Engineering creativity: Prior experience modulates electrophysiological responses to novel metaphors

How stereotype threat affects the brain dynamics of creative thinking in female students

When people are placed in a situation where they are at risk of substantiating a negative stereotype about their social group (a scenario termed stereotype threat), the extra pressure to avoid this outcome can undermine their performance. Substantial and consistent gender disparities in STEM fields leave women vulnerable to stereotype threat, including the stereotype that women are not as good at generating creative and innovative ideas as men. We tested whether female students' creative thinking is affected by a stereotype threat by measuring power in the alpha frequency band (8-12Hz oscillations) that has been associated with better creative thinking outcomes. Counter to expectations that a stereotype threat would reduce alpha power associated with creative thinking, analyses showed increased alpha power following the introduction of the stereotype threat. This outcome suggests that women may have attempted to increase their internal attention during the task in order to disprove the stereotype. Behaviorally, this effort did not lead to changes in creative performance, suggesting that the stereotype threat decoupled alpha power from creative thinking outcomes. These results support a growing school of thought in the neuroscience of creativity literature that the alpha power often seen in conjunction with creative behavior is not necessarily related to the creativity processes themselves, but rather might be part of a larger network modulating the distribution of attentional resources more broadly.

Creativity and its relationship with intelligence and reading skills in children: an exploratory study

Creativity, intelligence, and reading skills such as phonological awareness and decoding in reading can be critical to academic success, especially during childhood. Thus, this study aimed to characterize creativity, intelligence, phonological awareness, and reading decoding and verify possible relationships between creativity and these skills. The sample consisted of 75 children divided between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades of municipal public schools in the Brazilian context. The results indicated the gradual evolution of creativity, intelligence, phonological awareness, and reading decoding in children from the 1st to the 3rd year, especially for the performance of the 3rd year. Correlations between creativity with intelligence and reading skills were also evidenced for all three classes, with the 3rd year with stronger correlations, which are promising results for these relationships. The study of creativity is still a recent field for empirical investigations and deserves future investigations for a better understanding of these constructs in this population.

The Elephant in the Room: A Systematic Review of Stimulus Control in Neuro-Measurement Studies on Figurative Language Processing

The processing of metaphors and idioms has been the subject of neuroscientific research for several decades. However, results are often contradictory, which can be traced back to inconsistent terminology and stimulus control. In this systematic review of research methods, we analyse linguistic aspects of 116 research papers which used EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, or NIRS to investigate the neural processing of the two figurative subtypes metaphor and idiom. We critically examine the theoretical foundations as well as stimulus control by performing a systematic literature synthesis according to the PRISMA guidelines. We explicitly do not analyse the findings of the studies but instead focus on four primary aspects: definitions of figurative language and its subtypes, linguistic theory behind the studies, control for factors influencing figurative language processing, and the relationship between theoretical and operational definitions. We found both a lack and a broad variety in existing definitions and operationalisation, especially in regard to familiarity and conventionality. We identify severe obstacles in the comparability and validation potential of the results of the papers in our review corpus. We propose the development of a consensus in fundamental terminology and more transparency in the reporting of stimulus design in the research on figurative language processing.

Engineering creativity: Prior experience modulates electrophysiological responses to novel metaphors

Novel metaphorical language use exemplifies human creativity through production and comprehension of meaningful linguistic expressions that may have never been heard before. Available electrophysiological research demonstrates, however, that novel metaphor comprehension is cognitively costly, as it requires integrating information from distantly related concepts. Herein, we investigate if such cognitive cost may be reduced as a factor of prior domain knowledge. To this end, we asked engineering and nonengineering students to read for comprehension literal, novel metaphorical, and anomalous sentences related to engineering or general knowledge, while undergoing EEG recording. Upon reading each sentence, participants were asked to judge whether or not the sentence was original in meaning (novelty judgment) and whether or not it made sense (sensicality judgment). When collapsed across groups, our findings demonstrate a gradual N400 modulation with N400 being maximal in response to anomalous, followed by metaphorical, and literal sentences. Between‐group comparisons revealed a mirror effect on the N400 to novel metaphorical sentences, with attenuated N400 in engineers and enhanced N400 in non‐engineers. Critically, planned comparisons demonstrated reduced N400 amplitudes to engineering novel metaphors in engineers relative to non‐engineers, pointing to an effect of prior knowledge on metaphor processing. This reduction, however, was observed in the absence of a sentence type × knowledge × group interaction. Altogether, our study provides novel evidence suggesting that prior domain knowledge may have a direct impact on creative language comprehension.

This study provides novel evidence that prior knowledge facilitates interpretation of novel metaphorical sentences, an index of linguistic creativity. As such, this study contributes to, and bridges, the fields of figurative language processing and creativity research.