The Metaphor Effect Of Postural Openness On Creative Thinking And Its Mechanism

Embodied cognition holds that people obtain information and experience through the interaction between the body and the environment.The body not only provides cognitive content,but also influences the cognitive processing.As body actions,postures can affect people's cognition,psychology and behaviors in many ways."Metaphor" is a way to connect body actions with psychological operations,and the sensory-motor system can affect psychological operation through metaphorical mapping when it was activated.At present,there are few studies focus on the metaphorical effect of postures on higher cognitive activities,and its internal mechanism is not clear.This study takes the postures with openness differences in the horizontal direction of limbs as the research objects,selects two forms of creative thinking,namely divergent thinking and convergent thinking,as higher cognitive activities,adopts the "posture-cognition" dual task paradigm,and discusses the metaphorical effect,influencing factors and neural mechanism of postural openness on creative thinking through four studies and eight experiments.Study 1,based on task orientation,investigated the impact of postural openness on divergent thinking and convergent thinking,and explored whether there was the metaphorical effect between postural openness and creative thinking.Experiment 1 investigated the influence of postural openness on divergent thinking and whether it was regulated by standing and sitting posture.121 undergraduates were recruited as subjects,2(postural openness: expansive,contractive)× 2(postural uprightness: sitting,standing)between-subject design were employed,and the Alternative Uses Task was selected as the divergent thinking task.The results indicate that:(1)the main effect of postural openness is significant.The expansive posture promotes divergent thinking better than contractive posture,which verifies the "expansive-divergent" metaphor;(2)The main effect of postural uprightness is significant,and standing posture promotes divergent thinking better than sitting posture;(3)Expansive standing posture is the most conducive posture to divergent thinking.In experiment 2a,the influence of postural openness on convergent thinking and whether it was regulated by standing and sitting posture were investigated.Taking 120 undergraduates as subjects,the 2(postural openness: expansive,contractive)× 2(postural uprightness: sitting,standing)between-subject design was adopted,and the Remote Associates Task was selected as the convergent thinking task.The results show that the main effect of postural openness is not significant,the contractive posture doesn't have advantages in the convergent thinking processing,as well as the "contractive-convergent" metaphor doesn't appear.Experiment 2b investigated whether the impact of postural openness and postural uprightness on convergent thinking was regulated by task difficulty.121 undergraduates were recruited as subjects and 2(postural openness: expansive,contractive)× 2(postural uprightness: sitting,standing)× 3(task difficulty: high,medium,low)three-factor mixed experimental design was employed,which divided the the Remote Associates Task into high,medium and low difficulty.The results show that the main effect of task difficulty was significant,and other effects were not significant.It illustrates that the absence of "contractive-convergent" metaphorical effect is not for the reason of the task difficulty.Experiment 2c investigated the effect of postural openness on non-creative convergent cognitive processing.The experimental design was same as the experiment 2b,and 121 subjects were required to complete proofreading tasks with different difficulties.The results show that:(1)the main effect of task difficulty is significant;(2)The interaction effect of the three factors is significant.When performing the moderately difficult proofreading task,the contractive posture is more conducive to the task than the expansive posture.It indicates that the metaphorical effect of "contractive-convergent" can be reflected in the non-creative convergent cognitive processing,but it was regulated by the task difficulty.Study 2 examined whether the influence of postural openness on divergent thinking was regulated by individual creativity,so as to explore the internal influencing factors of the metaphorical effect of postural openness.The purpose of experiment 3 was to investigate whether the effect of postural openness on divergent thinking was adjusted by the ability level of creative thinking.2(creative thinking ability: high,low)× 2(postural openness: expansive,contractive)two-factor mixed experimental design was adopted,and 32 subjects with high and low creative thinking ability respectively were selected through the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking to investigate the performance of subjects in completing Alternative Uses Tasks with different postures.The results show that:(1)the main effect of creative thinking ability is significant,and the performance of high creative thinking ability subjects in completing divergent tasks is significantly better than that of low creative thinking ability;(2)Other effects are not significant.None of the two conditions of creative thinking ability appear "expansive-divergent" metaphorical effect.Experiment 4 investigated whether the effect of postural openness on divergent thinking was regulated by the level of creative achievement.2(creative achievement: high,low)× 2(postural openness: expansive,contractive)two-factor mixed design was adopted.20 high and 20 low creative achievers were chosen by the Creative Achievement Test to complete the task of alternative uses.The results display that:(1)the main effect of creative achievement is significant,and the performances of subjects with high creative achievements are significantly better than that with low creative achievements;(2)The main effect of postural openness is significant.The expansive posture promotes divergent thinking better than the contractive posture.Study 2 demonstrates that there is not a complete correlation between creative thinking ability and creative achievement.The creative thinking ability can inhibit the metaphorical effect of postural openness,while the creative achievement has no adjustment effect on it.Study 3 examined whether the influence of postural openness on divergent thinking is regulated by semantic evaluation,so as to explore the external influencing factors of the metaphorical effect of postural openness.Experiment 5 examined whether semantic evaluation affected the "expansive-divergent" metaphorical effect.2(semantic evaluation: positive evaluation,no-evaluation)× 2(postural openness: expansive,contractive)between-subject experimental design was employed,123 college students were recruited to complete the task of alternative uses.The results display that:(1)the main effect of semantic evaluation is significant,and the task performance under the condition of positive evaluation is significantly better than that of no-evaluation condition;(2)T-test shows that under the condition of no-evaluation,the expansive posture promotes divergent thinking more than the contractive posture,but there is no significant difference under positive evaluation condition.The study indicates that semantic evaluation can affect action representation and regulate the metaphorical effect of posture.In study 4,the functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy(f NIRS)was used to explore the neural mechanism of postural openness affecting divergent thinking.Experiment 6 investigated the difference of brain activation when completing creative and non-creative cognitive tasks under different postural openness conditions.20 college students were recruited as subjects,and 3(postural openness: expansive,contractive,natural)× 2(task: the Alternative Uses Task,the Object Characteristic Task)within-subject experimental design was employed.The results show that the interaction effect between postural openness and task is significant:(1)under the condition of expansive posture,when performing the AUT task,the right superior marginal gyrus was more significantly activated than when performing the OCT;(2)Under the condition of natural posture,the activation of the right superior marginal gyrus was significantly lower when performing the AUT task than that of OCT;(3)When performing AUT,the activation of the right superior marginal gyrus in expansive posture was significantly higher than that in natural posture,and also higher than that in contractive posture.The research indicates that the right superior marginal gyrus is the key brain area of postural openness affecting divergent thinking,which is related to semantic processing,attention,perceptual judgment and so on.The following conclusions can be drawn under the conditions of this research: body postural openness can metaphorically affect creative thinking,and its effect is mainly reflected in the promotion of expansive posture to divergent thinking,however,the research has not found the promotion of contractive posture to convergent thinking;The metaphorical effect of postural openness on divergent thinking is affected by individual creative thinking ability and semantic evaluation,but not by creative achievement;The right superior marginal gyrus plays an important role in the metaphorical effect of postural openness.