The Impact of Bodily States on Divergent Thinking: Evidence for a Control-Depletion Account

Impact of chronic physical activity on individuals' creativity

There is growing evidence to suggest that physical activity positively influences cognitive processes. A similar trend is seen in the literature examining the relationship between acute physical activity and creativity. Nevertheless, certain questions persist: Does engaging in physical activity over an extended period (chronic) influence creativity? If it does, what is the duration of this impact? The present study uses Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) to examine whether chronic physical activity for 6 weeks can improve individual creativity vis-à-vis a control group that performs regular class activity without any physical activity. It also assesses whether the effect of chronic physical activity on creativity endures after 2 weeks of ceasing the interventions. The study involves 49 school students who were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control conditions. Their creativity, operationalized as divergent thinking is measured using the Alternate Uses Task. The measurements are taken before the intervention, again 6 weeks later, and once more, after 2 weeks of cessation of interventions. The results indicate that after 6 weeks of engaging in physical activity, the participants showed improvements in both the fluency and originality components of divergent thinking when compared to the control group. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a lingering effect of physical activity on the originality component of divergent thinking. The findings lend some support to the strength model of self-control. The implications for research and practice are further discussed in the study.

Reduced occipital alpha power marks a movement induced state change that facilitates creative thinking

Walking and minimized movement restriction has a positive effect on creativity, such as divergent thinking. Walking is further known to reduce occipital alpha activity. We used mobile EEG during free and restricted movement, while subjects (N = 23) solved a Guilford's alternate uses test, to understand if occipital alpha power is also affected by movement restriction and if it is a neural marker for creativity. We found that, independent of the task, relative occipital alpha power was higher during movement restriction and showed a negative relationship with creativity scores even though the task was purely based on auditory information. Alpha lateralization was only modulated during the task related think-time (mainly during sitting) and showed a positive relationship with creativity scores but no correlation with the relative alpha power. This indicates that the ongoing alpha power and alpha lateralization mark two independent processes. Overall, our work shows that movement and movement restriction leads to a general change in state which affects cognitive processes. Specifically, limiting one's movements e.g. due to sitting and fixating on a screen can introduce a state of increased occipital alpha power and lowered creativity.

The Effect of Virtual-Reality-Based Restorative Environments on Creativity

This study, based on the theory of restorative environmental, uses virtual reality (VR) technology to construct interactive restorative environments and discusses the influence of the experience of virtual restorative environment on individual creativity. A total of 72 college students were selected as participants in the study. Through psychological scales, three creativity tests, and EEG feedback data, the following conclusions were drawn: (1) The VR restorative environment experience improves individual creativity, especially the creative quality of cohesion; (2) the experience of the VR restorative environment enables participants to experience a desirable sense of presence. Compared with the restorative scene experience without interactive activities, the addition of interactive activities improves the individual sensory fidelity to a greater extent. (3) We cannot simply assume that the experience of the VR restorative environment with interactive activities will make individual creative performance better than non-interactive experience. Interaction with certain difficulty will increase cognitive load, thus disrupting individual creative performance. Garden scenes that can be explored freely and have no interaction can better promote individual creativity. (4) In the environmental experience, participants paid greater attention to natural elements, and the restorative environment they described was very similar to the environment they believed could foster creativity. This study's results provide evidence for the positive effects of the VR restorative environment experience on individuals and contributes to the cognitive exploration of the interaction between restorative environments and individuals in the future.

Acute and Chronic Physical Activity Increases Creative Ideation Performance: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

Physical activity is a health-relevant lifestyle factor associated with various benefits on physical and mental health. Several meta-analyses indicated effects of acute and chronic physical activities on elementary cognitive functions such as executive control processes, memory, and attention. Meta-analytic evidence on the effects of physical activity on creative idea generation, which involves a conglomerate of these elementary cognitive functions, is largely missing.

OBJECTIVE

A twofold approach was used to evaluate (1) if there is an association between habitual physical activity and creative ideation and (2) if physical activity interventions (acute and chronic) enhance creative ideation performance.

