That Aha! Moment

Aha! moments are critical cognitive leaps. So why aren’t we talking about them more?

In the 1990s, the Magic Eye book series was a cultural sensation. These books were filled with autostereograms: patterned two-dimensional pictures that, when looked at in a specific way, revealed three-dimensional figures in a way that felt wholly magical. 

At the time, I assumed I was simply incapable of seeing what others were seeing. “There it is!” they would shriek. “This one’s a rock band! That one’s a monkey! This is incredible! Wow!” I would unfocus or cross my eyes to no avail—the pictures remained flat and nonsensical. I resigned myself to the fact that this phenomenon was simply out of my reach.

Recently, however, I pulled up some autostereograms online after my daughter expressed interest in optical illusions. Following instructions from a Reddit thread, I pressed my nose against the image, pretended I was looking through it as though it were a window, and slowly drew back the picture from my face. Suddenly, I could see a 3-D image of a brontosaurus. “Oh my goodness!” I exclaimed, “I can actually see it.” After a few minutes, my daughter, using the same method I used, squealed with delight. “I see it, there’s the neck—there’s the tail!”

This flash of insight is what psychologists refer to as the aha! experience. It is the moment in which something that was once hard or incomprehensible is suddenly grasped or seen in a new and penetrating light. Deciphering autostereograms might not be particularly consequential, but when it comes to knowledge acquisition the aha! experience most certainly is.

The aha! experience looks like:

• A young student getting the hang of numerators and denominators in fractions.

• A lab operator grasping the proper physical mechanics of pipette technique.

• A person discovering the root cause of a dishwasher malfunction.

• A med student getting the tactile feedback they should feel when making a specific incision.

• A scientist making a major breakthrough in their research.

When the flash of insight occurs, it is as though a light goes on. “Aha! That’s it!”  There is a sudden shift in how information is processed – the work or activity in front of them is suddenly crystallized.

The aha! effect is undoubtedly a positive experience, but it is so much more than simply a feel-good moment. It is an important cognitive milestone that has a significant impact not only on learning, but also on the byproducts of earned knowledge: safety, competence, morale, and growth. When properly understood and prioritized, it can unlock a new kind of productivity.

Not Just Anecdotal, But Empirical

While perhaps not as well documented as other cognitive phenomena like flow state, there is some literature on the aha! experience in the field of psychology. For example, Sascha Topolinski and Rolf Reber (2010) identified four consistent features of the aha! experience:

• Suddenness: The solution pops into mind unexpectedly.

• Ease: It feels effortless once it’s revealed.

• Positive affect: It’s emotionally rewarding.

• Confidence in truth: People trust that the judgment is right.

Though the aha! experience carries with it an element of instantaneousness, I would argue that its lead-up time does not. There are two ways in which an aha! moment is achieved.

1. Repetition

When it comes to tactile actions and skills in particular, we at Larabee are constantly blaring our bullhorns about the importance of repetition. The more novel or complex an action or technique is, the more repetition you need in order to process what is happening visually, mechanically, and sequentially.

When actions are demonstrated repetitively, the learner is able to direct their attention to different micromovements and details. Each repetition reveals another layer, another aspect. Without question, not all learners require the same number of repetitions, so self-paced repetition is highly beneficial.

Repetition begets understanding, as well as accurate imitation. Accurate imitation turns into muscle memory. Muscle memory results in speed. 

2. Rest

Have you ever taken a break from a difficult puzzle or quandary, returned to it some time later, and the solution materializes in front of you? “How,” you might ask yourself, “did I not see this before? It’s so obvious!” Sometimes, if a task or problem is particularly challenging, the aha! moment or solution occurs when the brain is detached from the endeavor at hand, striking a person seemingly out of the blue. 

In the final months of writing my doctoral dissertation, I grappled with how to tie in all the seemingly disparate threads of my research into one compelling argument. There was something there that I could not place my finger on: a notion that had not yet been articulated to or by me before. 

One evening, I closed down my work, put my headphones in, and walked around Midtown Manhattan, listening to an interview with the great Bessel van der Kolk. He was discussing PTSD, which seemed disciplines away from my own work in food and ethnic identity. I was engrossed in the interview and felt it was a much-needed respite from hours of writing, when van der Kolk said a sentence that seemed to hit me over the head with a cartoon anvil: “People become living testimonials for things that no longer exist.”

In ways unbeknownst to me, this statement triggered an aha! moment in which seven years of research seemed to converge. By the time I took my next step, it felt as though my concluding chapter had written itself. I made a beeline back to my desk to furiously deposit all my thoughts and ideas, and some months later successfully defended my dissertation.

Perception is a fascinating and highly unpredictable phenomenon. You can never control or predict what people will see, how they will make sense of it, or when that elusive aha! moment will occur. We can, however, encourage the environment, set them up for success, and stand back with enough patience and faith to let the magic take its course. 

“We feel fully alive, full of potential and purpose – in other words, we are completely activated as human beings.”

— Jane McGonigal

What is “Processing Fluency” and Why Does it Matter?

At the very end of the movie X2: X-Men United, Jean Grey – a psychic mutant who has presumably just died – narrates a quote on mutation, saying, “The process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.” It turns out that Jean Grey is not dead; rather she has undergone a rapid second mutation. The audience gets a glimpse of her new form: the immensely powerful (and dangerous) Dark Phoenix.

