The Cognitive And Neural Mechanism Of Creative Problem Solving Influenced By Reward

Cultivating and promoting creative thinking is immensely important because creativity is the source of human progress.Rewards are commonly used as a way to motivate individuals.Despite the several studies conducted on the influence of rewards on divergent creativity,creativity is not represented entirely by divergent thinking.Furthermore,problem-solving is a sufficient condition for creative processes.However,the influence of rewards on creative problem solving and its relationship with cognitive neural mechanisms remain unclear.The four stages of the creative process include preparation,incubation,illumination,and verification.Particularly,researchers have proposed a mental preparation concept based on the preparation stage.Subsequently,several empirical studies found that manipulating the preparation stage can impact the performance of creative problem-solving.Recently,the Meta-control State Model(MSM)has been used as the cognitive neural mechanism of creative thinking.Researchers believe that creative performance is affected by individual meta-control state bias(i.e.,persistence or flexibility),which has been verified by many related studies on creative thinking.Thus,presenting rewards during the preparatory phase should also manipulate the individual’s meta-control state to influence creative performance.Studying the relationship between rewards and creative problem-solving can reveal the changes in the creative process after it is regulated and explore the corresponding cognitive neural basis.It can further investigate the hypothesis of the metacontrol state model.It is necessary to investigate the impact of rewards in the psychological preparation period on creative performance and whether it conforms to the assumption of meta-control state bias in the MSM model.To solve these problems,four studies were designed to further explore the metacontrol state bias scenario and investigate the electrophysiological mechanism of the effect of reward on creative problem-solving based on the MSM model and mental preparation theory.Furthermore,time-varying network analysis was used to identify diverse network patterns during different stages of creative problem-solving.This study categorized rewards into real and hypothetical rewards based on the persistence and flexibility of the MSM model.Real rewards referred to real money gains in the experiment,while hypothetical rewards were to be imagined as real money by the participants.In Study 1,the effects of real and hypothetical rewards on solving the Chinese Compound Remote Associate(CRA)items and its electrophysiological mechanisms were investigated.Thereafter,the adaptive directed transfer function(ADTF)was used to reveal the diverse network patterns during the process of creative problem-solving.In contrast to the hypothetical reward,this study found that participants had a higher solution rate of creative problem-solving in the real reward condition.Moreover,low rewards can promote solutions for creative problem-solving in contrast to high rewards.Particularly,the event-related potential(ERP)results showed that the hypothetical reward induced a significantly positive P200-600 amplitude as opposed to the real reward.The metacontrol state bias of the participants can impact the performance of subsequent creative problem-solving by manipulating the reward,which provides empirical evidence for the MSM mechanism.Furthermore,the time-varying network analysis showed that in the stage of visual information processing,the left parietal region of the real reward was P7,while the central sources of the hypothetical reward were P7 and P3.Thus,the brain’s response to the hypothetical reward was stronger.In the novel association stage,the right parietal lobe controlled the activity of other regions,the Pz and P4 nodes of the parietal lobe controlled the activity of the hypothetical reward,and the activity of the parietal occipital lobe controlled the activity of the left frontal region.The stronger brain response of the parietal lobe and the information interaction of the frontal-parietal lobe during the novel association stage under the hypothetical reward condition indicate that the condition is more likely to generate a novel association.In Study 2,the effects of real and hypothetical rewards on the Chinese character decomposition task were investigated,while combining ERP and time-varying network analysis to explore its electrophysiological mechanisms.The results showed that the hypothetical reward exhibited improved performance,similar to a low reward.Furthermore,the hypothetical reward induced a more negative N1 amplitude,whereas the real reward induced a more positive LPC amplitude.Moreover,the adaptive direct transfer function(ADTF)results showed that in the stage of visual information processing,the occipital lobe was the central source of the real reward.In contrast,the left parietal lobe and the occipital lobe were the central sources of the hypothetical reward condition,which gradually transferred to the right parietal lobe and occipital lobe.In the conflict detection stage,the central and right frontal regions were the central sources while the brain response was also stronger in the hypothetical reward condition.However,the central regions comprised the central source nodes in the real reward condition.Thus,information interaction between the frontal and central regions under hypothetical reward conditions may enhance the performance for solving problems under novel conditions.Study 3 was conducted to investigate how the presentation of real rewards can improve creative performance.The results showed that people solved more CRA problems when motivated by subliminal real rewards in contrast to supraliminal real rewards.Furthermore,individuals solved CRA problems more frequently under insight solutions as opposed to low-reward conditions.The electrophysiological results indicated that subliminal rewards induced a more positive P200–600 amplitude than supraliminal rewards.Moreover,the brain-behavior correlations revealed a relationship between the P200 and 600 amplitude and behavioral performance,indicating differential effects between subliminal rewards and supraliminal rewards on creative problem-solving.Subliminal rewards may promote creative problem solving and insight rate as a result of their lower attentional selectivity in contrast to supraliminal rewards.The ADTF is used to disclose diverse network patterns during the process of creative problem-solving.The findings of this study suggested that individuals under supraliminal reward demonstrated weak responses at multiple nodes in the brain during the visual information processing stage.This may be influenced by the interference caused by the presentation of the monetary reward.In the subliminal reward condition,the central source comprised the parietal region.Furthermore,the central source of the subliminal reward network for CRA problem-solving gradually shifted to the right parietal lobe in the novel association stage,whereas the supraliminal reward was mainly in the central region.Thus,information interaction in the parietal occipital region of the subliminal reward may reflect the formation of novel associations.In Study 4,the effects of real and hypothetical rewards on creative problem-solving based on behavioral measures were explored under the framework of loss.The findings for the Chinese CRA task in the loss group showed that the creative problem resolution rate of the real reward was higher than that of the hypothetical reward condition.Furthermore,no difference was observed in behavioral performance between the gain and loss groups,which may be due to the high physiological arousal induced by loss counteracting the impairment of high cognitive persistence.The findings for the Chinese character decomposition task in the loss group indicated that the hypothetical low-reward condition yielded the best performance.However,high physiological and brain arousal induced by loss aversion associated with the real high reward improved their information representation ability.This condition did not differ significantly from that of the hypothetical low reward.Moreover,in contrast to the gain group,the performance on the Chinese character decomposition task in the loss group was significantly better.This may be due to the high physiological arousal and brain activation induced by loss.Thus,participants’ aversion to high real rewards could have significantly improved their brain activation and information representation.In conclusion,the present study explored the effect of rewards on creative problem solving and its cognitive neural mechanism.The results provide empirical evidence for the application of MSM theory in the context of creative problem-solving.Furthermore,findings suggest that rewards can manipulate a human’s meta-control state bias to change the performance of subsequent creative problem-solving.The findings from the diverse network patterns showed that the dynamic network patterns are different for the various phases of creative problem-solving.Thus,these findings indicate that different types of rewards regulate the network connection patterns at different phases of creative cognition.