TY - JOUR
T1 - Enhancement of visual attention precedes the emergence of novel metaphor interpretations
AU - Terai, Asuka
AU - Nakagawa, Masanori
AU - Kusumi, Takashi
AU - Koike, Yasuharu
AU - Jimura, Koji
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C; 26330245) to AT, and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2015 Terai, Nakagawa, Kusumi, Koike and Jimura.
PY - 2015/6/26
Y1 - 2015/6/26
N2 - Emergence of creative ideas often involves sudden linking of unrelated ideas. Here we demonstrate that the production of insights about novel metaphor was preceded by prolonged visual inspection of metaphorical sentences. The participants made free spoken responses in a task requiring the generation of semantic interpretations about visually presented sentences, where gaze locations were continuously monitored. We found that creative interpretations were primarily generated from novel metaphorical expressions, rather than from conventional expressions. Moreover, presented words within novel metaphors were visually inspected for longer periods specifically before creative interpretations were produced. Interestingly, prolonged gazes occurred several seconds (∼8 s) prior to the generation of creative interpretations, particularly, in the case of the topic word within the metaphor. These results demonstrate latent cognitive process meditating the emergence of insights, and suggest that the prior visual inspection prompted the semantic representation of the metaphorical sentences, which eventually facilitates creative ideas.
AB - Emergence of creative ideas often involves sudden linking of unrelated ideas. Here we demonstrate that the production of insights about novel metaphor was preceded by prolonged visual inspection of metaphorical sentences. The participants made free spoken responses in a task requiring the generation of semantic interpretations about visually presented sentences, where gaze locations were continuously monitored. We found that creative interpretations were primarily generated from novel metaphorical expressions, rather than from conventional expressions. Moreover, presented words within novel metaphors were visually inspected for longer periods specifically before creative interpretations were produced. Interestingly, prolonged gazes occurred several seconds (∼8 s) prior to the generation of creative interpretations, particularly, in the case of the topic word within the metaphor. These results demonstrate latent cognitive process meditating the emergence of insights, and suggest that the prior visual inspection prompted the semantic representation of the metaphorical sentences, which eventually facilitates creative ideas.
KW - conceptual combination
KW - creativity
KW - free spoken response
KW - metaphor comprehension
KW - semantic attention
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U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00892
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00892
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85059619554
VL - 6
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
SN - 1664-1078
M1 - 892
ER -