Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting

Abstract

Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement. Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance. In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford’s alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen. When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition. Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking. Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility.

Spontaneous Eye Blinks Map the Probability of Perceptual Reinterpretation During Visual and Auditory Ambiguity

“…We computed a blink detection algorithm based on the pupil radius data similar to the one described in previous studies (Brych & Händel, 2020; Brych, Murali, & Händel, 2021a, 2021b; Murali & Händel, 2021, 2022). First, the z‐score of the radius data of each eye was calculated (per trial, for each subject) and then a potential blink was considered if either (1) both left and right eye radii values were missing or (2) if either the left or right eye radii data were missing and the other eye had a z‐score below a threshold of −1 (Exception: Experiment 1: threshold set to −2 for four subjects; Experiment 2: threshold set to 0.5 for one trial for one subject and two trials for another subject).…”

Multi-level meta-analysis of whether fostering creativity during physical activity interventions increases their impact on cognitive and academic outcomes during childhood

“…It has been suggested that holistic physical practices influence planning and creativity outcomes 108 . Specifically, researchers have proposed that the mechanism linking PA to creativity is not a link between exercise and cognition but that the broadening of attention during free movement compared to restricted movements 111 , 112 . Murali and Händel 111 conducted three experiments in adults involving sitting and walking to identify the mechanism between movement and creativity through restricting movement in both activities.…”

“…Specifically, researchers have proposed that the mechanism linking PA to creativity is not a link between exercise and cognition but that the broadening of attention during free movement compared to restricted movements 111 , 112 . Murali and Händel 111 conducted three experiments in adults involving sitting and walking to identify the mechanism between movement and creativity through restricting movement in both activities. They found that free movement led to better performance in creativity tasks due to broadening of focus of attention (see also 112 ).…”

The brain in motion–cognitive effects of simultaneous motor activity

“…Three studies investigated the effect of exercise on cognitive flexibility. They assessed walking of less than 15 min at light intensity either on a treadmill ( Oppezzo and Schwartz, 2014 ; Tomporowski and Audiffren, 2014 ) or on the floor ( Murali and Händel, 2022 ) and consistently found beneficial effects. In sum, short walking interventions increase cognitive flexibility.…”