Neurophysiological Characteristics of “Transferring” the Metaphorical Meaning of Images Into Original Titles

Abstract

In the ERP study we aimed to find differences between creating titles for artistic images distinguishing by their meaning and stylistics. Thirty six adolescents (16 m; 20 f. Mean age: 15.9 ± 1.1 years) took part in two studies. Images from three categories – “cartoons”, “plot sketches”, “paintings” – full of metaphors and symbols were used as the stimuli. We considered creating titles for “cartoons” and “plot sketches” of modern artists as convergent creative task based on guessing of artists thought, at the same time the task – creating the titles for “paintings” was considered by us as more open and divergent creative task. During creating titles ERP’s amplitude for the “plot sketches” vs “cartoons” was higher in parietal-occipital and frontal, central, parietal areas on intervals 116–208 and 492–656 ms respectively. During creating titles for the paintings in the author’s style vs realistic paintings differences in ERP’s amplitude were found in occipital areas (152–264 ms), frontal and occipital areas bilateral (208–440 ms) and in frontal, temporal, central, parietal areas with maximum in the left hemisphere (544–600 ms). Late positive wave with different latency, was found in two studies – “plot sketches” vs “cartoons”(492–656 ms) and – “author’s style” vs realistic images (544–600 ms) and suggested to be connected with the extraction and analysis of the metaphorical meaning and symbols in the images for creating of the verbal interpretation (title). Only in performing a convergent creative task (closely related to the interpretation of the artist’s idea), finding the answer was accompanied by a smaller amplitude of late differences in the interval of 1300–1650 ms (more than 1500 ms before the moment when the answer was marked as have been found), while there were no significant differences between finding and not finding the answer in the second study. With the same task and in the conditions of finding/not finding the answer, we assumed that in the first study a process of comparing one’s own ideas with a certain desired (laid down by the author) meaning, that was expressed more strongly than in the second study, was needed.