Reactive control in evaluating appropriately or inappropriately novel ideas: Evidence from electrophysiological measures

Abstract

Creativity is generally defined as the ability to generate products or thoughts that are both novel (new, unusual, original, and unexpected) and appropriate (useful, effective, adaptive, and valuable) (Sternberg & Lubart, 1996. Although novelty and appropriateness are considered two essential features of creative ideas (

Cognitive control of invalid predominant ideas in insight‐like problem solving

“…In both of these studies, the insight‐like test problem did not greatly evoke conflict‐related neural activities (i.e., the N2/N400 components or activation of the anterior cingulate cortex) when it was similar to the practice problem, but it could not be solved by the practiced solution or predominant ideas. Indeed, when the participants evaluated externally provided ideas for solving character decomposition tasks, if the predominant idea was invalid for solving the current problem, it did not elicit greater conflict‐related N2 or N400 components than the appropriate conditions did (Tang et al, 2022). Based on the above results, we further inferred that even when the predominant idea is invalid for solving the problem at hand, when the current problem is similar to situations in which the predominant idea is typically applied, people are unlikely to experience cognitive conflicts.…”

“…The analysis epoch for the ERP was 2200 ms and was time-locked to the problem onset, including a 200ms prestimulus baseline. As previous studies showed that greater N2, N400 and late sustained potentials (LSP) were found when solving creative or insight-like problems than ordinary problems (Abraham et al, 2021;Kroger et al, 2013;Li et al, 2020;Rataj, Przekoracka-Krawczyk, & van der Lubbe, 2018), we measured the mean amplitude of these components at 280-380 ms, 380-600 ms, and 600-1000 ms, respectively, referring to the classic time windows analyzed for conflict monitoring and resolutionrelated components (Heidlmayr et al, 2020) and the observed windows of these components in Chinese character decomposition tasks (Tang et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2019Zhang et al, , 2020Zhang et al, , 2021.…”

“…In a study on problem solving with Chinese characters that used the learning‐testing experimental paradigm, when participants were confronted with a test problem similar to the practice problem that could be solved with the practiced solution, no greater conflict‐related N2 or N400 components were evoked; rather, problems that required a novel approach evoked a greater sustained positive wave in the later time window (Luo et al, 2011). Similarly, when participants were asked to evaluate whether externally provided predominant ideas were sufficient to solve Chinese character decomposition tasks, no differences in the N2 or N400 were found between the invalid predominant and appropriate predominant conditions, but the invalid predominant conditions elicited a greater late positive component than the appropriate predominant conditions (Tang et al, 2022).…”

“…In a study that asked participants to solve problems independently, the observed late positive potentials were suggested to reflect the search for or generation of alternative solutions (Luo et al, 2011). However, this view was undermined in a later study because sustained positive waves were also found in an evaluation task when participants were asked only to evaluate the appropriateness of given predominant solutions rather than to explore alternative solutions; instead, the researchers speculated that the participants just continued to try the predominant but currently invalid ideas (Tang et al, 2022). The latter explanation was supported by a fMRI study that also adopted character chunk decomposition tasks, in which the activation of the primary visual cortex, related to the operation of the predominant idea, did not decrease and the activation of the higher visual cortex, related to the exploration of subordinate ideas, did not increase (Huang, Zhao, et al, 2019).…”

“…By comparing the electrophysiological activity associated with the practice problems and two types of insight‐like test problems, along with participant reports of online processing, we can determine cognitive control of invalid predominant ideas. Based on previous studies showing that cognitive control in solving insight‐like problems was dependent on the similarity between the current problem and the typical problem (Huang, Han, et al, 2019; Huang, Zhao, et al, 2019; Tang et al, 2022), we predicted that when the insight‐like test problem was similar to the practice problems, it would not elicit conflict‐related N2 or N400 components but would instead elicit greater cognitive control‐related sustained deflections in the late time window, largely over the anterior region. In contrast, when the insight‐like test problem was not similar to the practice problems, we predicted that it would elicit greater N2 or N400 components and sustained deflections over anterior‐central regions.…”