METHODS

Multilevel meta-analytic methods were applied to (1) evaluate the cross-sectional association between creative ideation performance and measures of habitual physical activity and (2) the effect of physical activity on creative ideation performance. Indicators of creative ideation (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, or composite score), creativity domain (verbal, figural), population (adults, children), gender, study quality, and publication year served as moderator variables for both meta-analyses. Analyses of intervention studies additionally examined the moderator variables study design (between, within), time of measurement (during, after), and implementation of intervention (acute, chronic).

RESULTS

The applied meta-analytic multilevel analysis indicated a medium effect for cross-sectional studies (r = 0.22, SE = 0.06, p = 0.002, 95% CI [0.10-0.34]) based on 17 effects sizes from seven studies. The pooled effects of 28 intervention studies, providing 115 effect sizes, indicated a medium effect size of Hedges' g = 0.47 (SE = 0.09, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.30-0.65]). Furthermore, a stronger effect was observed for chronic interventions of several days or weeks in comparison with acute interventions of one single bout.

CONCLUSION

This study adds important new meta-analytic evidence on the beneficial role of physical activity beyond mental and physical health outcomes: Physical activity has a positive impact on creative ideation, which expands the literature on the role of physical activity in more elementary cognitive functions such as executive control, memory, and attention. Moderator analyses suggested that chronic interventions showed stronger effects than single bouts of physical activity. Rigorously conducted randomized controlled intervention studies and more cross-sectional studies are needed to broaden the evidence in this nascent field of research.

Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting

Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement. Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance. In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford’s alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen. When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition. Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking. Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility.

A Perspective on Implementing Movement Sonification to Influence Movement (and Eventually Cognitive) Creativity

Creativity represents an important feature in a variety of daily-life and domain-specific contexts. Recent evidence indicates that physical movement serves as a key resource for exploring and generating task-relevant creative ideas, supporting the embodied perspective on creative cognition. An intuitive link between movement and creative cognition is movement creativity. The process of exploring the movement solutions an environment offers (i.e., affordances) and exploiting novel, functional, and creative movements may translate to and improve how individuals explore and generate novel ideas. Opening perception to the variety of affordances (“conventional” and novel) an environment offers drives creative movement. Teachers and coaches can promote this process by designing a learning environment that invites performers to consider and utilize novel movement solutions. In this article, we present a rationale for using movement sonification to promote creative movement. Movement sonification consists of mapping a movement parameter into sound, with a sound being triggered or changing according to how movement unfolds. We argue that movement sonification can facilitate the emergence of creative movement via enhancing perception of currently performed movements and invite performers to utilize novel affordances, and emphasizing information for regulating subsequent creative actions. We exemplify this concept in a creative dance intervention for children during physical education classes. In conclusion, we contend that learning to explore original dance sequences using movement sonification may provide a meaningful link between creative movement and creative cognition. Children may use their minds and bodies as tools for creative thinking and exploration, such as shaping letters with their bodies.

Systematic Review of the Proposed Associations between Physical Exercise and Creative Thinking

The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between physical exercise and creative thinking. A systematic review approach was employed by searching PubMed, Google Scholar and PsychInfo databases. Among the evaluated 13 studies, 92% indicated a beneficial relationship. However, 77% were vulnerable to moderate-high risk for methodological bias, suggesting adherence to standardized and controlled research initiatives should be promoted. There appears to be weak to modest support for acute, moderate-intensity exercise to benefit creativity. Exercise timing relative to creativity assessment protocols should be addressed and further detailed. Creativity scoring procedures must be refined, and an increased focus on the motivational components of exercise may help guide researchers in measuring creative thoughts and behavior. Broader concluding claims that creativity, in general, is improved or impaired by exercise, is as problematic as sweeping statements that exercise improves or impairs a measure as dynamic as intelligence. Scientific inquiries must specify precisely which outcome characteristics are changing in line with research interventions. This review identifies several fallible linkages between physical activity and creativity. Too few studies were conducted on strong methodological foundations, perpetuating the risk for undermining or inaccurately inflating the potential association between exercise and creative thinking behavior.

