Creativity and aging: Positive consequences of distraction.

Abstract

Diminished inhibitory control in cognitive functioning renders people vulnerable to the effects of distracting information. Older adults' decreased ability to ignore information makes them especially susceptible to the disruptive effects of distraction. We show that in the domain of creativity, distraction can have beneficial consequences. In the first study, both younger and older adults generated more creative recipes when presented with distracting information that was congruent with target information, compared to no distracting information, in a subsequent creativity task. This increase in creativity with congruent distraction was preserved, and even slightly enhanced, among older relative to younger adults. In the second study, we sought to replicate and extend our findings to a new task. We found that following exposure to distracting information, older adults generated more creative solutions than younger adults on a subsequent unusual uses for a brick task. Present findings suggest ways that distraction can boost creativity among older adults.

Creativity in the Predominantly Inattentive and Combined Presentations of ADHD in Adults

“…Fortunately, most studies report no gender-based differences in creativity ( Abraham, 2016 ). While aging has been shown to fragilize inhibitory mechanisms and consequently, facilitate DT, this has been observed in a much older sample (aged 60–77; Carpenter et al, 2020 ). Thus, it is unlikely that these variables had a significant effect on our results.…”

Aging and inhibition: Introduction to the special issue.

“…Finally, much of this special issue and, indeed, the literature is focused on the negative effects of reduced inhibitory control (cf. Carpenter et al, 2020). However, we have argued that reduced inhibitory control is like a double-edged sword (Amer et al, 2016) in that it produces both costs and benefits for those who experience it.…”

Cluttered memory representations shape cognition in old age

“…(e.g., 'room', 'bubble', and 'salts') can be linked by a fourth missing word ('bath'), older, but not younger, adults showed enhanced performance when exposed to solutions (i.e., the missing words) as distractors on a previous unrelated task [100]. Similarly, older adults showed a greater performance benefit than younger adults on the Alternate Uses Task (requiring generation of unusual uses for a common item), when useful suggestions were presented as distractors on a previous task [119]. These findings suggest that access to distractors in enriched memories can sometimes aid creativity.…”