Promotion of creativity (divergent productions) and convergent productions by systematic-relaxation exercises: empirical evidence from five experimental studies with children, young adults, and elderly

Abstract

Presented are the results of five experimental studies on the effects of systematicrelaxation exercises on divergent as well as convergent performance. Subjects were 40 elementary school children, 120 college students, and 52 elderly. In Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5, subjects were assigned at random to either an experimental group (participating in a short systematic-relaxation exercise without pre-experience or exercising autogenic training which subjects had learned at least 6 months before) or to a control group (with unspecific relaxation instructions). In Experiment 3, subjects with against without experience of autogenic training were matched for age, gender, years of study, and creativity pretest scores. Before and after systematic against unsystematic relaxation, subjects were tested for divergent performances (word fluency, associational fluency, expressional fluency, and ideational fluency) and convergent performances (short-term memory, concentration, and general intelligence). Results of all experiments consistently show significant improvements of divergent andÐto a lesser extentÐconvergent performances in the experimental groups after systematicrelaxation exercises. These short-term effects of systematic-relaxation exercises are

Exposure to Progressive Muscle Relaxation Leads to Enhanced Performance on Derived Relational Responding Tasks

“…The present study established that a brief relaxation intervention was effective in significantly increasing cognitive performance operationalized as derived relational responding. These findings are consistent with the literature reporting enhancements to cognition following extensive as well as brief meditation training (Krampen, 1997;Rausch, et al, 2006;Zeidan, et al, 2010). Specifically, a single 11-minute PMR exercise was effective in significantly increasing response accuracy compared to the two control groups for both one-node and twonode derived relations.…”

“…, along with improved problem solving ability across age groups from young children to the elderly (Krampen, 1997).…”

The Opposite of Stress

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Improvement of orthography test performance by relaxation exercises: results of a controlled field experiment in basic secondary education

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