Aha! moments correspond to metacognitive prediction errors

Psychologists have long been fascinated with understanding the nature of Aha! moments, moments when we transition from not knowing to suddenly realizing the solution to a problem. In this work, we present a theoretical framework that explains why we experience Aha! moments. Our theory posits that during problem-solving, in addition to solving the problem, people also maintain a metacognitive model of their ability to solve the problem as well as a prediction about the time it would take them to solve that problem. Aha! moments arise when we experience a positive error in this metacognitive prediction, i.e. when we solve a problem much faster than we expected, signaling to ourselves that we are more competent than we had realized. We posit that this metacognitive error is analogous to a positive reward prediction error thereby explaining why we feel so good after an Aha! moment. We provide support to our theory across two large-scale pre-registered experiments on problem solving, demonstrating a link between metacognitive prediction errors and Aha! moments. These results highlight the importance of metacognitive prediction errors and deepen our understanding of human metareasoning.