Author

Qin Li

Degree Type

Honors Capstone Project

Date of Submission

Spring 5-1-2008

Capstone Advisor

Paul Verhaeghen

Honors Reader

Alecia Santuzzi

Capstone Major

Psychology

Capstone College

Arts and Science

Audio/Visual Component

no

Capstone Prize Winner

no

Won Capstone Funding

no

Honors Categories

Social Sciences

Subject Categories

Cognition and Perception | Cognitive Psychology | Psychology

Abstract

In recent decades, Psychology has advance empirical studies of creativity, aiming for a better and more concrete understanding of this elusive topic. One branch of these studies investigates creativity’s physiological manifestation in an attempt to isolate underlying neurophysiologic mechanisms involved in creative thinking. These studies, through EEG recording of electrical brain activity, indicated that highly creative individuals tend to express a low arousal state as compared to less creative individuals. This experiment investigates the relationship between induced low arousal and creativity. A computer-based biofeedback game is used to induce low arousal. A multivariate analysis of our data revealed no significant change on the Torrance Test of Creativity (TTCT) score as a result of the intervention. There are evident trends, but they fall short of statistical significance. As advocated by previous research, our study also shows that intelligence as measured by the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) does not correlate with creativity performances.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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