Author Interviews, Cognitive Issues, Psychological Science / 30.10.2014
Meditation May Improve Creative Thinking and Problem Solving
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Lorenza S. Colzato, Assistant Professor
and Dominque Lippelt, Research Master Student
Cognitive Neuroscience ResearchProgram
Leiden, The Netherlands
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Our study aimed to investigate whether prior meditation experience could modulate the effect of two types of meditation on two aspects of creative thought. Creativity can be thought of as consisting of two main ingredients: Convergent thinking (finding one solution to a defined problem) and divergent thinking (finding many possible solutions to a problem). In a previous study we found that Open Monitoring meditation and Focused Attention meditaton (FAM) have distinguishable effects on creativity. OMM induces a control state that promotes divergent thinking while Focused Attention meditaton does not improve convergent thinking. Our results confirm and extend these findings. Open Monitoring meditation improved performance on a divergent thinking task, while Focused Attention meditaton did not, and these effects were present in both experienced and novice practitioners, suggesting that one does not have to have many years of meditation experience to benefit from its effects. However, while solving convergent thinking problems experienced practitioners tended to solve more problems through insight as opposed to using an analytical strategy, a way of problem solving that bears similarities to divergent thinking.
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