In a study, researchers gave participants the anagram "EAPNTLOH" and asked them to find the hidden word. One group was told to systematically test every possible letter arrangement until a word emerged. A second group was told to focus first on common English letter pairs (such as "th" and "ph") and to start consonants and vowels in plausible patterns. Members of the second group typically solved the puzzle in less than half the time.
A third participant reported staring at the letters for a while and then suddenly seeing the word "ELEPHANT" jump out without any conscious step-by-step process. This experience is best described as:
- A
The availability heuristic
- Bcheck_circle
Insight
- C
Mental set
- D
Confirmation bias
Explanation
Insight is a sudden realization of a problem's solution, often after a period of incubation. Mental set is the tendency to approach problems in a familiar way; the availability heuristic involves judging frequency by ease of recall.