Aha! moments are not quite at the same magnitude as a mutant’s powers going full throttle, but they are powerful leaps of cognition. More specifically, they are leaps in what is called processing fluency. This term—which despite its boring sounding name is actually quite extraordinary—is a feeling state that refers to the ease with which information is processed. When a person undergoes an aha! moment, they experience a surge of processing fluency. However hard the problem was before, it is processed quickly and easily after the realization or insight has occurred. Processing fluency is critical to our ability as humans to function and develop in any capacity.

Why does processing fluency matter? 

First: high fluency represents an increase in aptitude as well as a reduction in cognitive difficulty. Until the learner truly comprehends this difficult task, a complex activity remains a complex activity. 

Second: it boosts confidence. When someone feels capable, their confidence increases, and they are motivated to continue in that same positive direction. The opposite can be said for people who lack opportunities to increase processing fluency, and how demotivating that lack of confidence can be.

Third: it’s delightful! Facility in any skill is inherently a rewarding and positive state of being, especially as it tends to lead right into the elevated state of flow.

Processing fluency is just another form of fluency, like language. When you develop the ability to speak a new language, you have internalized the grammar, words come with ease, and you’re able to express yourself competently and confidently.

If It Doesn’t Click, It Cannot Stick

I have a friend who swears by a specific tres leches cake recipe. After coming across it in a magazine years back, she tore it out and filed it away, pulling it out every time she needed a showstopping dessert. And for good reason too: her recipe produces an unapologetically addictive cake with a perfectly soaked yet featherlight crumb.

The problem, she says, is that if she were to ever lose the recipe, she would never be able to recreate it. She can follow instructions, but she doesn’t understand the hows and whys of what she’s doing. Why the batter must be emulsified in a certain order. Why those proportions of leavening agents matter. Why the baking time and temperature are what they are. To her, the whole process feels arbitrary – a string of actions without underlying logic.

That is the danger of learning without aha! moments. There is no processing fluency, no deep absorption of knowledge. Without that cognitive leap, complex actions remain complex actions.

So what? She’s still able to make the cake, isn’t she?

Without question, consistency and dependability are two of the biggest problems we come across in client discovery. One prospective client shared that a whopping 50% of their lab operators could not be depended on to execute a complex procedure – despite their high academic credentials. (This is a conversation for another time.) In these instances, I’m sure they would love to have employees that could follow instructions to the letter, like my friend.

But imagine that there is a technician on a biologics production line. He knows the SOP for media preparation by heart: measure, mix, adjust pH, sterilize. He executes every step exactly as written. But when the pH meter drifts out of calibration or a reading seems off, he freezes. Why?

Or consider a healthcare example: a nurse learns a new infusion pump. She diligently memorizes the steps: prime the tubing, set the rate, double-check the patient ID. She does it correctly every time…until the software gives her an error indication that she has never seen.

If you have execution without comprehension, knowledge is brittle. Tasks remain highly effortful and more time-consuming than they should be. Doers can replicate, but they cannot adapt when something deviates from the norm. They cannot innovate or build on their knowledge. They are rule followers, not problem solvers. For the organization, this is inefficient. For the individual, it’s paralysis.

On the other hand, when information clicks, you get independence, transferability, and growth. 

Conclusion: Aha! Moments Cannot be Planned, but They Can Be Designed

If a kindergartner is given a densely written manual on how to tie their shoes, they are not set up for success. If they are given ample opportunities to watch, repeat, and practice with scaffolded guidance, they are set up to experience the incredible, life-affirming, confidence-inducing bright light of the aha! moment when it all comes together.

While we cannot force these experiences into being, we can create environments in which effective learning can happen. For action based skills (again – this is Larabee’s focus), here is how:

• Make steps and sequences not only visualizable but imitable.
  If your SOPs are full of words and static images, there is too much ambiguity. If your employees are watching a linear video in advance of doing, they cannot imitate with precision.

• Design for Flow, Not Friction.
  If learners are flipping between their workbench, computer tabs, PDFs, and videos, you’ve lost the fluency that insight thrives on. These are not unavoidable obstacles – they are antiquated approaches to learning.

• Show the Why, Not Just the What
  Giving learners the knowledge of why something matters is important, but it must be driven by context.

• Allow Space for Struggle
  Aha! moments are generally preceded by confusion. If the learner is not grasping a mechanism or technique, make that first step a little smaller or more low-stakes.

Aha! moments are some of my favorite things to witness. The expression on the individual’s face is always the same: a vague look of puzzlement followed by an astonishing light in their eyes that says, “I get it now!” 

These experiences share deep kinship with another positive emotion, which is the flow state. This, of course, is a term coined by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a state of being in which an individual is so completely engrossed in an activity that time and environment seem to melt away. Flow is considered one of the highest states of being because of how fulfilling, intrinsically motivating, and productive it is.

Like flow, aha moments improve performance, are immensely gratifying, and help us feel more confident and motivated. Arguably, the words of the ever insightful sociologist Jane McGonigal on flow apply to the aha moment as well. During these experiences, she says, “we regularly achieve the greatest form of happiness available to human beings: intense, optimistic engagement with the world around us. We feel fully alive, full of potential and purpose – in other words, we are completely activated as human beings.”