Have you ever encountered a problem and just known there was a solution even though you could not quite put a finger on what the solution was? In this line of research we are interested in understanding whether people have a sensitivity to the existence of a solution prior to consciously retrieving it and, if so, what that sensitivity can influence. In our research we consistently find that participants are able to judge whether a Compound Remote Associate (CRA) word problem has a solution or not at a level greater than chance. However, this effect is small with participants’ sensitivity only slightly better than chance performance. Our research so far has focused on:

    • Understanding what information participants are using to make correct intuitive judgments
    • Improving the accuracy of intuitive judgments
    • Identifying the relationship between intuitive judgments and solution retrieval

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