Temporal Synchrony in Bodily Interaction Enhances the Aha! Experience: Evidence for an Implicit Metacognitive...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Embodied Cognition
• Metacognition

Background:

• The Aha! experience, or insight, has been traditionally viewed holistically.
• The role of bodily interaction and predictive processing in insight remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate the mechanism of implicit metacognitive predictive processing.
• To investigate how bodily interaction influences the Aha! experience.
• To establish a quantifiable, three-stage paradigm for insight research.

Main Methods:

• Three experimental groups manipulated temporal synchrony in bodily interaction (Immediate Mirror, Delayed Mirror, No-Interaction Control).
• A three-stage paradigm (Prediction, Execution, Feedback) decomposed insight tasks.
• Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and functional connectivity analyses were employed.

Main Results:

• Bodily interaction significantly modulated the intensity of the Aha! experience, mediated by metacognitive predictive processing.
• fNIRS revealed the Somato-Cognitive Action Network (SCAN) involvement in early prediction stages.
• Shared neural mechanisms, including the Reward Network (RN), Dorsal Attention Network (DAN), and Ventral Attention Network (VAN), were identified for bodily interaction and insight.

Conclusions:

• Implicit metacognitive predictive processing offers a novel mechanism linking bodily interaction to the Aha! experience.
• The three-stage paradigm provides a quantifiable approach to studying insight.
• Findings integrate embodied cognition, enactive cognition, and metacognitive predictive processing for a unified account of insight.