Do People Really Have Insights in the Shower? The When,Where and Who of the Aha! Moment

While there are well‐known anecdotes and documented insight cases by renowned scientists and inventors, little is known about the experiences of insight in the general population. The present study aimed to determine peoples' self‐reported experience of insight in their daily lives. Using an online questionnaire, responses were obtained from 1,114 respondents. Eighty‐percent reported having insights. These respondents reported demographic information and answered three open‐ended questions on where their insights occur, what insights are and other thoughts on insight. A greater percentage of those who have insights are, female, younger, highly educated, and involved in occupations including, management, sciences, arts and service professions. The qualitative results uncovered eight major themes, reflecting on the places people have insights: At night, work, shower, home, when it is quiet, transport, while exercising, and in nature. Two major themes emerged on what insights are: Something from the subconscious, and a result of (not) thinking. Finally, three major themes emerged from the third question on thoughts they would like to share on insight: The improvement of insight with age, the importance of analyzing the details of the problem, and the unexpectedness of the solution. Results are discussed in the context of the current experimental research on insight.     

Improvisation: The Astonishing Bridge to Our Inner Music

Musical improvisation is the expressive capacity of a performer fostered by access to their own “productive” (creative) or “reproductive” (mnestic) tonal imagery: a field of consciousness that includes experiences, images that are internal, combined, distorted, associated, or in competition between themselves. In the highly original form of life that is jazz, narrating means directing time: a time of epiphanies and introversions, of intuitions and revelations, of syncopated rhythms and aesthetic insights, which appear and disappear on the edges of interference between consciousness and the unconscious. The performing urgency of gestures, voices, and sounds, although arranged in the same scene, highlights the difference in individual time. In this intense activity of opposition and resolution the experience becomes an unstable territory that rests on the capacity of the body to remember, decide, anticipate, and invent. The ego reveals itself to be an emerging representation of our nerve structures and, even if conscious organization continues to be attributed to it, its role is not at all crucial. Unity, if anything, means coordination. The conscious ego is the expression of the body. In its ultimate form its unity is a biological problem.     

Why Insight Fails

Psychoanalysts rely on insight to promote therapeutic change. However, even when a great deal of insight has been attained, significant change may not be forthcoming in some patients, more often in borderline-level patients. The author examines such a case with particular reference to E. Kris' major points on insight, including the role of the ego's integrative functions in the attainment and utilization of insight. The author contends that failure to utilize insight is overdetermined and not necessarily owing to impairments in the integrative functions or to resistance in all its expressions. The author postulates that failure to make progress is due to a combination of the strength of the unmodulated drives, general ego weakness, poor early object relations, particularly preverbal experience, and constitution, in interaction. The whole of the personality is implicated in the inability to utilize insight.     

A New View of Meditation

After years of meditating, are you still saddled with many of the same personal conflicts and interpersonal inhibitions that plagued you before you began? Rubin explores the hidden flaws in the meditative method itself. He explores Buddhism's ambivalent relationship to emotional life, and the negative consequences of letting go of experience. Detaching from experience may result in renouncing vital aspects of ourselves, such as constructive passion. The author argues that real meditation is transformative not tranquilizing, fostering a dynamic way of living.     

汉语字谜原型激活中的情绪促进效应

采用先学习原型字谜、接着进行正负情绪诱导、然后再进行靶字谜测验的三阶段实验设计,探讨了不同诱发情绪状态对汉语字谜原型激活的影响。结果发现,在本实验条件下：难度高的靶字谜的测试中没有发现正负诱发情绪状态对汉语字谜原型激活的不同影响;但是,在难度中等的靶字谜的测试中,诱发的正面情绪状态对汉语字谜原型激活有显著促进作用,而诱发的负面情绪状态与控制组相比对汉语字谜原型激活没有显著影响。性别变量在两种实验条件下都没有显著主效应     

基于线索的顿悟问题解决:图式和表征操作的影响

对小学、初中、高中学生共270名被试在不同线索条件下解决顿悟问题T puzzle的表现进行研究,结果表明:(1)由于图式运用水平的发展,知觉定势在单一线索下对高二被试的限制作用更为明显,导致小学五年级和初中二年级被试的问题解决时间短于高中二年级;(2)由于表征操作能力发展水平的限制,增大需操作表征数目的线索不利于五年级被试的问题解决;较高的表征操作能力发展水平使得高二被试在多重线索下有更好的解决成绩;(3)与图式相关的线索并不能有效提高儿童解决顿悟问题的效率。     

词汇飞跃的本质:命名洞察力的实证研究

通过个案跟踪和控制实验探讨了词汇飞跃的本质。研究结果表明命名洞察力具有现实性,且词汇飞跃与命名洞察力的出现紧密相关,这在一定程度上解释了儿童词汇量快速增长的原因。命名洞察力的获得促进了词汇的快速增长,标志着儿童建立起词汇与指称之间的匹配关系。词汇飞跃之后,儿童很快建立起词语间的符号关系,并最终促进了儿童语法的发展。基于此实证结果,本研究还建构了诠释词汇飞跃本质的理论模型。