Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Suddenly comprehending the solution to a vexing problem is often accompanied by an Aha! experience. The drivingmechanisms behind this experience are unclear. One way to address this, is to study Aha! under cognitive load. If Aha! isthe result of the same explicit process that we use to solve everyday problems, it should be influenced by cognitive load ina similar way. However, if it constitutes a different, more implicit process, cognitive load might not affect it at all. Usinga dual-task paradigm where participants solved word puzzles under different memory loads, we found that word puzzlessolved with Aha! were more accurate and led to higher solution confidence. When memory load increased, only puzzleswithout Aha! were solved more slowly. The fact that solution retrieval with Aha! was unaffected by memory load, impliesthat Aha! experiences rely on a process that does not compete for limited cognitive resources.