Research On The Cognitive And Neural Basis Of Visual Art Creativity From The Perspective Of Expertise

Creativity,which is the advanced cognitive ability to produce novel and appropriate products or ideas,promotes the development and progress of human society.Creativity can be divided into both domain-general and domain-specific.Artistic creativity,which refers to the ability to solve artistic problems and produce novel and aesthetic products,is important to domain-specific creativity.There has been no complete theorical model in previous researches of visual artistic creativity.The cognitive basis of visual artistic creativity is mostly limited to domain-specific visual processing ability.However,some cognitive abilities like executive function and semantic processing,which are the most important in domain-general creativity,have not been investigated in visual artistic creativity.The current study aimed to explore whether experts showed better domain-general and domain-specific creativity compared with normal group via three studies and seven experiments.In addition,if it is different,what is the cognitive(i.e.executive function,semantic processing,and visual imagery)and neural basis of the advantages?Firstly,we explored the difference in domain-general and domain-specific creativity by comparing expert group,who have received training in the artistic design domain,and non-expert group in study 1.Meanwhile,we explored the relation between domain-general and domain-specific creativity.The results indicated that expert group showed better domain-general and domain-specific creativity(including novelty and amenity)compared with non-expert group.Secondly,we investigated the cognitive neural basis of visual artistic and domaingeneral creativity via executive function,semantic processing,and visual imagery in study 2,study 3 and study 4.We explored the difference of executive function between expert and non-expert groups,and whether executive function is mediating factor between art training and domain-specific/domain-general creativity in study 2a.Our finding indicated that expert group showed lower inhibition cost and higher inhibition control ability compared with non-expert group.There are no differences in shifting ability and working memory between the two groups.We chose inhibition ability to explore the influence of executive function on domain-specific and domain-general creativity between the two groups by changing inhibition ability(exhaustion)temporarily in study 2b.The results suggested that inhibition function boosted creative performance in figural divergent thinking,and the exhaustion of executive function regulated the performance between expert and non-expert groups in the creative tasks in verbal divergent thinking and product design.Moreover,we investigated whether there exists difference in structural property of semantic network(study 3a)and dynamic flexibility of semantic association(study 3b)between expert and non-expert groups.The findings of study 3a indicated that there were differences in regional/global efficiency,network diameter,and assortativity between the two groups.Global efficiency is the mediating factor between the relations of artistic training and domain general figural,verbal divergent thinking,and domain-specific creativity of product design.In addition,in study 4,we explored the influences of imagery vividness,imagery manipulation,and imagine processing in domain-specific and domain-general creativity.Our results suggested that visual artistic training affected imagery processing.There was no difference in imagery vividness between the two groups.Expert group showed faster reaction time for mental rotation and better fluency and originality of imagine compared with non-expert group.Thirdly,in study 5,we investigated the difference between expert and non-expert groups during visual artistic and domain-specific creative tasks using f NIRS.We also aimed to explore the neural basis of visual artistic and domain-specific creativity in different levels of visual artistic creation.The findings showed that the left primary motor cortex(PMC),right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex(DLPFC),and left inferior frontal gyrus(IFG)showed significantly different activation for expert group compared with non-expert group.Generally,we found expert group showed better performance in both domaingeneral and domain-specific creativity compared with non-expert group.Moreover,structural property of semantic network and dynamic flexibility of semantic association may be not only the neural basis of domain-general creativity but also significantly associated with visual artistic creativity.Imagery processing is necessary for visual artistic creativity,specially imagine processing of imagery(overstatement,transformation and reorganization e.g.)which may be the core of visual artistic originality for creativity.Finally,the brain regions,which are related to cognitive function,may be essential to higher visual artistic creativity(i.e.PMC,DLPFC and IFG).These results not only enrich the cognition and neural basis of visual art creativity,but also provide direction for the cultivation of artistic creativity.