Summary: Researchers say the freedom to make self-determined movements may be key to flexible thinking and creativity.
Source: University of Würzburg
Movement helps us to think creatively. This insight is over 2000 years old—and already known to the philosophers in ancient Greece.
However, what is the connection between movement and cognition from a scientific point of view? What happens in the brain when we walk? Are people who rarely move less creative?
“Our research shows that it is not movement per se that helps us to think more flexibly,” says neuroscientist Dr. Barbara Händel from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany. Instead, the freedom to make self-determined movements is responsible for it.
Accordingly, even small movements while sitting can have the same positive effects on creative thinking. However, the researcher does not derive any concrete movement suggestions from her work: “The important thing is the freedom to move without external constraints.”
Don’t stare at small screens for too long
It is important, she says, that movement is not suppressed or forced into regular patterns. “Unfortunately, this happens when people focus for example on a small screen,” explains the JMU researcher.
The increased use of mobile phones and similar devices—also in the field of education at the time of the Corona pandemic—could therefore have a negative effect on cognitive processes such as creativity.
The experiments that Barbara Händel and her doctoral student Supriya Murali conducted are described in detail in a recent publication in the journal Psychological Research.
About this creativity research news
Author: Press Office
Source: University of Würzburg
Contact: Press Office – University of Würzburg
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting” by Supriya Murali et al. Psychological Research
Abstract
Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting
Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement.
Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance.
In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford’s alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen.
When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition.
Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking.
Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility.