An Elaboration Account of Insight

In this paper we discuss an elaboration account of insight that provides answers to two of the main questions regarding insight problem solving: why insight problems are so difficult for humans and why insight is so rapid in nature. We claim that the difficulty in insight problems is due to misguided heuristic search and that this difficulty is overcome using a reformulation mechanism. Furthermore, we claim that search is carried out quickly when the heuristics are good--explaining the rapid nature of insight. We clarify our account by providing examples and initial empirical results. In conclusion, we review related work and discuss possible future work.