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The present study aimed to explore the neural-related mechanism of the creative evaluation process in individual with different levels of creativity. The time course of evaluation process for creative objects was monitored by event-related potentials (EPRs). Forty-five participants were divided into the high-creativity performance (HCP) group and the low-creativity performance (LCP) group and then completed a creative object evaluation task. The behavioral results revealed that the HCP group showed higher accuracy rates on the creative object evaluation task than the LCP group did. The ERPs analysis demonstrated that in the early stage of creative object processing, ordinary objects elicited a more negative anterior N2 at 190-340 ms than the creative objects did in the LCP group. In the late stage of creative object processing, creative objects elicited a more positive ERPs deflection in the HCP group than in the LCP group at 350-500 ms and at 500-1000 ms. Taken together, these results indicate that different creativity performance individuals may express different attention patterns or top-down processing strategy in the early stage of creative object evaluation processing; and high-creativity performance individuals can better utilize both cognitive and non-cognitive evaluation processing in the late stage, to process the creative object effectively.

Creative objects differ from ordinary objects in that they are created by human beings to contain novel, creative information. Previous research has demonstrated that ordinary object processing involves both a perceptual process for analyzing different features of the visual input and a higher-order process for evaluating the relevance of this visual information. However, it is unclear how and when these processes are influenced by the creative information of the object. This study utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the time course of creative object processing. Behavioral results revealed that participants spent more time processing creative objects than they did ordinary objects. Analysis of scalp ERPs further revealed that creative objects elicited a more negative ERP deflection between 190 and 340 ms (N190-340) with an anterior scalp distribution. Additionally, creative objects elicited more positive ERP deflection than did ordinary objects between 400 and 700 ms (P400-700) with a right centro-parietal scalp distribution and between 700 and 1000 ms (late positive component) with a right anterior-central scalp distribution. Such results suggest that the processing of creative objects is composed of two distinct stages. The early perceptual stage involves the detection of visual differences exhibited by the creative objects, while the late stage involves the right-lateralized processes of understanding and encoding the creative information.

The present study aimed to explore the neural-related mechanism of the creative evaluation process in individual with different levels of creativity. The time course of evaluation process for creative objects was monitored by event-related potentials (EPRs). Forty-five participants were divided into the high-creativity performance (HCP) group and the low-creativity performance (LCP) group and then completed a creative object evaluation task. The behavioral results revealed that the HCP group showed higher accuracy rates on the creative object evaluation task than the LCP group did. The ERPs analysis demonstrated that in the early stage of creative object processing, ordinary objects elicited a more negative anterior N2 at 190–340 ms than the creative objects did in the LCP group. In the late stage of creative object processing, creative objects elicited a more positive ERPs deflection in the HCP group than in the LCP group at 350–500 ms and at 500–1000 ms. Taken together, these results indicate that different creativity performance individuals may express different attention patterns or top-down processing strategy in the early stage of creative object evaluation processing; and high-creativity performance individuals can better utilize both cognitive and non-cognitive evaluation processing in the late stage, to process the creative object effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]