Synonyms
Definition
Insight can be attributed to animals’ ability for fast integration of behaviors gained from their past experience and effectively applying this experience for solving a problem as a meaningful whole, in the context of a situation. W. Thorpe (1963) defined “insightful behavior” as “the sudden production of a new adaptive response not arrived at by trial behavior” and “the solution of a problem by the sudden adaptive reorganization of experience”.
Introduction
Wolfgang Köhler (1924) first revealed experimental evidence of insight in chimpanzees basing on ideas of Gestalt psychology. His experiments showed chimpanzees as using planning and foresight, that is, cognitive reasoning to solve a problem. Köhler devised an arrangement in which all of the elements necessary for the solution of the problem were in full view of the animal. One of the most often referred-to examples of problem solving by insight concerns Sultan, a chimpanzee,...
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References
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Reznikova, Z. (2016). Insight. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3131-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3131-1
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