Mental process

Abstract: Creativity is a cornerstone of what makes us human, yet the neural mechanisms underlying creative thinking are poorly understood. A recent surge of interest into the neural underpinnings of creative behavior has produced a banquet of data that is tantalizing but, considered as a whole, deeply self-contradictory. We review the emerging literature and take stock of several long-standing theories and widely held beliefs about creativity. A total of 72 experiments, reported in 63 articles, make up the core of the review. They broadly fall into 3 categories: divergent thinking, artistic creativity, and insight. Electroencephalographic studies of divergent thinking yield highly variegated results. Neuroimaging studies of this paradigm also indicate no reliable changes above and beyond diffuse prefrontal activation. These findings call into question the usefulness of the divergent thinking construct in the search for the neural basis of creativity. A similarly inconclusive picture emerges for studies of artistic performance, except that this paradigm also often yields activation of motor and temporoparietal regions. Neuroelectric and imaging studies of insight are more consistent, reflecting changes in anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas. Taken together, creative thinking does not appear to critically depend on any single mental process or brain region, and it is not especially associated with right brains, defocused attention, low arousal, or alpha synchronization, as sometimes hypothesized. To make creativity tractable in the brain, it must be further subdivided into different types that can be meaningfully associated with specific neurocognitive processes.

Abstract: Creativity is often considered to be a mental process that occurs within a person’s head. In this article, we analyze a group creative process: One that generates a creative product, but one in which no single participant’s contribution determines the result. We analyze a series of 5 theater performances that were improvisationally developed in rehearsal by a theater group; over the course of these 5 performances, a collaborative creation emerged from the improvised dialogues of the group. We argue that in cases of creativity such as this one, it is inaccurate to describe creativity as a purely mental process; rather, this case represents a nonindividualistic creative process that we refer to as distributed creativity. We chose this term by analogy with studies of distributed cognition, which are well established in cognitive science, but have not yet had a substantial impact on creativity research. Our study demonstrates a methodology that can be used to study distributed creative processes, provides a theoretical framework to explain these processes, and contributes to our understanding of how collaboration contributes to creativity.

Abstract: Mental process and mental experience are not the same thing. The former is the operation of the mind; the latter is the subjective life that emerges from that operation. In social evaluation, implicit and explicit attitudes express this distinction. Although it is clear that they are not the same, how they differ is not. Across content domains, implicit and explicit attitude measures show substantial variability in the strength of correspondence, ranging from near zero to strongly positive. Variation in controllability, intentionality, awareness, or efficiency is thought to differentiate implicit and explicit attitudes. Dual-process theories and empirical evidence for moderating influences of implicit–explicit attitude relations provide a framework for comprehending relations between the operation and the experience of the mind.