The relevance of the irrelevant: Attentional distractor-response binding predicts performance in the remote associates task.

Abstract

Psychologists have long thought that an inability to suppress irrelevant information hinders our ability to solve problems. However, most studies have investigated analytical rather than creative problem solving. Here, we examine whether the way in which the brain processes task-irrelevant information affects its ability to solve complex and creative problems. Using well-established paradigms from the attentional-perceptual literature (the event-file binding task) and problem-solving literature (the Remote Associates Test and Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), we found that greater attentional leakage, as manifest by strong perceptual distractor-response binding, might be beneficial for solving insight-based creative problems but not necessarily for problems that require pattern finding and logic. These results suggest a specific advantage for spreading attention more equally between relevant and irrelevant information in order to creatively ‘think outside of the box’. This delineates a beautiful mapping between the way our sensory systems interact with the external world and our brain’s formation of internal semantic networks that underlie our creative capacities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)