Tag Archives: Jin Fan

Walking Linked to More Creative Solutions than Sitting

Marily Oppezzo

Marily Oppezzo

People who walked instead of sat generated more novel and feasible ideas, reported Santa Clara University’s Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz of Stanford University.

Dan Schwartz

Dan Schwartz

More than 175 volunteers completed well-validated assessments of creative thinking:

Guilford’s Alternate Uses (GAU) for common objects, created by University of Southern California’s J. P. Guilford, to measure of cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking,

JP Guilford

Edward Bowden

Edward Bowden

Compound Remote-Association test (CRA), developed by University of Wisconsin’s Edward Bowden and Mark Beeman of Northwestern to evaluate convergent thinking,

Barron’s Symbolic Equivalence Test (BSE), introduced by Frank Barron of University of California, Santa Cruz to calibrate the number of original insightful analogies generated for complex ideas.

Frank Barron

Oppezzo and Schwartz coded analogies according to a protocol developed by Northwestern’s Dedre Gentner to measure:

  • Appropriateness,
  • Novelty,
  • Quality, determined by:

o   Level of detail,
o   Semantic proximity to the base statement,
o   Relational mapping to the base statement.

Dedre Gentner

Dedre Gentner

Walking was associated with increased divergent creativity on Guilford’s Alternate Uses (GAU) and improved convergent thinking measured by Compound Remote-Association test (CRA).
This trend significantly increased when volunteers walked outside and these participants produced the most novel and highest quality analogies.

Walkers generated an average of 60% more creative ideas than when seated.
People who walked were more talkative, and their greater verbal output was associated with more valid creative ideas.

Marc Berman

Marc Berman

Participants generated more valid creative solutions when they walked first then sat for the next problem-solving session.

John Jonides

John Jonides

These effects may be explained by Attention Restoration Theory (ART), described by University of Michigan’s Marc G. Berman, John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan as two types of attention:

Involuntary attention, captured by inherently intriguing stimuli,

-Voluntary or directed attention, directed by cognitive-control processes.

Stephen Kaplan

Stephen Kaplan

They suggested that walking in natural environments renews directed attention and improves performances on difficult tasks even when no longer walking.
Even viewing photographs of nature was associated with improved performance on a complex backwards digit-span task.

In contrast, walking in an urban walk requires directed attention to avoid obstacles and dangerous situations, and provides less opportunity to restore directed attention.

Jin Fan

Jin Fan

After volunteers walked, they performed better on attentional function tasks on the Attention Network Test, developed by Jin Fan of Mount Sinai Medical School to evaluate:

-Alerting,

-Orienting,

-Executive attention.

Benefits of walking were not related to mood or weather conditions during four different seasons.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

These studies validate Friedrich Nietzsche’s observation that “all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking and walking in a natural setting before generating creative ideas.
Access to walking places in natural settings can enhance cognitive functioning and performance.

-*How effective have you found taking a brief walk outdoors before high-stakes discussions?

RELATED POSTS:

©Kathryn Welds

Advertisement

Reduce Rumination, Stress by Taking a Walk in Nature, Viewing Animals

More than 50% of people live in urban environments and most have relatively infrequent contact with nature, according to research published by the United Nations.

Theo Lorenc

Theo Lorenc

One consequence is that many urban dwellers with decreased exposure to nature report “changes in psychological functioning” including ruminative thoughts – repetitive thoughts about negative aspects of the self – and depressed feelings, found University College London’s Theo Lorenc, Mark Petticrew, and Steven Cummins with Stephen Clayton of University of Central Lancaster, and David Neary of University of Manchester, University of Liverpool’s Margaret Whitehead, Hilary Thomson of University of Glasgow,  University of York’s Amanda Jayne Sowden, and Adrian Renton of University of East London.

Stephen Clayton

Stephen Clayton

Contact with nature can affect cognitive performance as well as emotional experience: Children living in urban environments with consistent views of nature outside their windows, performed better on:

  • Working memory (backward digit span, backward alphabet span),
  • Impulse inhibition (matching familiar figures task),
  • Selective attention (Stroop color-word task),
  • Concentration (Necker Cube pattern control task), reported by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances Kuo, and William C. Sullivan.
Andrea Faber Taylor

Andrea Faber Taylor

Urban environments are thought to require substantial top-down voluntary attentional control to filter relevant from irrelevant stimuli.
At the same time, built landscapes can deplete cognitive resources, worsening performance on tasks requiring focused attention, noted University of Uppsala’s Terry HartigGary W. Evans of University of California, Irvine with Marlis Mang of Planning & Design Solutions.

Terry Hartig

Terry Hartig

Walking for 90 minutes in nature reduced ruminationblood flow, and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), reported Stanford’s Gregory N. Bratman, Kevin S. Hahn, Gretchen C. Daily, and James J. Gross with J. Paul Hamilton of Laureate Institute for Brain Research.
This brain area has been linked to self-focused behavioral withdrawal and rumination among both healthy and depressed people.

Gregory Bratman

Gregory Bratman

More than 35 volunteers rated their proneness to ruminate with negative thoughts, then half walked alone for 90-minutes without music through undeveloped open space hills through grassland with scattered shrubs and oak trees along a paved path.
They were told to take ten photographs of “whatever captured their attention” to disguise the study’s hypotheses.

Urban vs Rural Walks

Kevin Hahn

Kevin Hahn

Remaining participants walked alone without music down a busy, paved six-lane road with traffic for the same time period.

Following the walks, volunteers again rated their likelihood to repeatedly think negative thoughts.
They also completed a brain scan and cognitive and emotional assessment instruments including:

Lee Anna Clark

Lee Anna Clark

Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) developed by Southern Methodist University’s David Watson, with Lee Anna Clark and Auke Tellegen of University of Minnesota,

Backward digit span, developed by David Wechsler of Bellevue Hospital,

Jin Fan

Jin Fan

Attention Network Task (ANT- executive attention subtest), developed by Mount Sinai’s Jin Fan, Bruce D. McCandliss and John Fossella of Cornell, Yale’s Jonathan I. Flombaum and Michael I. Posner of University of Oregon,

Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire (RRQ) by Ohio State’s Paul Trapnell and Jennifer Campbell, including items like “I often reflect on episodes of my life that I should no longer concern myself with”),

Nash Unsworth

Nash Unsworth

Operation Span Task (OSPAN) developed by Georgia Tech’s Nash Unsworth, Richard Heitz and and Randall Engle with Josef Schrock o Marysville College,

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), developed by University of South Florida’s Charles D. Spielberger, 

Visuospatial working memory (change detection), developed by University of Iowa’s Steven J. Luck and Edward K. Vogel,