title: In search of the 'Aha!' experience: Elucidating the emotionality of insight problem-solving.
abstract: Although the experience of insight has long been noted, the essence of the 'Aha!' experience, reflecting a sudden change in the brain that accompanies an insight solution, remains largely unknown. This work aimed to uncover the mystery of the 'Aha!' experience through three studies. In Study 1, participants were required to solve a set of verbal insight problems and then subjectively report their affective experience when solving the problem. The participants were found to have experienced many types of emotions, with happiness the most frequently reported one. Multidimensional scaling was employed in Study 2 to simplify the dimensions of these reported emotions. The results showed that these different types of emotions could be clearly placed in two-dimensional space and that components constituting the 'Aha!' experience mainly reflected positive emotion and approached cognition. To validate previous findings, in Study 3, participants were asked to select the most appropriate emotional item describing their feelings at the time the problem was solved. The results of this study replicated the multidimensional construct consisting of approached cognition and positive affect. These three studies provide the first direct evidence of the essence of the 'Aha!'
  
  
  RESULTS
  The potential significance of the findings was discussed.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Administration and Institute of Applied Psychology, Hohai University, Nanjing, China.|School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Wangbing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Chang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.|Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003405:Creativity; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: affective experience; creative cognition; happiness; insight problem-solving