There are
problems with the narrow
interpretation taken in the
Maier String experiment. For example, the person may respond "it just came to me" but what they mean to say is that it came to them
after they saw the
motion of the
string. The cause in this case can not be attributed to the
experimentor, but the awareness of the
stimuli available. Any new information can cause a
radical shift in thinking that may very well appear to "come from
nowhere" but when asked to
isolate the
time of start for this thinking, most people, through
introspection can and will link their
reasoning to the probable root cause.
While the second experiment indicates a lack of psychological subtlety when dealing with one's inner-workings it doesn't disprove the reasons that the subjects put forward, it merely gives a likely reason that was overlooked because the pattern wasn't understood by the subjects. Also arguably, the level of sophistication of the subject has a lot to do with the success of their introspection, and people who aren't adept at ordinary analysis will have a hard time examining their psyches with objective reasoning.