Surprise!-Clarifying the link between insight and prediction error.

ABSTRACT: The AHA experience, a moment of deep understanding during insightful problem-solving involving feelings of certainty, pleasure, and surprise, has captivated psychologists for more than a century. Recently, a new theoretical framework has proposed a link between the AHA experience and prediction error (PE), a popular concept in decision-making and reinforcement learning. This framework suggests that participants maintain a meta-cognitive prediction about the time it takes to solve a problem and the AHA experience arises when the problem is solved earlier than expected, resulting in a meta-cognitive PE. In our preregistered online study, we delved deeper into this idea, investigating whether prediction errors also pertain to participants' predictions regarding the solvability of the problem

SUBMITTER: Becker M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11680657 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature