Creative cognition: Its implicit nature and conscious control

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H02717
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Cognitive science
• Research Institution: Ritsumeikan University
• Principal Investigator: Hattori Masasi 立命館大学, 総合心理学部, 教授 (50301643)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 鈴木 宏昭 青山学院大学, 教育人間科学部, 教授 (50192620) ; 三輪 和久 名古屋大学, 情報学研究科, 教授 (90219832)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 思考 / 問題解決 / 創造性 / 推論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We all have difficulty in coming up with good ideas or giving good explanations. We have clarified some of the mechanisms of such phenomena from the perspective of the structure of the task, the effort (cognitive resources), characteristics of the individual (personality, tendency to search for information, inhibitory function, etc.), and the surrounding environment (presence of noise, cognitive load, etc.). We discovered, for example, that people with a moderate inhibitory function can unconsciously obtain hints from the outside world in an environment with moderate noise, indicating that all factors interact in a complex manner. The results also suggest that unconscious storages of information have the ability to integrate pieces of information and can perform more complex processing than previously thought.

Free Research Field

認知科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

創造的なアイデアの生成過程において，無意識的な思考が関係していることは以前から知られていたものの，どのような人が，どのような状態のときに，どのような情報を外界からうまく取り入れることができるかといった詳細については，本研究が初めて明らかにした。ある人の創造性を促進する環境が，別の人の創造性を妨害する可能性があることを明らかにした本研究の成果は，たとえば，個人差を考慮した創造的活動の場の構築に役立つ可能性を秘めている。