Most people should have already struggled to solve a problem, only to find the answer when walking or washing as if out of nowhere. Such flashes of inspiration not only get us when we breed through problems, but also when we suddenly understand a joke or a crossword notification or are overwhelmed by a knowledge of ourselves.
In recent years, scientists have been able to identify certain patterns of brain activity that indicate moments of insight. But it is still unclear whether such flashes of inspiration are actually based on a distinct form of thinking – or perhaps simply the last, most satisfying step in a conscious thought process.
A new study by a Belgian team of psychologists provides further evidence that unconscious processes play a role in aha moments, which are different from analytical, step-by-step thinking. Apparently, even if people have to do several things at once and are distracted, they can still come to spontaneous insights.
For the investigation, the results of which published the group around Hans Stuyck from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Ku Leuven in Belgium in the journal »Cognition«, the psychologists created 70 words that students either with analytical thinking or spontaneous flashes could solve. The task was to find a fourth for three predefined words that fits every word. (If the test had been carried out in German, the participants, for example, had received the words "group", "poverty" and "sausage", whereby "blood" would have been the right solution: "blood group", "anemia", "blood sausage". )))
Dimmers or light bulbs?
The 105 students, most of whom were, had 25 seconds to solve every task. After they answered, they stated whether they had reached the goal with the help of a spontaneous flash of mind, so they "suddenly and clearly became aware of the solution", as with a light bulb that suddenly illuminates a dark room. Or whether you had developed the solution step by step "without aha moment"-as if your brain was a room that is slowly illuminated with a dimmer switch.
The participants were divided into three groups. The first group received only the riddles. In the second group, two random digits flashed one after the other on the screen before the words appeared, and subjects had to try to remember those numbers after the puzzle was over. The third group finally had to try to remember four digits instead of two.
The purpose of the number exercise was to affect the brain of the participants with another task in order to affect their ability to solve problems logically. "The cognitive resources, the pool we can tap into to do something consciously, are limited," says Stuyck. But would that also have a negative impact on the ability to spontaneously create insights?
As expected, the more demanding the memory task was, the worse the participants performed when they resorted to analytical thinking, for example when they tried out individual words one after the other. With this tactic, they solved an average of 16 puzzles correctly if they did not have to remember numbers, but only twelve if they had to memorize two digits, and eight if they had to memorize four digits.
However, if the subjects relied on their inspiration, the success rate was not only higher overall, it also did not decrease due to the memory task. Subjects who were waiting for mental flashes solved between 17 and 19 puzzles correctly on average in all three groups. "Regardless of whether they did not have a memory task or whether they had a low- or high-demand memory task, the number of puzzles they solved with insight remained constant," says Stuyck. "This is the most interesting result.«
Between-process trade-off between the conscious and unconscious
Our brains do many things without them entering our consciousness – that's why we seem to automatically find the right way to work and aren't always aware of the biases that influence our decisions. However, cognitive psychologists disagree on whether actual thinking can take place below the level of consciousness. "There are many debates about this in literature," explains Stuyck.
The Belgian believes that in aha moments there is a species and take between conscious and unconscious processes. For example, if people have to solve such word puzzles, several word facial confectionions are activated, but only the strongest are accessible to awareness. If the correct answer happens to be a weaker association, those affected may feel stuck, but under the surface without noticing it, your mind can bring it into awareness.
"Finding a creative solution to a problem is like trying to see a dark star at night. You have to look at the problem out of the corner of your eye, so to speak," says neuroscientist Mark Beeman of Northwestern University, who was not involved in the study. Flashes of inspiration usually overtake us when we have brooded over a problem for a while and put it aside. Once the foundation has been laid through conscious mental effort, a walk, nap, or distracting task seems to provide a creative breakthrough, Beeman believes.
Put attention to a quiet idea in the background does not seem to require mental effort. This concludes Stuyck from the fact that even memory exercises could not suppress spontaneous AHA moments. Beeman agrees, but warns against transferring the results of the new study directly to the real world. The task of remembering numbers may have been simple enough to serve as a useful distraction and help the gno to be their Heureka moment. However, he doubts that the same results also arrive if the brain performance is more stressed by humans. People who want to be more creative at work to put on more work is therefore certainly not recommended.
Stuyck's team is already preparing for another study with word puzzles. The researchers want to temporarily deactivate part of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that we use to consciously process information. To do this, they will use a harmless, non-invasive method called transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which brain cells are stimulated by magnetic fields. Then it will become clear whether flashes of inspiration cannot be stopped by this.
© Springer Nature Limited Scientific American, Aha! Moments Pop Up From Below The Level of Conscious Awareness, 2022
