Distracted by words: the roles of irrelevance processing and openness on creative performance [Poster and Oral Presentation]

Attention is one the key cognitive mechanisms in the creative thinking process. In particular, several studies have shown how paying attention to irrelevant information can potentially increase the creative performance in an Alternative Uses Task (AUT), if it is combined with high levels of Openness to experience (see e.g., Agnoli et al., 2015; Agnoli et al., 2018). However, past research has been mainly focused on the processing of visual irrelevant stimuli, opening up the question whether this effect can be generalized to other types of stimuli. Thus, in the present study we explored the role of the processing of (apparently) irrelevant words on the creative performance during an AUT task. Forty-five participants (M age = 22.38 years) were involved in an AUT task to produce original uses for common objects identified by target words (pretested and selected for familiarity). Each target word was displayed at the center of a screen, and it was surrounded by 8 peripheral irrelevant words. The attentional processing of the stimuli on the screen were measured through a Tobii T120 eye-tracker. In addition, we computed the semantic distance between the target words and each peripheral word. Big-5 traits and creative achievement were then measured in the participants. Results revealed that the processing of irrelevant peripheral words had an effect on participants’ creative performance (in particular on the fluency index, whereas no significant effect emerged on originality) if combined with their Openness trait and if the semantic distance between the irrelevance and the target word was taken into account. More specifically, the processing of semantically distant irrelevant words led to a higher fluency with increasing Openness. These findings help us understanding and expanding our knowledge on the cognitive and personality factors that influence ideation, particularly the relationship between verbal information and irrelevant processing.