The involvement of conflict monitoring and rewards processing in the appropriateness evaluation of creativity: An event-related potential-based analysis

Generating novel ideas or solutions and evaluating their appropriateness are two primary components of human creativity. While numerous studies have focused on the mechanisms for generating novel ideas, few have examined how the brain evaluates the appropriateness of ideas, particularly over time. The current study aimed to investigate the neuro-cognitive mechanisms underlying how appropriateness of novel solutions is evaluated dynamically, particularly how it interacts with novelty. Participants were asked to ascertain whether proposed solutions were appropriate within the context of high- or low-novelty riddles while recording the event-related brain potentials. The findings revealed that appropriate solutions for both high- and low-novelty riddles elicited smaller N200 (N2) amplitudes and greater P300 (P3) amplitudes than inappropriate solutions, suggesting that conflict monitoring and reward processing may be involved in the evaluation of the appropriateness of novel ideas. Furthermore, the P3 effects suggest a negative relationship between appropriateness and novelty, with greater P3 amplitudes and their differences (i.e., appropriate minus inappropriate solutions) observed in the low-novelty condition compared to the high-novelty condition. Additionally, the results indicate significant differences between the processing of high- and low-novelty riddles in terms of behavioral and event-related potential indexes (including accuracy, response times, and N2 and P3 amplitudes), but only for appropriate solutions, highlighting the critical role that appropriateness plays in the evaluation of creativity. In conclusion, this study draws attention to the involvement of conflict-related N2 and reward-related P3 amplitudes in the evaluation of appropriateness, while also providing electrophysiological evidence of the interactions between appropriateness and novelty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)