The Impact Of Multicultural Experience On Creativity: Evidence From FMRI

In the wake of developments in science and technology,the opportunities for communication and cooperation in economy,polity,culture and education between different countries more frequently than before.The tendency of globalization is becoming more and more apparent which has brought opportunities and challenges to all countries.In the contact,conflict and merging of different cultures of ethnic groups affects individual cognition,emotion and behavior.Multicultural experience is defined as the direct or indirect experience obtain on the process when individuals communicate to persons or elements come from other culture.In “creative cognition approach”,the author reckons that obtain different knowledge systems is the previous preparation for generate creative ideas.In recent studies on cross-culture creativity has prove the close relationship between multicultural experience and creativity empirically.Conscious of the importance of multicultural experience,the leaders of education system and organization actively promote individuals' creativity by effective strategy such as exchange program on education system.To explore the relationship between multicultural experience and creativity,the present study,with the use of four cultural priming,evaluated whether the performance of individuals' creativity task differently by record and evaluate their answer,and reveal the brain's nervous activity under the relation pattern of multicultural experience——creativity link through f MRI.Study 1,23 Chinese undergraduates aged in 18-24 in participated a with-subject design experimental procedure consisted of four conditions:American culture only condition,Japanese culture only condition,dual cultures condition and control condition.In the first two conditions,undergraduates were exposed to American/Japanese culture only,in third condition,they were exposed to American culture and Japanese culture in the meantime.In control condition,they were exposed to a picture consist of geometric figure which mean nothing in culture.Asking them to look at the priming picture first and then report the unconventional uses of a daily items when they watch the pictures of objects.Results:(1)the performance of Unusual Uses Tasks(UUT)has improved only when individuals contact different cultures in the meantime,otherwise,their scores of task have remained mostly stagnant in one culture contact conditions and control condition;(2)there was no difference between three other conditions in our studies;(3)the performance of UUT in the Japanese culture condition is substantially bellow the performance in the Dual culture condition.Conclusions: multicultural experiences may boosts the performance of creative tasks,and maybe that's because contact to difference cultures at the same time could broader the search area of information related to thecurrent task,and what's good for the generation of creative ideas and then enhances the performance of creative tasks.Individuals exposed to monoculture will improve the performance on creative tasks slightly but below the significant level.Study 2,exploring the neurotic mechanism of priming different cultures by f MRI.Results:(1)bilaterally in IPL(inferior parietal lobule,BA40)and left PG(precentral gyrus,BA2)have significantly activated in the contrast between American culture condition and control condition and between Japanese culture condition and control condition;(2)right fusiform gyrus(BA37)and left frontal lobe/sub-gyral(BA4)have significantly activated in the contrast of Japanese culture condition and control condition;(3)right Occipital Lobe-Lingual Gyrus(BA 18)and right superior frontal gyrus(BA 8)have significantly activated in the contrast of Dual cultures condition and control condition.(4)left Precuneus(BA 31)has significantly activated in the contrast between Japanese culture condition and Dual cultures condition.Conclusions:BA40 contributed to semantic processing and focus on integrate information in creative thought process.Requires both integrating current information and their internal representation induced by that information,and that could have contributed to the significantly activated of inferior parietal lobule(BA40).Left frontal lobe/sub-gyral(BA4)gets activated in verbal related tasks,so most studies agree that this brain region involved to semantic processing.BA4 involved during the cognitive processing of semantic information retrieval,semantic preference and remote semantic integration.Right superior frontal gyrus(BA 8)involves to inhibition of old ideas.Right Occipital Lobe-Lingual Gyrus(BA 18)usually associated with cognitive process on visual memory,visual image and enactive representation.The current study application of f MRI for the first time,to explore the neural mechanism under the relationship between multicultural experiences and the performance of creative tasks,and what's good for researchers understand the relationship between creative thinking better.