by all this type of stuff, cell phones or whatever, and your insights remain shielded,” says Hans Stuyck, a doctoral student at Université Libre de Bruxelles and KU Leuven in Belgium, who led the study.įor that investigation, which was first published online in December 2021 in the journal Cognition, the psychologists created 70 word puzzles that undergraduate students could solve using either insight or analytic reasoning. Even when people are managing multiple demands on their brainpower, the research suggests their intuitive thought processes may still be readily accessible. Scientists have identified distinctive brain activity patterns that signal moments of insight, but there is still some debate about whether insight is simply the final, most satisfying step in a deliberative thought process or a wholly separate form of thinking.Īn ingenious new study by a team of Belgian psychologists provides additional evidence that insight engages unconscious mechanisms that differ from analytic, step-by-step reasoning. Psychologists call these sudden aha! moments “insight.” They occur not only when we are faced with a problem but also when we suddenly “get” a joke or crossword puzzle clue or are jolted by a personal realization. Most of us have had the experience of struggling mightily to solve a problem only to find, while taking a walk or doing the dishes, that the answer comes to us seemingly from nowhere.

Aha moment in psychology