The Effect Of Forming Novel Associations In Creative Learning On Memory And Its Neural Mechanisms

In recent years,creative learning has gradually attracted the attention of researchers.In general,researchers with different research orientation are concerned about different aspects of creative learning.The researchers of educational orientation mainly focus on the external factors affecting creative learning and less care about the process of creative learning;while the researchers holding cognitive orientation focus on the cognitive process of creative learning,and do not explain how these processes affect the learning performance.Creative learning and creative activities have similar key cognitive processing processes,mainly include information selection and novel associations formation.Some researchers have focused on the effect of creative activity on memory,and found that creative activity has a promoting effect on later memory,but researchers explain the mechanism only from the perspective of theoretical hypothesis.A few researchers explored the neural mechanism of creative activity to promote memory,and found that creative activity significantly activates the amygdala.They thought that the creative activity itself as a reward,generally accompanied by positive emotions,and thus promotes memory.However,creative activities have unique cognitive processes,rewards and positive emotions are not unique for creative activities.Therefore,based on the lack of past researches,the purpose of current study is to investigate the effect of novel associations formation on memory in creative activities,and further explore the neural mechanism.Experiment 1 was designed for single-factor within-subjects,using the idiom answer selection paradigm,with the formation of a novel association(selecting a novel answer)and normal association(selection of an normal answer)as the levels of independent variable,the recollection performance in test phase as dependent variable,which examines the effect of the novel association on the memory during the creative activity process.The results show that compared with the normal association,the novel association has a higher correct recall rate,suggesting that the novel association in the creative activity will promote the post-memory.The second experiment used fMRI technology to reveal the neural mechanisms of the effect of novel associations on memory,with single-factor within-subjects design.The findings are as follows:(1)Compared with the failure recall in novel associations,the successful recall significantly activate the right hippocampus,the left amygdala,bilateral middle temporal gyrus,right superior temporal gyrus,and right insula.These brain regions may be related to the representation of episodic memory,the semantic representation based on the words,and the promotion of positive emotion to the episodic memory in the process of novel associations formation;(2)Compared with the failure recall in normal associations,the successful recall did not significantly activate any brain regions;(3)The novel association has a significant effect on memory promotion with the activation of the right hippocampus,suggesting that novel associations may promote post memory through the episodic memory representations.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The formation of novel association in the process of creating activities has a positive effect on memory;(2)The formation of novel association may promote post memory through the episodic memory representations.