Noticing Unexpected Objects Improves the Creation of Creative Solutions—Inattentional Blindness by Children Influences Divergent Thinking Negatively

Some See It, Some Don’t: Exploring the Relation between Inattentional Blindness and Personality Factors

“…Interestingly, our finding on the role of openness is consistent with previous results indicating that inattentional blindness is negatively associated with creative thinking [ 22 ]. Openness and creativity are closely linked, although the nature of this relationship is somewhat unclear [ 30 ] (see also [ 60 ]).…”

“…Recently, it has been suggested that creative behavior and achievement might be one of two facets of openness to experience, the other one being fluid intelligence [ 61 ]. Moreover, creativity is associated with certain styles of attentional processing and perceptual abilities [ 22 , 62 , 63 ]. Thus, the relation between openness and inattentional blindness, as described in the present study, might actually rely on the following: Open people are characterized by a high level of creativity [ 60 ], which entails enhanced perceptual and attentional capabilities [ 22 , 62 , 63 ], which in turn affects the likelihood of consciously perceiving unexpectedly appearing objects.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, there are only two studies to date investigating whether inattentional blindness is related to personality factors in adults [ 20 , 21 ]. A related third study showed a negative association between inattentional blindness and creative thinking in seven-year-old children [ 22 ]. We did, however, not follow up on this specific finding for two reasons.…”

“…Thus, it is conceivable that individuals who are open to new experiences might also be more receptive (in a perceptual sense) to unexpected objects or events. This notion is indirectly backed by empirical evidence: Creative individuals score higher on the openness scale [ 31 ], and they are also more likely to detect unexpected objects in an inattentional blindness paradigm [ 22 ]. Openness might therefore also be connected to inattentional blindness.…”

Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood

“…In later studies, Memmert (2007Memmert ( , 2009) also demonstrated that a training program focused on broadening attention led to an increase in sport-specific, in-game creative performance, and that children with lower levels of inattentional blindness produced more novel responses in a test of divergent thinking. Memmert and Roth (2007) conducted a study to examine the efficacy of creativity training interventions on the development of tactical creativity in a group of elementary-aged children playing handball, soccer, or field hockey.…”