Sex differences in the relationship between creativity and hemispheric information selection at the global and local levels

Abstract

Sex-related differences in creativity-related hemispheric selective processes at the global and local levels were studied using hierarchically presented letters under the conditions of their identification and comparison. The results showed that, irrespective of the sex and the type of creative thinking, its originality was associated with the acceleration of right-hemispheric processes of information selection at the global level and deceleration of interhemispheric communication. Relationships between the originality of ideas and hemispheric attentional characteristics were stronger in men during the solution of verbal creative problems and in women during figurative original thinking. The originality of verbal activity in men was more closely associated with the success of selective processes in the left hemisphere; in women, with the selective functions of both hemispheres. Figurative thinking in men was less related to hemispheric characteristics of attention compared to women. An increase in figurative originality in women was accompanied by the acceleration of information selection in the right hemisphere and a higher efficiency of local attention and speeds of global processing in the left hemisphere.