From “Hmmm…” to “Aha!”: Emotional Monitoring of Representational Change

Abstract

There are two common approaches to researching insight: the study of the emotional response to a solution (Aha! experience) and the study of the restructuring of representations. The relationship between them can be found by comparing functions they perform relative to each other. For the experimental investigation of insight, problems that are typically being used can be solved within a little amount of time and are highly similar in their structure. We believe that such laboratory designs of the tasks often lead to researchers missing out on the moments of impasse and initial restructuring of the search space. In the current study, using the method of multimodal corpora constructed from individual solutions, we gained partial confirmation of the key statements of the model of emotional regulation of the representational change. According to the model, an insight solution process is accompanied by emotions regulating the process of representational change. A feeling of impasse is a response to the lack of progress towards the solution. An Aha! experience appears in response to solvers performing actions that bring them a huge step closer to the solution of a problem. We believe that these emotional responses are experienced before the solution reaches consciousness and they motivate the solver to adapt their search space accordingly. The model we propose is a development of the ideas of Ya.A. Ponomarev on the role of emotions in regulating of insight problem solving andmodel of M. Ollinger and colleagues describing the phases of insight problem solving.