Workspace Disorder Does Not Influence Creativity and Executive Functions

Recent research by Vohs et al. (2013) garnered media attention after reporting that disordered environments increase creativity. The present research was designed to conceptually replicate and extend this finding by exploring the effect of workspace disorder on creativity. Participants were randomly assigned to work at a neatly organized (Order condition) or a messy desk (Disorder condition), where they completed several paper-and-pencil and computerized tasks, including two validated creativity measures (Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults; ATTA; Goff and Torrance, 2002; Alternative Uses Task; adapted from Guilford, 1967). We also included several executive control measures from the NIH EXAMINER (Kramer, 2011), to explore the role of reduced top-down control in explaining a possible creativity-disorder connection. Independent-samples t-tests failed to replicate any significant difference in creativity between the Order and Disorder conditions. Furthermore, the conditions did not differentially affect executive control. Despite implementing an experimental setup similar to the one in Vohs et al. (2013), including a larger sample size, and adopting multiple measures of the constructs of interest, we did not find any effect of workspace clutter on cognitive performance. At this stage, the relationship between disorder and cognition seems elusive and does not warrant the claims it generated in the popular press.

Engaging in Creativity Broadens Attentional Scope

Previous studies have shown that creativity is enhanced by a broad attentional scope, defined as an ability to utilize peripheral stimuli and process information globally. We propose that the reverse relationship also holds, and that breadth of attention also is a consequence of engaging in a creative activity. In Study 1, participants showed increased breadth of attention in a visual scanning task after performing a divergent thinking task as opposed to an analytic thinking task. In Study 2, participants recognized peripheral stimuli displayed during the task better after performing a divergent thinking task as compared to an analytic task, whereas recognition performance of participants performing a task that involves a mix of divergent and analytic thinking (the Remote Associates Test) fell in between. Additionally, in Study 2 (but not in Study 1), breadth of attention was positively correlated with performance in a divergent thinking task, but not with performance in an analytic thinking task. Our findings suggest that the adjustment of the cognitive system to task demands manifests at a very basic, perceptual level, through changes in the breadth of visual attention. This paper contributes a new, motivational perspective on attentional breadth and discusses it as a result of adjusting cognitive processing to the task requirements, which contributes to effective self-regulation.

Experimental effects of acute exercise and music listening on cognitive creativity

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to extend previous experimental work suggesting that both exercise and music-based interventions may influence creativity processes, by investigating the independent influences of exercise or music stimuli on verbal creative performances in the laboratory environment.

METHODS

32 students at the University of Mississippi participated in this within-subject intervention, which included three laboratory visits per participant. Individuals participated in three 15-min, randomized experimental conditions: Treadmill walking, self-selected music, or a seated control period, and subsequently completed four creativity assessments during each visit (three tests of divergent thinking, and one test of convergent thinking), with the order of divergent thinking tasks counterbalanced. Creativity task performance was independently scored across four dependent parameters, which included fluency (i.e., total number of ideas), flexibility (i.e., total number of categories), originality (i.e., responses thought of by <5% of the sample), and elaboration (i.e., degree of supplementary detail included per idea).

RESULTS

Repeated Measures ANOVAs indicated that creativity scores for fluency (F(2, 60) = 0.63, p = 0.94), flexibility (F(2, 60) = 0.64, p = 0.53), originality (F(2, 60 = 0.23, p = 0.78), and elaboration (F(2, 60) = 2.74, p = 0.07), were not statistically significant across the visits.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings add to the equivocal body of creativity research, uniquely assessing the effects of exercise and music on verbal creativity performance. The present study further highlights the critical need for improvement in the assessment and evaluation of laboratory-assessed cognitive creativity. Methodological strategies must be examined and refined for the meaningful and credible measurement and interpretation of experimental creativity.