Flexibility of thought in high creative individuals represented by percolation analysis.

Autor:	Kenett YN; Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104; yoedk@sas.upenn.edu hes@bu.edu.; The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel., Levy O; Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel., Kenett DY; Center for Polymeric Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215.; Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215., Stanley HE; Center for Polymeric Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215; yoedk@sas.upenn.edu hes@bu.edu.; Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215., Faust M; The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.; Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel., Havlin S; Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A] 2018 Jan 30; Vol. 115 (5), pp. 867-872. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Jan 16.
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.1717362115
Abstrakt:	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. Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Databáze:	MEDLINE
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