Insight Learning

Bruce Wilson, PhD

“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Have you noticed that sometimes when you hear a joke and the joke makes no sense to you, and then it does? This minute time to reflect ignites your insight. That’s insight learning.

What Einstein’s theory of special relativity, penicillin, and microwaves have in common is they were all born from sudden flashes of understanding, known formally in psychology as insight learning. Is there any sort of system to this type of learning or is it just random?

Wolfgang Kohler, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, first proposed the concept of insight learning in the early 20th century. It came about when he tested chimpanzees and other animals in experiments, challenging them to solve specific problems.

He realized that chimps could solve these problems without going through trial-and-error attempts or as a result of stimulus-response learning. Instead, the animals seemed to experience a sudden epiphany in which they saw the solution to a problem after directly working on it while they were doing something else.

The Four Stages of Insight Learning

Insight learning is defined as the sudden, cognitive realization of a solution to a problem without trial-and-error. This learning occurs in four distinct stages: awareness, reflection, insight, and action. (1)

Awareness

The brain forms mental maps of information and stores this information into a cohesive whole. The information and ordering is organised into patterns it has discerned to interpret and relate to the world.

When the brain is immersed with new information new perspectives are examined. This new information is processed and the brain attempts to fit these ideas, thoughts and concepts into its current mental maps. When the brain integrates new knowledge, the new knowledge creates a different mental map than the one that currently exists.

Self-discovery has often been identified as the “aha” moment. This is a moment when the obvious gives way to the oblivious. The epiphany materializes from the ether. It rises from the ashes of premeditated thoughts and conclusions to share a new and previously unrelated internal awareness.

Reflection

During reflection we are not thinking logically or analysing data; we’re engaging a part of our brain used for making links across the whole brain. We are tapping into more intelligence than the three to five pieces of information we can hold in our working memory.

The brain is functioning across the whole dataset of ideas, images, thoughts, and knowledge to connect and reconfigure its mental maps without any new input from the conscious or working memory. During this process you don’t think about anything logically just focus on your breathing. It is in the quiet “non-logical”, “non-thinking” times that we usually have an insight.

Insight

The moment insight hits, our mental maps have been reconfigured or a new mental map has suddenly snapped into existence. The body then releases various neurotransmitters like adrenaline as well as possibly serotonin and dopamine. A sudden excitement and a rush throughout the body occurs.

When insight occurs, the brain gives off strong gamma-band waves. Gamma-band waves are the only frequency found in all parts of the brain and are seen when the brain simultaneously processes information across different regions. Gamma-band brain waves signify various parts of the brain forming a new map.

Action

The motivation from having an insight is short term. Taking tangible actions while the insight is close at hand will ensure new ideas becoming a reality. Without action the insight and new mental map is not reinforced and the insight is lost.

“The capacities by which we can gain insights into higher worlds lie dormant within each one of us.” – Rudolf Steiner

Archimedes

Archimedes was stepping into a bath when he noticed that submerging his body caused the water to rise by an equal volume. Suddenly realizing he could use the same method to measure the volume of any irregularly shaped object,

Archimedes reportedly yelled the famous phrase “Eureka!”. While now widely understood as a legend, the story of Archimedes demonstrates key properties of what we now call insight—namely, how unexpected and elating an insight can be.

Epiphany appears to rely on the availability of “space for quiet” and an absence of predetermined ideas within the receiver. In the modern world of social media, and multiple hours spent on screens, this concept has even more relevance.

Epiphanies are not planned. They are not reinforced. They come from an unknown place at a non-predetermined time. They shock and awe. They are powerful moments of self-discovery, which have long-lasting effects.

References

Rock, D. (2017). Quiet Leadership. Harper Collins publishers.

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