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How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures

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 expe...

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Autores principales: Ishikawa, Tetsuo, Toshima, Mayumi, Mogi, Ken
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538685/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31178774
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01023
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author Ishikawa, Tetsuo
Toshima, Mayumi
Mogi, Ken
author_facet Ishikawa, Tetsuo
Toshima, Mayumi
Mogi, Ken
author_sort Ishikawa, Tetsuo
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-65386852019-06-07 How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures Ishikawa, Tetsuo Toshima, Mayumi Mogi, Ken Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC6538685/ /pubmed/31178774 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01023 Text en Copyright © 2019 Ishikawa, Toshima and Mogi. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Ishikawa, Tetsuo
Toshima, Mayumi
Mogi, Ken
How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures
title How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures
title_full How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures
title_fullStr How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures
title_full_unstemmed How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures
title_short How and When? Metacognition and Solution Timing Characterize an “Aha” Experience of Object Recognition in Hidden Figures
title_sort how and when? metacognition and solution timing characterize an “aha” experience of object recognition in hidden figures
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538685/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31178774
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01023
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