The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the interaction between body and environment on creative thinking. Previous studies have focused on the roots of creativity and its components.In order to clarify the cognitive mechanism of creativity, researchers used psychometric approach.Some researchers reported case studies that described the performance of outstanding artists and scientists.On the other hand, previous studies have pointed out that creativity depends on not only one's ability but also environmental factors.However, the environmental factors that the previous studies suggested were cultural factors or social factors.They did not imply physical environment.
In recent studies of embodied cognition and situated cognition, it is suggested that complex behavior does not necessarily emerge from complex mechanism. The complex behavior may be explained by simple sensor motor coordination.It is considered that human behavior including creative thought is no exception.This paper hypothesizes that creative thought depends on the interaction between the thinker's body and physical environment in the problem situation.
To this end, author employed the revised “Unusual Uses Test”, which is a kind of creativity test.This test is different from the original version because of the object that participants use.In the original version, participants propose to use a brick in as many ways as possible.In the revised version, participants were provided one of the two different sizes of plastic plates (12cm × 12cm or 14cm × 14cm or 21cm × 21cm) and were asked to propose ways to use the plastic board.Then, the size of the participants' hands were measured.
The results of the experiment indicate that the size of the hands of participants' who proposed creative ideas was different in response to the size of the given object.This suggest that creativity is affected by physical environment and the thinkers' body.