When analytic thought is challenged by a misunderstanding

Language and thought share a unitary cognitive activity, addressed by an interpretative function, grounded on common, universal interactive abilities. This interpretative effort reveals the assonance between the meaning attribution to an utterance and the discovery of solution via a restructuring process in insight problem solving. Restructuring is grasping the adequate interrelation among parts of a whole (a Gestalt). Analogously, the understanding of a witticism is the result of an interpretative process focused on the speaker’s intended meaning, adhering to or detracting from the literal meaning as the case requires.This interpretative effort always implies processing the context, never abstracting from it. In the style of the Gestaltists analytical reasoning always processes the context relevant to the aim of the task, as does language. This analysis works on a conscious explicit and unconscious implicit layer. We investigated the interrelationship between language and thought in insight problem solving. The solution of the problems reveals an interactive ability to grasp the aim of the task and to overcome the privileged organization of perceptual stimuli, in an interrelated interpretative ‘‘game’’.