| Creativity was once thought as a mysterious power, or supernormal ability, which was uncultivable and could not be studied scientifically. However, as research continues, a growing number of evidence indicated that, creativity is not an elusory phenomenon, its underlying cognitive process is also universal and regular. Most of the cognitive theories of creativity agree that, there are at least two stages involved in the creative cognition process:generation and evaluation. But, the existing empirical studies concerned more about the creative generation process, and the discussion about creative evaluation was very little. Moreover, the few relative researches still adopted traditional creativity research paradigms and materials, which could not distinguish the creative evaluation process from other cognitive processes, and then discover its cognitive mechanism. Therefore, this study chose a critical dimension of creativity-novelty, and brought in new paradigm to investigate the novelty evaluation process technically. Using behavioral estimation and ERP technique, the different cognitive mechanism of novelty evaluation of the undergraduate students with high and low level of creative scientific problem finding (CSPF) ability was discussed.The Creative Scientific Problem Finding Test was used to determine the creative scientific problem finding (CSPF) ability of our subjects. Pictures of creative animals and plants (the bodies of which were formed by the combination of distinct features of different animals or plants), and normal animals and plants were used as stimuli. By analyzing the behavioral and ERP results of our participants in three different tasks (novelty evaluation task, categorization task, recognition task), the behavioral and neural differences in novelty evaluation process between participants with high and low level of CSPF ability was discussed.In study one,114 undergraduate students were chosen to be our participants. According to their scores of The Creative Scientific Problem Finding Test, participants with high and low level of CSPF ability were selected, and the differences of their accuracy and reaction time in three tasks were discussed. Results suggested that:(1) In the novelty evaluation task, the accuracy of high CSPF level participants was better than low CSPF level participants, only low CSPF level participants’ reaction time to novel pictures was slower than that to normal pictures. (2) In categorization task, the accuracy and reaction time of participants with high and low level of CSPF ability were not significantly different, only high CSPF level participants’ reaction time to novel pictures was slower than that to normal pictures. (3) In recognition task, the accuracy of high CSPF level participants was better than low CSPF level participants, for all of the participants, the accuracy to novel pictures was significantly lower than that to normal pictures, and the reaction time to novel pictures was significantly slower than that to normal pictures.In study two,14 high CSPF level students and 11 low CSPF level students were selected by Creative Scientific Problem Finding Test. By using ERP technique, the neural differences in novelty evaluation task and categorization task between these two groups were investigated. Results suggested that:(1)In the novelty evaluation task, in the time window between 190 and 340 ms, only for the low CSPF level participants, there was a significant difference between N2 waves elicited by the novel pictures and normal pictures. In the time window between 350 and 500 ms, only for the high CSPF level participants, there was a significant difference between P3b waves elicited by the novel pictures and normal pictures. In the time window between 500 and 1000 ms, for all the participants, there was a significant difference between PSW waves elicited by the novel pictures and normal pictures. (2) In the categorization task, in the time window between 190 and 340 ms, for all the participants, there was no significant difference between N2 waves elicited by the novel pictures and normal pictures. In the time window between 350 and 500 ms, for all the participants,, there was no significant difference between P3b waves elicited by the novel pictures and normal pictures. In the time window between 500 and 1000 ms, only for the high CSPF level participants, there was a significant difference between PSW waves elicited by the novel pictures and normal pictures.In conclusion, the students with high level of CSPF ability were more efficient during the novelty evaluation process, and the reasons for this phenomenon can be explained as follow:the high CSPF level individuals are more efficient when storing information and updating representation in working memory. They are good at distributing their attention resources with defocused attention mode, and they can change their attention mode more flexibly. More importantly, they implicitly evaluate the novelty of anything they noticed, even they are not asked to do so, thus, the degree of automation of their novelty evaluation process is higher than others. |
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