insight

/in"suyt'/, n.

1. an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing, esp. through intuitive understanding: an insight into 18th-century life.

2. penetrating mental vision or discernment; faculty of seeing into inner character or underlying truth.

3. Psychol.

a. an understanding of relationships that sheds light on or helps solve a problem.

b. (in psychotherapy) the recognition of sources of emotional difficulty.

c. an understanding of the motivational forces behind one's actions, thoughts, or behavior; self-knowledge.

[1150-1200; ME; see IN-¹, SIGHT]

Syn. 2. perception, apprehension, intuition, understanding, grasp.

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▪ learning

      in learning theory, immediate and clear learning or understanding that takes place without overt trial-and-error testing. Insight occurs in human learning when people recognize relationships (or make novel associations (association) between objects or actions) that can help them solve new problems.

      Much of the scientific knowledge concerning insight derives from work on animal behaviour that was conducted by 20th-century German Gestalt (Gestalt psychology) psychologist Wolfgang Köhler (Köhler, Wolfgang). In one experiment Köhler placed a banana outside the cage of a hungry chimpanzee, Sultan, and gave the animal two sticks, each too short for pulling in the food but joinable to make a single stick of sufficient length. Sultan tried unsuccessfully to use each stick, and he even used one stick to push the other along to touch the banana. Later, apparently after having given up, Sultan accidentally joined the sticks, observed the result, and immediately ran with the longer tool to retrieve the banana. When the experiment was repeated, Sultan joined the two sticks and solved the problem immediately. This result, however, is ambiguous, because it appeared that Sultan solved the problem by accident—not through insight.

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