The Experimental Effects of Acute Walking on Cognitive Creativity Performance

Abstract

To examine the experimental effects of acute moderate-intensity walking exercise on cognitive creativity, 20 young adults (M age = 21.3 years) completed a within-subject experimental protocol involving three trials on a single laboratory visit. Trials 1 and 2 were control trials involving creativity task performance. Following Trial 2, participants completed a 15-minute acute bout of treadmill walking exercise. After this, participants completed a Trial 3 creativity assessment. For all trials, both convergent (remote associates task) and divergent (alternative uses task) creativities were assessed. There was no statistically significant experimental effect of acute exercise on convergent creativity performance (F = 0.48; P = 0.62; η 2 = 0.05). Results were similar for divergent creativity. Our findings do not provide evidence that acute walking enhances cognitive creativity. ARTICLE HISTORY

Studying the effects of visual movement on creativity

“…The main limitation of our study concerns the measures of creativity used. Interpretations made on GAU scores representing divergent creativity and RAT scores representing convergent creativity should be considered with caution as these measures are not completely independent and pure (Patterson, Frith & Loprinzi, 2018;Cortes, Weinberger, Daker & Green, 2019). In order to remove doubts about the measures, further studies involving several different types of divergence and convergence oriented tasks should be carried out in order to have a better understanding of the effects involved.…”