Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jan 30;115(5):867-872. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1717362115. Epub 2018 Jan 16.
Flexibility of thought is theorized to play a critical role in the ability of high creative individuals to generate novel and innovative ideas. However, this has been examined only through indirect behavioral measures. Here we use network percolation analysis (removal of links in a network whose strength is below an increasing threshold) to computationally examine the robustness of the semantic memory networks of low and high creative individuals. Robustness of a network indicates its flexibility and thus can be used to quantify flexibility of thought as related to creativity. This is based on the assumption that the higher the robustness of the semantic network, the higher its flexibility. Our analysis reveals that the semantic network of high creative individuals is more robust to network percolation compared with the network of low creative individuals and that this higher robustness is related to differences in the structure of the networks. Specifically, we find that this higher robustness is related to stronger links connecting between different components of similar semantic words in the network, which may also help to facilitate spread of activation over their network. Thus, we directly and quantitatively examine the relation between flexibility of thought and creative ability. Our findings support the associative theory of creativity, which posits that high creative ability is related to a flexible structure of semantic memory. Finally, this approach may have further implications, by enabling a quantitative examination of flexibility of thought, in both healthy and clinical populations.
思维的灵活性被理论化认为在高创造性个体产生新颖和创新想法的能力中起着关键作用。然而，这仅通过间接的行为测量进行了检验。在这里，我们使用网络渗流分析（在网络中删除强度低于递增阈值的链接）来计算地检验低创造性个体和高创造性个体的语义记忆网络的稳健性。网络的稳健性表明其灵活性，因此可用于量化与创造力相关的思维灵活性。这是基于这样的假设，即语义网络的稳健性越高，其灵活性越高。我们的分析表明，与低创造性个体的网络相比，高创造性个体的语义网络在网络渗流中更稳健，并且这种更高的稳健性与网络结构的差异有关。具体来说，我们发现这种更高的稳健性与网络中不同语义相似词的不同组件之间连接的更强的链接有关，这也有助于促进它们的网络中的激活传播。因此，我们直接且定量地检验了思维灵活性与创造性能力之间的关系。我们的研究结果支持了创造力的联想理论，该理论认为高创造性能力与语义记忆的灵活结构有关。最后，这种方法可能具有进一步的意义，通过在健康和临床人群中实现思维灵活性的定量检查。
